SEDA Roll of Honour

SEDA wishes to congratulate Dr Clara Davies who has recently been placed on our Roll of Honour for her exceptional contribution to the work of SEDA and to staff and educational development more generally.

From 2017 – 2020 as SEDA Co-Chair, through visionary leadership and sheer determination, Clara enhanced the strategic direction and mission of SEDA. She was a wonderful role model and mentor for incoming Vice-Chairs and Co-Chairs, along with new committee and sub-committee members. Clara was instrumental in repositioning and enhancing the operational approaches of SEDA through the Covid pandemic and beyond. She also spearheaded the current SEDA strategy. Her approach exemplified the very best in SEDA Values, showing her to be an effective change agent and influencer.

Thanks to her we now have a more online and digitally focussed organisation achieved by her through evidence-based arguments and collegiality. Much of her work led to policy development on areas including committee structures, governance, the SEDA Fellowships scheme and event organisation, to best benefit those working in higher education. Since her term as Co-Chair ended Clara has shown no signs of tiring. Since 2021 she has made a significant contribution to SEDA Fellowships as shown through the production of a Quality Handbook for the scheme and being a tireless advocate for the maintaining of standards. Clara promotes the SEDA Fellowships Scheme externally at every opportunity, including SEDA conferences.

She previously provided strong strategic leadership and integration of academic practice in learning and teaching at Leeds University and then Leeds Beckett University. Clara not only promoted sound pedagogical change across all the institutions she worked in but also focused on the development and recognition of teaching excellence. This was at a time when the impact of academic development was less known and understood. In her consultancy work Clara continues to have immense impact on the increasing prestige and importance of educational development work.

As SEDA Co-Chair she took a particular interest in achieving structural change through policy and the establishment of a strong ethos of student-centredness. She showed successful, strategic leadership to enhance student learning, working closely with our SEDA partners. Clara has also been a regular chair and member of review panels, policy development groups and teaching development projects locally and nationally. She represented SEDA at the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) from 2016 – 2019.

Clara has always taken a key role within SEDA of championing an integrated approach to educational development – comprising research, teaching and leadership impact, across the sector nationally and internationally.

It is clear that during her extensive involvement in educational change and policy enhancement, Clara has developed an acute insight into the factors involved in institutional educational change. She does this through reflection, inviting feedback and critique from colleagues and ample external engagement in professional development through conferences, external reviews, and participation in various activities with national organisations such as the Heads of Educational Development Group (HEDG). She has encouraged many of her SEDA peers to do the same, and many of the colleagues she has inspired have now become educational leaders.