Executive women thrive at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), holding strategic leadership positions supporting more than 27,000 students across four campuses for one of the largest universities in the UK. Alongside their executive counterparts, there are also further women on the university's Board of Governors and Academic Board, leading a range of activities relating to the organisation of learning and teaching, research, scholarship, academic standards, students, and courses.
Find out more about the women on Nottingham Trent University's Executive Team.
Sharon Huttly, NTU Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Academic Development and Performance
As Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sharon Huttly [picture above] represents the Vice-Chancellor at external and internal events, and is responsible for development, enhancement and innovation of NTU's teaching and learning; management of the Executive Deans who lead the university's Academic Schools; academic oversight of the strategic planning cycle; and senior sponsorship of such activities as NTU’s Mansfield and Ashfield development programme and in relation to its membership of Athena SWAN.
Sharon has served on various national working groups and committees, including recently as a member of the Office for Students’ Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) Panel. She is a member of both Advance HE’s Teaching and Learning Strategic Advisory Group and of the British Academy’s Higher Education Policy Committee.
Sharon was born in Nottingham but remembers little about it, having moved around the UK and having spent two years living in Brazil. She can now see the Lake District’s hills from her back garden and spends most of her leisure time outdoors with her family, dogs and horse.
Jane McNeil, NTU Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education
In this role, Jane McNeil supports the Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Academic Development and Performance, and is responsible for influencing policy and strategy for student access and participation, curriculum and pedagogy, and student outcomes and employment. She is also chair of the University’s Academic Standards and Quality Committee.
Jane has a long standing commitment to the University and to students’ education. Her early roles as a medieval history lecturer and developing online learning in the Humanities led to a wider interest in pedagogic innovation. This was realised in subsequent roles, including institutional lead for quality enhancement, Director of Academic Development (2011-18), and from 2018 as Executive Dean for Learning and Teaching. Her perspective on education has therefore been shaped by her experience as a lecturer, a practice innovator and as a policy developer. Central to this is a dedication to addressing structural inequalities in higher education.
From early work on eLearning and assessment, Jane’s interests developed to consider wider topics related to student success, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the evaluation of educational development.
In 2012, Jane led the first institutional trial in the UK of the active learning approach, SCALE-UP. Following wider adoption of this pedagogy, in 2017–2019 she led a project with three universities, funded by the Office for Students, to test the efficacy of active learning to address barriers to student success. This interest continues alongside work on learning spaces and strategies for institutional educational change.
Emma Leech, NTU Director of Marketing and Communications
Emma Leech is responsible for the strategic leadership of the Communications, Admissions, Marketing and Student Recruitment team (CAMS) and leads on issues relating to profile, brand and reputation.
Emma was previously Director of Marketing and Advancement at Loughborough University. She started her career in fashion and consumer PR in 1988, working in tourism and destination marketing before settling in higher education in 1997.
A Founding Chartered PR Practitioner, Chartered Marketer and Chartered Manager, she has won a string of awards over more than two decades spanning PR, marketing, innovation, fundraising, digital, and web.
Emma holds an MBA and various PR, marketing and management qualifications. She was the Chartered Institute of Public Relations President 2019.
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