Empowering Education Through Community Engagement

For this episode of the Campus podcast, we talk to Eunice Simmons, who has been vice-chancellor of the University of Chester since 2020, about what works when it comes to widening participation in higher education and how to ensure students are successful in their studies and beyond. She describes how initiatives such as Citizen Student and the Race Equality Challenge Group embed the values of social capital, civic engagement and equity across the institution, and link academic learning to the real world. Her work towards widening participation, which resulted in a joint win as 2023 University Leader of the Year in the Purpose Coalition awards, includes being chair of the board of trustees of Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO).

An environmental scientist by training, she also discusses how post-Covid changes to work patterns led to a rethinking of university spaces to boost sustainability and cost efficiency.