Academic awarded fellowship to collaborate with US


A university business academic will be visiting American universities this summer as part of her research into entrepreneurship, after being awarded a Travelling Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.


Sheila Kelly from the University’s Business School will be visiting several US universities which are considered leaders in the field of research into entrepreneurial venturing among older people. The Fellowship will fund her trip.


Every year, around 100 Churchill Fellows are selected to go abroad to acquire knowledge and understanding to enable them to better contribute at work and to their community.


Shiela Kelly


Sheila, who is Business Development Manager and based at the Ambleside campus, was inspired by recent academic writing on the subject to start her research project. She explains, “This research project is very timely because the current generation of baby boomers will have to or will want to work longer. In 10 years time 25 per cent of the workforce will be over 50 years old. In the United States in the past decade the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity has been in the 55 – 64 year-old age group. Better health in later life, the rise in the pension age and the ease of setting up a company using the internet mean that this trend is already happening in the UK.”


Sheila will be visiting universities in Baltimore, Boston, New York and Washington DC to research patterns of late life entrepreneurship and the factors influencing success or failure. She adds: “This research will have particular relevance to Cumbria because the county has a higher percentage of older people (19.3%) than the national average of 16% and also the county’s economic health will depend upon older people remaining in the workforce.”


On her return, Sheila will work with the business support agencies in Cumbria to improve the learning opportunities provided by the University to develop the skills needed by older people considering self employment or for the development of social or community enterprises.


Sheila would like to hear from anyone who has an interest in this subject and she can be contacted by emailing: sheila.kelly@cumbria.ac.uk


University of Cumbria selected as lead partner for libraries change project


The University of Cumbria has been chosen as the lead partner in a project with eight other universities to develop closer collaboration between library services.


The COLLABORATE Project aims to use collaboration as a means to challenge and transform university library services and ways of working at a number of north-west universities. The project will be funded by the Higher Education Academy’s Change Academy initiative, which encourages and supports collaboration across higher education institutions, working in partnership with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.


Margaret Weaver


The universities involved are University of Cumbria, University of Bradford, University of Huddersfield, Edge Hill University, Leeds Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, University of Salford, Teesside University and University of York.


Margaret Weaver is Head of Learning Information and Student Services at the University of Cumbria and is the team leader for the COLLABORATE Project. She explains: “This project is all about putting the student experience at the heart of everything we do. By working collaboratively, we can better serve all our students and provide a better higher education learning experience. Libraries are traditionally good at working together and therefore our starting point is to build on current library collaborative approaches, developing the capacity for collective leadership to inform possible new shared services, and staff engagement, and to harness emergent technologies for twenty-first century student- centred services using the Change Academy co-creative techniques.”


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