Name : Alison Halstead

Age : 50

Job : Dean of learning and teaching, Wolverhampton University.

Salary : Salary is fine, but the tax kills it.

Background : Physics undergraduate at Imperial College London, PhD in materials engineering with the Cabot Corporation on the failure mechanisms of complex cobalt wear-resistant alloys. Worked in industry, then did a postgraduate certificate in teaching in further education and higher education before working at Brunel, Coventry and the Open universities.

I've been at Wolverhampton for three years.

Working hours : Office hours are 7.45am to 4pm (to beat the traffic). I try not to work at weekends, but with deadlines for papers and bids I can be antisocial at times.

Number of students you teach/staff you manage: I teach on professional development programmes and lead our Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, a Higher Education Funding Council for England £4.5 million project with about 20 staff. We are all very different: e-learning, student support, educational development and researchers.

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Biggest challenge : I was put forward for a national teaching fellowship, and writing the reflective account was unbelievably challenging. The pain was taken away when I got one, and I was ecstatic that Wolverhampton was the only university to be awarded three.

Biggest bugbear : Bureaucracy that has no benefits for staff or students. The audit method is dated, but it's good to see some changes that give more emphasis to enhancement.

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How you solved it : Keep chipping away by asking "does it make a difference" and, if it doesn't, question why you do it.

Worst moment in university life : Jumping out a window of a ground-floor lecture hall in my first week as a lecturer because the door handle had mysteriously vanished.

What university facilities do you use? The virtual learning environment Wolf [Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework], the e-portfolio Pebble Pad, e-innovation studio, voting assessment kit and onlinejournals.

Who are the most difficult people you deal with? Staff who lack a "can-do" philosophy and try to stifle innovation. I find ways to move forward anyway.

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Do you interact much with other parts of the university? I interact with a lot of schools and service departments, and as many staff and students as I can.