Iain Morrison
For 23 years, Iain has been supporting his students as they navigate their studies. Iain’s passion for his student’s development and wellbeing has now seen him promoted to Senior Lecturer.
Forward Thinking
One of his first lecturer projects was the development of the Personal Professional Development (PPD) programme. The programme was created with ten student partners from courses across the school who felt that they didn’t have the confidence and experience to identify and explain the skills they can offer to prospective employers.
So, PPD was created to allow students to develop and document their practical, critical and creative skills together with more lifelong transferable skills. It sees students compile a profile of their learning over four years of study, helping them to identify and showcase what they’ve achieved so far. This helps to facilitate their plans for the future as well as promote the extracurricular activities, such as work experience, internships, exhibitions, freelancing and volunteering they’ve undertaken during their studies.
Iain has made sure that the PPD concept has been shared widely across RGU. It’s seen as an example of best practice when it comes to developing employability.
Sharing Experience
The PPD learnings are underpinned by the Gray’s Open Studio Morning which takes place in semester one each year. Created by Iain, the sessions see stages one and two students visit stages three and four in their studios to view their work. The older students share how the course has developed for them and discuss the opportunities available such as placements or Erasmus.
This is followed by stages three and four students returning the visit. This gives them the chance to reflect on the skills they’ve gained while studying, growing their understanding of how their practices have matured.
The Open Studio Mornings help to reinforce the welcoming atmosphere at Gray’s. It’s all about learning from each other, sharing experiences to find new ways to collaborate. These events have received great feedback from students who say the opportunity to visit various studios throughout the School is extremely worthwhile.
There’s more…
When Iain was stage one coordinator for the Communication Design course he introduced a range of online support for the course, invited successful practitioners to talk to students about their careers, introduced the Year Review Crit allowing students to reflect on the projects they’ve undertaken and the skills they’ve acquired.
He’s committed to developing industry links for the course, so far connecting with STV News, MAKE, Belmont Cinema, Woodend Barn, IKM Testing UK, Shetland Arts and the Anatomy Rooms.
He redesigned the structure of the Professional Design Studies module to reflect current methods of business practice and promotion. This saw the creation of a guest lecture series which saw students introduced to a diverse range of subjects to broaden their commercial awareness and help focus their future career plans.