{"id":337,"date":"2018-06-19T09:16:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T08:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/?p=337"},"modified":"2018-06-19T09:16:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T08:16:49","slug":"tuesday-ten-10-questions-we-ask-l-t-experts-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/2018\/06\/19\/tuesday-ten-10-questions-we-ask-l-t-experts-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Ten: 10 questions we ask L & T experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Lancaste<\/strong>r is Director of Studies, Executive MBA programmes, and a Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Researcher, Marketing in the School of Management. Donald came to the University recently after an established international advertising career.\u00a0 He has worked in ad agencies big and small, starting in London and expanding to Scotland, then the Middle East, the Far East, Asia Pacific, Germany and finally London again.\u00a0 His clients have included such brands as Mars, Unilever, P&G, HSBC, Beefeater Gin, Stella Artois, Mazda, Toyota and even Aston Martin.\u00a0 Donald has championed marketing strategy and multi-channel communications, content creation, and evaluation across sectors, cultures and borders.\u00a0 His interests and experience in the field have led to guest-lecturing,\u00a0 doctoral research and now a full-time commitment to teaching tomorrow\u2019s marketers.<\/p>\n

What can you see outside of the window?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Physically, I\u2019m really lucky:\u00a0 my office in 8 West looks out over greenery, trees and sometimes blue sky.\u00a0 There\u2019s a trickle of people walking by, sometimes chatting, picnicking, celebrating, or even sunbathing.\u00a0 Who\u2019d have thought this is a place to work!<\/p>\n

What does your average day at work involve?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been insatiably curious.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that goes hand-in-hand with having a low threshold of boredom!\u00a0 Luckily, my day is rarely average, so I appreciate the variety I encounter.\u00a0 This ranges from mentoring Executive MBA students to writing new courses;\u00a0 from grading exams to working on marketing for the School;\u00a0 from developing our forthcoming London EMBA programme to making final edits to my doctoral thesis.<\/p>\n

Why do you think teaching at your university is importan<\/strong>t?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been privileged to have worked in advertising for decades, all over the world.\u00a0 In that time I\u2019ve met and worked with far too many people who include \u2018marketing\u2019 in their job title, yet didn\u2019t deserve it.\u00a0 Marketing and thus advertising is a lot more than persuading folk to buy stuff they don\u2019t need: it should (in my view) espouse a strong social consciousness, a positive purpose and a professional ethicality that\u2019s too often missing.\u00a0 So if I can help to \u2018raise the bar\u2019 somehow for tomorrow\u2019s business leaders, I\u2019ll sleep more easily.<\/p>\n

What do you hope the impact of your teaching will be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps strangely, I\u2019m not interested in \u2018teaching\u2019 in its narrowest sense.\u00a0 If I can imbue students with some enthusiasm and engagement with ideas, helping to build understanding and application of those ideas from theory into practice, I\u2019ll be providing experiential value. Hopefully, I'll be helping in some small way to close the gap between academia and the world of practitioners.<\/p>\n

Who has inspired you most in your teaching career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As an undergrad, I was hugely inspired by the enthusiasm and charisma of Professor David Bellamy, whom I still recall fondly, despite the intervening years.\u00a0 Notwithstanding being a TV personality at that stage, he had time for us as students and motivated in me an enduring interest in the transferability of ideas.<\/p>\n

\"Hopefully, I'll be helping in some small way to close the gap between academia and the world of practitioners.\"<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When did a lecture go wrong and how did you overcome it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost always tech!\u00a0 You\u2019d think by now I\u2019d have learned not to rely on it, but despite taking almost every precaution it\u2019ll still catch me out.\u00a0 In my first class of last semester (when I wanted to make a good impression) all was prepared on my laptop, backed up and tested, only to find that the designated room had different laptop connections, and the back-up wouldn\u2019t read on that room\u2019s PC.\u00a0 Fortunately, I could access an earlier version via email\u2026<\/p>\n

Recommend a book, film or album from the past year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d recommend Chris Packham\u2019s \u2018Fingers in the Sparkle Jar\u2019,\u00a0 an autobiography of amazing humility and frankness, written with extraordinary and electrifying use of language.\u00a0 To quote The Guardian, \u201che is passionate, speaks his mind and is willing to stand up for what he believes in\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is the biggest change that you've made to your teaching since you started your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I began, I had virtually no teaching experience, so I naturally adopted an authoritarian style of pedagogy of 'telling' \u2013 which was doubtless somewhat dry.\u00a0 Since then, I\u2019ve been trying to increase the experiential, contributory and unpredictability aspects which, although scary, are more engaging for students and mentor alike.<\/p>\n

What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in teaching at your university?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Respect your students, and they\u2019ll respect your subject.<\/p>\n

What three things would you take to a desert island?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My dog, a selection of arable seeds, and Alexa (to satisfy my curiosity).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Lancaster is Director of Studies, Executive MBA programmes, and a Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Researcher, Marketing in the School of Management. Donald came to the University recently after an established international advertising career.\u00a0 He has worked in ad agencies...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1003,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[18,17,15,16],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learning-and-teaching","tag-marketing","tag-student-engagement","tag-teaching","tag-teaching-development"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/06\/IMG_393120120small_preview.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Piw-5r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}