An Award for All as Vice-Chancellor Becomes a CBE
Swansea Metropolitan University colleagues have congratulated Wales' longest serving Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Warner, as he dedicates his CBE to the University's staff and students.
Professor Warner was awarded the accolade in the Queen's birthday honours list for services to local and national higher education.
Speaking on behalf of Swansea Met, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ken Reid said: "All of the staff and students at Swansea Metropolitan University are delighted at the news of David's richly deserved award. Since his appointment in 1998, David has placed Swansea Met firmly on the higher education map throughout Wales. He has also achieved a great deal for Swansea and its region."
Professor Warner came to the, then, Swansea Institute of Higher Education on 1st January, 1998 and is now the longest serving head of a Higher Education institution in Wales. He has previously worked in a school, an FE college and at the Universities of Warwick, East Anglia and as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Birmingham City University.
As well as being Vice-Chancellor at Swansea Metropolitan University, he is also the Deputy Chair of Higher Education Wales, which is part of Universities UK.
Professor Warner has written or edited some ten books on aspects of higher education management including Human Resource Management in Higher and Further Education; How to Manage a Merger ... or Avoid One; Higher Education Management: the key elements; The State of UK Higher Education; Higher Education Law and Managing Crisis. He is currently the commissioning editor of a sixteen volume series for the Open University Press entitled Managing Universities and Colleges and is the Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education.
He has been involved in all aspects of HE management development for a number of years and has successfully undertaken a wide range of consultancies in the UK, currently working, under the auspices of the Leadership Foundation, at the University of Manchester.
In addition, Professor Warner has undertaken a number of international consultancies, the most recent being for universities in Namibia, Romania, Belarus and Queensland, Australia.
The Royal honour comes eighteen months after the University received confirmation, from of Privy Council, of its name change from Swansea Institute to Swansea Metropolitan University, following two years of rigorous inspections which were passed with flying colours.
Since then, the University has seen a surge in full-time student applications and enrolments with numbers up by 23% last year, the biggest increase of any Welsh university.
Also, figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) showed that Swansea Met had significantly exceeded its target set by Government for the employment of its graduates, with 94.1% of its students in employment or training within six months of graduating against a target of 92.9%.
Another impressive outturn during the University's inaugural year included figures published in the Grant Thornton Higher Education Financial Yearbook for 2008/9, which showed that Swansea Metropolitan University had the best financial record in Wales and the fourth best in the whole of the UK.
Despite being an institution that focuses on teaching, the recent RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) results indicated that 60% of the research work which is carried out at Swansea Met is of ‘international significance', and in some cases ‘world leading'. Research strengths include art and design, engineering and education.
Dedicating his CBE to the University's staff and students, Professor Warner said: "I am obviously very pleased, but I think the most important thing is that it is recognition of how far Swansea Metropolitan University has come.
"It is not an honour for me as me, it is an honour for me as head of Swansea Metropolitan University."