Katharine Hubbard

Tesco Woosh was recommending I ordered a Christmas pudding today …. 😡

The Other Side of Professional Success (with some help from Billy Joel)

One of the songs that makes me cry the most is Vienna by Billy Joel. I feel like that song has directly looked into my soul and summed me up in 3 minutes with more insight than any therapist has ever managed. All to a…

-446!

Academic coaching is data-driven support for students in the dark Despite the wealth of student services, many still fall through the cracks. Buxi Duan makes the case for a proactive, data-informed approach to support through academic coaching Despite the wealth of...

This week on Wonkhe: Despite the wealth of student services, many still fall through the cracks. Buxi Duan makes the case for a proactive, data-informed approach to support through academic coaching

Universities should face the consequences for misleading students over the cost of living Jim Dickinson has been stuck on trains again, looking at what universities tell students about local cost of living. If anything it's worse than last year - only now there's clearer legal consequences...

This was a good article in @wonkhe.bsky.social today, but did @jimdickinson.bsky.social intend to quite so publicly share he is on the mailing list for Spiders nightclub?! 😂https://wonkhe.com/blogs/universities-should-face-the-consequences-for-misleading-students-over-the-cost-of-living/

Come and work for me! Permanent Senior Advisor in Pedagogy and Practice post. Want someone w experience in design & delivery of PGCAP - we have bold plans! @bnuni.bsky.social really exciting place to work right now. Pls share #AcademicDevelopment #HigherEducation
jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/seni...

Operational clarity Operational clarity isn’t something that happens at the end of a project; it’s something you have to build into delivery itself. When you think about what it means to deliver a project, especially …

*New: Documentation is delivery. If knowledge lives in silos, we haven’t delivered properly.
www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/blackboard/o... #Project #Blackboard #VLE #Education

Another beautiful piece of writing from @michaeloneill.org - one of the wisest and most thoughtful people I know in #HigherEducation bsky.app/profile/mich...

Hope in Chemistry Education — Michael O'Neill Reflections on the place hope might occupy in Chemistry Education, prompted by Gannon’s Radical Hope: a teaching manifesto .

**New blog post** Hope in Chemistry Education. www.michaeloneill.org/blog-1/2025/...

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:

- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue

Working title: Love is Double-Blind

Decolonisation vs diversification of the curriculum – what do we mean, and does it matter?

Oxford university students protesting in 2015. Original image (c) The Telegraph A lot of my work focusses on inclusive education. One component of this focuses on decolonisation and diversification of the…

Now mine are a bit older (2 and 5) I think the hardest thing is realising that weekends aren’t recharge time anymore, and are more tiring than a day at work! Have got used to lunchtime being my quality time - can do a surprising amount of gardening in a lunch break with a bit of planning!

I know someone who literally put a (individually wrapped) biscuit or a sweet every 10 scripts into their stacks of exam marking to get them through it!

Katharine Hubbard at a train station

Early train for me to get to Kingston University @royalsocbio.bsky.social funded symposium - I’m giving a keynote on ‘Decolonising and diversifying the biosciences - what do we really mean and can we ever achieve it?’

It's never been a Plan B. I didn't choose it because it was the only job available or some insulting notion it was a simpler or easier route. I love being LTS and and I'm grateful I get to spend the next part of my career supporting the next generation of LTS academics.

Slides at osf.io/ktsq6

This times a million! Going down a teaching-specialist lecturing track IS an intentional choice for many of us on that route. Some of us actually love teaching, love working with staff to also enjoy teaching, and ensuring universities adhere to their civic duty of being EDUCATIONAL spaces.

Why aren’t we addressing inequity of outcomes for postgraduates? The postgraduate population is growing, but there appears to be less interest in regulating this area of higher education, much less how equitable outcomes are. Katharine Hubbard asks the sector to pa...

New piece on WonkHE today - why isn’t the sector addressing inequity for postgraduate students? Why do we only care about outcomes for those paying the home undergraduate tuition fee? (Hint - the sector does what the OfS and league tables measure) wonkhe.com/blogs/why-ar... #HigherEducation

I agree that they are a frustrating professional body! You have to learn to ‘speak’ the language of AdvanceHE which isn’t great - I’ve used it with staff as an example of the hidden curriculum. They should be leading the way in teaching practice and scholarship, (and provide better value for £!)

Put my neck out nodding at this from @katharinehubbard.bsky.social on teaching qualifications, professional recognition and what new lecturers need (practice not theory). Thank you for saying so many things I don't think I knew how to express! #AcademicSky

katharinehubbard.blog/2025/05/20/t...

Dr Katharine Hubbard NTF PFHEA Specialist in Higher Education Pedagogy and Practice

New blog post - Teaching qualifications vs professional recognition. We often conflate training, qualifications and professional recognition. What do staff and institutions actually need in terms of developing teaching practice? katharinehubbard.blog/blog-posts/ #HigherEducation #AcademicDevelopment

Teaching qualifications vs professional recognition in UK HE

I have a confession to make - I don’t have a teaching qualification. I am an award winning educator, National Teaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of AdvanceHE. But I am entirely self-taught, and have never had any formal training in…

‘The universities are the enemy’: why the right detests the American campus | Lauren Lassabe Shepherd For centuries, the academy was exclusive to the Christian elite. When that began to change, an onslaught began

This a good read on the history of the college/university as “a place to meet other boys like themselves and to be steeped in the cultural norms of their religious denomination and social class” and why diversification has led to current attacks on HE www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why we need to stand up for ‘woke’ curricula

This year has been a pretty turbulent one for higher education. In the USA, it feels like every week there is another attack on higher education and on anything related to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI in the UK - I’m not sure why it seems to be…

That’s good to know - mine are 5 and 2 so we are right in the thick of it!

Indeed! Think this also comes with getting more into mid-career where you have a track record to point to as evidence of your capability and success? Early career where it is all about convincing others of your potential is harder than we give it credit for.

Best life advice I ever got was “you can have it all over the course of your life/career, but you can’t have it all simultaneously and that’s ok - trying to have it all simultaneously is a path to burn out”. Can’t say I always follow the advice, but was very wise

The SoTL (scholarship of teaching and learning) staircase

Really helpful post Juie and Steve!

I created the SoTL staircase to demonstrate the variety of outputs go beyond books and journals for a staff development event I led in 2023. Now written up as a post on our new SoTL blog at Hallam. lta.shu.ac.uk/scholarship/...

Unless you've experienced it yourself, you will never understand the frustration of being soemone who is good at using Excel watching someone who isn't using it in a meeting

I have been using skeleton PowerPoint presentations this year. It lets me ask students to do things before showing them how I do it (e.g. electron counting).

I think it’s working well, and it has saved me *so* much time. The blog’s point about responding to student questions really resonates, too.

Have you seen what @rhodium103.bsky.social can do with a spreadsheet?! I thought I was pretty good with Excel, but Chris can do things with it I hadn’t even imagined were possible! All to be celebrated, but you may have to recalibrate what over engineering a spreadsheet looks like!