News in brief

Honours
The Library and the School of Healthcare have both successfully retained their ‘Investor in People’ (IiP) status, a national standard recognising their ability to manage, train and develop their staff.

The Library has gained IiP status for the third time since 2000. Librarian Margaret Coutts believes the scheme is a vital part of the Library’s success, and this was reflected in the positive responses from library staff in the University’s well-being survey.

The external assessor said the Library demonstrated “examples of excellent and innovative practice within a mature culture” and gave particular praise to its integrated planning process, which links reviews and operational plans with the University’s vision for the future.

Leeds’ School of Healthcare has held Investor in People status for more than 11 years. Acting head of school Dr Paul Marshall said the assessor highlighted the importance of the University’s strategy map as a positive driving force for the school, and commended the way it was used for planning activities and during the staff review process.

Professor Gerard Hodgkinson in Leeds University Business School has become the first British academic ever elected as the Academy of Management’s program chair-elect of its managerial and organisational cognition division. Professor Hodgkinson will develop workshops for more than 6,000 management scholars from 99 countries who are expected to attend the academy’s 2008 meeting in California.

Leeds medical student Iram Ansari has been selected as one of 500 students from around the world to attend the 57th annual Nobel Laureates meeting in Lindau, Germany, this July, where she will exchange ideas with 18 of the world’s pre-eminent scientists.

The School of Medicine nominated Iram to attend the meeting through a national competition run by the Council of the Heads of Medical Schools.