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Campus Conversation: Anniversary with a difference


By Staff Reporter

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One thing we’ve all missed this past year has been the chance to have a really good party. Birthdays and anniversaries have come and gone, with more party poopers than party poppers.

The University of the Highlands and Islands celebrated its 10th birthday on February 1, the same day we welcomed Professor Todd Walker as our new Vice Chancellor, joining us (virtually at the moment) all the way from Australia. Our joy at both was heartfelt, but our celebration was on mute.

Picture: Eric Cormack. .Moray college graduation ceremony [afternoon session].
Picture: Eric Cormack. .Moray college graduation ceremony [afternoon session].

Parents everywhere will understand that UHI being 10 now means that we are on the cusp of those very difficult teenage years. Growing up and becoming is never an easy nor a steady process.

In your teenage years there is a strong drive to be different, to stand out, to create your own identity, to be separate from what has gone before. Children choose their battles to create this identity, many of them with those nearest and dearest to them.

Another pressure in your teenage years is not to be different, not to stand out from the crowd. Children can be very cruel and standing out can attract that cruelty. Many children spend their teenage years hiding who they really are.

One of the greatest insights we can give our children is that they don’t have to submit to the tyranny of being ‘normal’. They are loved and valued for who they are, and once they are comfortable in their own skin, they can be more confident in the process of becoming fully themselves.

UHI’s 10th anniversary as a university has been a moment for celebration and reflection.

I believe that UHI has been the most exciting and radical development in UK Higher Education in the past 50 years. It offers ways of doing things, and things to do, that traditional universities can barely dream of. It offers a level of connectivity within our communities, institutions and economy that the rest of Scotland’s colleges and universities together aspire to replicate.

Our university was not created in a vacuum. It was an infrastructure overlaid on 13 existing community colleges and specialist institutions. It was built on the proud history of its parent colleges, deeply embedded in their own local communities and, like Moray College, offering everything from early years provision, support for teaching and pupils in schools, apprenticeships across many sectors, and programmes both for ambitious students and forward-thinking employers.

David Patterson - Principal of Moray College ..Picture: Daniel Forsyth. Image No.034932.
David Patterson - Principal of Moray College ..Picture: Daniel Forsyth. Image No.034932.

Our university is also more than the sum of its parts. It builds regional coherence on top of local connectivities; it offers research, innovation, and knowledge exchange with national and international reach; and it builds graduate and postgraduate opportunities on top of the colleges’ pre-existing higher skills provision.

For this young and impressionable university, we must make sure that it does not fall into the teenage trap of wanting to be seen as a ‘normal’ university. Yes, it must have recognisable and robust quality assurance processes, but it must be anything but normal. It must embrace its past, geography and the rich diversity of its academic parents to remain truly unique, innovative, and a vision for how universities and colleges together can create Scotland’s future.

Let’s raise a virtual glass to that future. Slàinte mhath!

David Patterson is principal of Moray College UHI.


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