Award for Brighton academic helping break down barriers to student success

Advance HE’s National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) celebrates those in UK higher education who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession.

The NTF award is given to only a handful of academics each year, and Jo believes that the driving force behind her recognition is a lifetime of removing barriers to education from students from disadvantaged or non-traditional backgrounds.

“When I was thinking about my application for this award, I was told: ‘find your golden thread’,” she says. “My golden thread is widening participation and supporting every student to fulfil their potential, whatever that is.”

Jo MacDonnell

That philosophy has been at the heart of Jo’s practice since she first entered academia in 2006 as a lecturer on Brighton’s TV Production and Broadcast Media foundation degrees.

“I was teaching the foundation degree students at Hastings,” Jo says. “There were no challenges to their ability, but the challenge to their mindset, related to doing a foundation degree in a satellite campus, has proved to be really influential in my approach to my work – it’s how I first fell in love with teaching and the student experience. That formative experience with students from widening participation backgrounds 17 years ago has shaped my entire career.”

Since then, Jo has continued at the university in a wide range of roles but always with a focus on the student experience. In 2015, she became one of Brighton’s faculty-based Directors of Education, and in 2021 stepped up to the position of Director of Education and Students.

“Sometimes the barriers to success are the students’ own barriers,” Jo says. “You know – ‘I shouldn’t be here’, ‘I’m not a university person’, ‘I don’t belong here’. But for other students, the barriers are ones that we impose through our lack of inclusivity.”

A place to call home

For the past eight years Jo has worked hard on narrowing the attainment gap for disadvantaged and Minority Ethnic students; under her leadership on this issue, the university has seen a 21% reduction in the Black/White degree-awarding gap since 2017–18. She also cites the joint work being done on the university’s ‘Belong at Brighton’ student induction programme as a real success.

“It’s something I’m really proud of, because it reflects what students told us,” Jo says. Following feedback from minority ethnic students on Brighton’s transition and academic welcome – and working closely with the Brighton Students’ Union – the university now offers an extended induction stretching all the way back to the point of offer. “It’s about supporting every student, regardless of background, to feel like they belong here and to achieve their potential – whatever that looks like for the individual,” Jo adds.

That feeling of belonging doesn’t just extend to the students: in the university, over the past 17 years, Jo has also found a place to call her own. “It just feels incredibly collegiate,” she says. “There’s always somebody to bounce ideas off. I think it’s the people at Brighton that make it really special. And that’s why I’ve stayed – because I’ve felt at home here. I was welcomed into the academic community as someone who was not an academic, and it made me feel at home.”

Read more about the Advance HE’s National Teaching Fellowship Scheme. The University of Brighton’s Donor Research Group, led by Simonne Weeks, has also been recognised by Advance HE this year for a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE).