Compelling leader is UK’s most enterprising
Dec 20 2007 by Iain Laing, The Journal
A LEADER of a technological business scheme on Teesside has been named the UK’s most enterprising academic.
Janice Webster has been awarded the title by Upbeat, a benchmarking project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
The initiative looked at 150 case studies of university engagement with business and the community to find the best ways higher education institutions can reach out, and the best ways of assessing their success.
Janice was picked from 150 academics for her work in establishing and taking forward DigitalCity, a project to create technology businesses at the University of Teesside.
“Winning this award feels like I have got the truffles after all the digging and I would particularly like to thank the university’s academic enterprise team and my DigitalCity team for putting us on the map for enterprise in the UK university sector.
“Without their support it would not have been possible to get the DigitalCity project into the Upbeat programme in the first place,” she said.
“We achieved a lot in the first three or four years and I’m just so proud that I was able to see a way to initiate the DigitalCity project. Now having handed over the reins to a new director, Dr Jim TerKeurst, I can step back from managing the project with confidence that DigitalCity will help to build the thriving creative cluster in Tees Valley we all desire.”
Teesside vice-chancellor Prof Graham Henderson said: “This is a great accolade for both her and the university and we congratulate Janice for raising our profile and this university’s engagement with the digital world.”
Janice was born in Ilkeston in Derbyshire and first came to Teesside in its polytechnic days to study 3D design and interior design, gaining first class honours.
After setting up her own company, she returned to higher education as a senior lecturer and helped establish Teesside’s MSc in computer-aided graphical technology applications.
She led the Institute of Design for several years before becoming director of the Virtual Reality Centre in 1997 and then founding director of DigitalCity in 2002.
The award was presented by Prof James Powell, pro vice chancellor (Enterprise and Regional Affairs) at Salford University, who is director of the University Partnership for Benchmarking Enterprise and Associated Technologies.
He said: “Her entrepreneurial flair was shared with her creative teams in a unique and compelling way so they became their own leaders of the pioneering DigitalCity project.”
