Honorary doctorate for Professor Lewis Elton

Links:

ucl.ac.uk/research/personal?upi=LELTO69" target="_self">Professor Lewis Elton

University of London External System 150th anniversary

Emeritus Professor Lewis Elton (UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching) is to receive the D. Litt (Education) honoris causa on 10 March as part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the University of London External System, the oldest distance-learning programme in the world.

Professor Elton's connection to the London External system dates back to 1947, when he took the London External degree in Mathematics. He was awarded a University Research Studentship, which took him on to a PhD in Applied Mathematics at UCL with Professor (later Sir Harrie) Massey in 1950. More recently, he played a part in creating the MSc in International Primary Health Care which Professor Trisha Greenhalgh (UCL Primary Care and Population Sciences) offers through the University of London External System.

Professor Lewis Elton was appointed as UCL's first Professor of Higher Education in 1994 and founded the Higher Education Research and Development Unit, which later became the UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching. At UCL he advises on matters related to teaching, learning and assessment and on the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has collaborated with a number of UCL departments on curriculum developments based on student-centred and problem-based learning, including Primary Care and Population Science, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and Educational Psychology.

Professor Elton is Visiting Professor in Higher Education, Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning at the University of Manchester and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Surrey's Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education.

He is also an independent consultant and acted as a Higher Education Adviser to the UK government Employment Department (and later the Department for Education and Employment) 1989-1994. He has advised numerous universities in the UK, Ireland, Germany, South Africa and Hong Kong over the past eighteen years.

Professor Elton already holds honorary doctorates from the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Gloucestershire. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Physics; Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education; and an Honorary Life Member of the Staff and Educational Development Association. He was awarded the Times Higher Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

To find out more about Professor Elton's work, follow the links at the top of this article.