Midlands Universities Science Minister Amanda Solloway has announced the launch of £5million talent programme which is the largest ever investment into technicians in higher education.
The new initiative is led by Midlands Innovation, a consortium of eight Midlands universities and industry partners aimed at creating awareness on the expertise of their technical community by delivering a package of measures to support their career advancement and development.
Solloway explained, that technicians play a vital role across our universities, research centres and industry sectors.
He further expressed his joy that Midlands Universities Innovation is leading the way in supporting technicians who work so hard across the UK to teach students and underpin innovation.
Currently, around 30,000 technicians currently underpin research, teaching, knowledge transfer and innovation at UK universities.
Additionally, many of them are researchers and educators in their own right, teaching and training students and researchers at every level.
Notably, Midlands universities Innovation is a world-class research and innovation partnership, combining the collective excellence of eight leading universities in the heart of the UK.
This institution are namely; Aston, Birmingham, Cranfield, Keele, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham and Warwick universities.
The initiative also unites the power of university research with the unique strengths of Midlands industry to drive cutting-edge research, innovation and skills development.
Midlands universities HE technicians program
Steven Hill, England’s Director of Research, stated the technicians talent program was necessitated in a bid to grow the shortage of technicians across all sectors.
He said: Technicians are an understudied group in higher education, which means there is a real gap in our understanding of both their role and future skills requirements.
Hill added the current shortage of technicians threatens the UK’s innovative strength and global competitiveness.
The midlands universities technicians talent program is sponsored by a grant of more than £3 million from the Research England Development Fund.
The rest of the funding will be provided by the consortium university members as well as key partners including the Science Council, Technician Commitment, Wellcome Trust, British Geological Survey, Rolls Royce plc, Unilever and Midlands Engine.
The initiative is based on considerable work already undertaken by Midland Innovation to advance the technician agenda, including the signing of the Technician Commitment by all consortium institutions in 2017.
It also involved the establishment of the UK Higher Education Technicians Summit; a national conference for technical staff working in higher education and research, and the Papin Prizes, a series of awards to publicly recognise technical excellence in academia.
As well as piloting a collaborative placement programme to enable career development opportunities for our technical staff.
Universities reaction
Professor Stephen Jarvis, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at University of Warwick said the initiative is aimed at promoting skills development programmes, mentoring schemes, professional registration and new transparent technician career pathways.
The Midlands universities technicians talent program would be led by Kelly Vere, Director of Technical Skills and Strategy, at Nottingham university.
The program would lead and promote change to enhance the status and development opportunities of technicians in the Uk.
