Helen Billington , 42
Faculty of Biological Sciences
Learning and Teaching Quality Assurance Officer
Coventry University

Job advertised in The Times Higher , November 14 2003

Helen Billington gave up her career as a lecturer in environmental biology at Coventry University when her husband's job shifted to Leeds. She lives on a smallholding in North Yorkshire and commutes to Leeds.

"Since the move, I've been involved in university administration, initially managing projects such as widening participation for a spin-off called Yorkshire Universities," she says.

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A vacancy as faculty recruitment officer at Leeds University's faculty of biological sciences some 18 months ago gave Billington the opportunity to get back into her subject area, albeit with a marketing bent. From there, she decided to apply for a quality assurance officer post because she wanted to improve students' experience of learning. The faculty wanted to link its four schools - biochemistry and microbiology, biology, biomedical sciences and sport and exercise sciences.

Jeremy Rayner, faculty dean for learning and teaching, says: "We had 20 or so applications. Some were quite strange. We needed someone with an understanding of the pressures on academics, the national quality agenda and white paper."

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Billington was appointed in January and is phasing in the work while awaiting the appointment of her replacement. Her first task is to get approval for a new faculty degree programme.

"That will need a student handbook and code of practice for assessment. I'm going to try to unify practice across the faculty. That should decrease the workload - not at the outset, though."