A Staffordshire University leader is hoping for the ‘digital double’ when the winners of two prestigious awards are announced this month
The awards are a fantastic opportunity for professional networking that make me reflect, spark new ideas or thinking and generally make me feel fortunate to be amongst such talent in an exciting industry.
Staffordshire University’s Andrew Proctor was named among a list of champions of digital transformation across the UK back in June when the DL100 published their list of finalists which has since been put to public vote.
Andrew has held the post of Pro-Vice Chancellor (Digital) since 2019 and is the driver of Staffordshire University’s ambition to be the foremost digital institution. He is one of just four leaders working in academia to be included in the independent list and the only higher education representative to be shortlisted in the ‘Digital Leader’ category.
Digital Leaders is a nationwide programme for promoting effective, long-term digital transformation and the most hotly contested category each year is the Digital Leader of the Year Category which includes Andrew.
He said: “It’s an honour to part of the DL100 club and this is fantastic recognition of everything our University is doing to be at the forefront of digital. In the last year we have launched Staffordshire University London, our Digital Institute, which specialises in tech courses like Esports and Cybercrime.
“Prior to that we launched a new chatbot for students which is available 24/7 to help with all aspects of their university life. At Staffordshire we pride ourselves on our ability to innovate and being the first UK university to migrate all our systems to the cloud has certainly helped us to move quickly to online learning and remote working in response to the current pandemic.”
Winners are announced this week, on October 15, just six days before the Computing Digital Technology Leaders Awards where Andrew is a finalist for Chief Digital officer.
Andrew said: “I am doubly proud to be in the running for these awards and representing our Connected University and the wider higher education sector.
"The awards are a fantastic opportunity for professional networking that make me reflect, spark new ideas or thinking and generally make me feel fortunate to be amongst such talent in an exciting industry.”