BU leads way in professorial appointments

5 January 2009

BU has become the first new university to promote academic staff to Associate Professor.

BU is the first post-1992 University to appoint Associate Professors and ten members of staff across BU’s six academic Schools have been awarded the new status.

The Associate Professor role presents an opportunity for academics to progress at BU within their chosen specialism of education, research, enterprise or professional practice, with the aim of achieving full Professor status within five years.

Additionally, BU has created a new grading structure for existing Professors. Senior academics Professor Matthew Bennett, Professor Tim Darvill and Professor Adrian Newton, of the School of Conservation Sciences, and Professor Jian J Zhang, of the Media School were promoted to Professor Grade 2 status. This was in recognition of their outstanding contribution to international research in their respective fields of Physical Geography, Archaeology, Conservation Ecology and Computer Animation.

These appointments follow the University’s new framework agreement which is designed to reward with career progression and promotion to those academic staff who demonstrate clear achievement in education, research, enterprise and professional practice.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Curran said: “Our new professorial structure is an important step for BU. The lack of a University promotion round has been a concern since I was appointed and I am delighted that through the hard work of colleagues and the co-operation of 'University and College Union (UCU) we now have a robust scheme in place.”

BU plans to appoint further to Associate Professor and Professor Grade 2 positions each year.