As you can imagine, after the College’s high profile international search I was delighted to to be interviewed and subsequently appointed as Dean for our Faculty. Having first joined St Mary’s Medical School as a Wellcome Clinical Training Fellow in 1982 it is an honour to now lead our Faculty.
Since my appointment as Acting Dean in October 2017, I have learnt much more about the work that is undertaken within Medicine and have had the opportunity to work with HoDs and Vice Deans to consider how we can effectively position ourselves as an organisation and across our campuses to best support the immense strengths of our Faculty.
For our research strategy, I am eager to build thematically where we have ambition and critical mass, recruit and support early career researchers across the Faculty with a particular focus on mentorship and career progression.
Having spent my career at Imperial focussed on research, my steepest learning has been in education. Our undergraduate School of Medicine is the landmark which defines our reputation nationally and internationally; as there will be five new medical schools next year, we need to ensure that our medical education remains excellent, attracting the highest quality of students and producing the best trained doctors.
I shall be working with the Vice Provost (Education), our Vice Dean (Education), our Faculty Education Office and departmental leads to continue to enhance and develop all our UG and PGT courses, supporting the ambitious learning and teaching strategy across the College. Meanwhile, in July I shall be glowing with pride at LKC Medicine – our joint medical school in Singapore with NTU – when the first 52 students will graduate. This most successful partnership, Imperial’s first such foray internationally, is a tribute to all of the work of Jenny Higham, Martyn Partridge, Des Johnston, Martin Lupton, Naomi Low-Beer and the teams that have supported them. I thank them all now on behalf of the Faculty.
Jonathan
Professor Jonathan Weber
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine