{"id":1428,"date":"2019-03-05T11:01:40","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T11:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2021-09-02T15:31:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T15:31:36","slug":"opentel-academic-of-the-month-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/opentel-academic-of-the-month-march\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenTEL Academic of the month &#8211; March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our first academic of the month is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/people\/twl22\">Tim Lewis<\/a>\u00a0Senior Lecturer in Languages and member of our steering group committee.\u00a0\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><em>The main benefit I\u2018ve derived from being a member of OpenTEL is the intangible but important one of feeling part of an identifiable research community.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Two of the challenges I have faced in the time I have been an OpenTEL member have been the normal ones of obtaining external research funding and of trying to manage a complex project on top of a heavy workload. \u00a0There\u2019s comfort, support and encouragement in listening to colleagues who are dealing with similar dilemmas.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>OpenTEL has helped, by putting me in contact with colleagues from outside my own faculty, who share my interests and have a similar vision of what a university should be: open, outward-looking and internationalist.\u00a0\u00a0 A specific example: I was recently contacted by a Chinese academic who is interested in spending time researching at the OU.\u00a0 Reaction in my own faculty was negative. But I learned through OpenTEL that her university had a strategic partnership with STEM.\u00a0 Colleagues there provided a statement in support of her application, which is now going ahead.\u00a0 In due course, I hope that I or one of my colleagues will visit her university, because it\u2019s that kind of exchange of ideas that is central to my view of what universities are about. It\u2019s not simply routine everyday chores and concerns.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So it is clear that I have made new contacts through OpenTEL, both in other OU faculties and internationally. And I hope to carry on doing so.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My academic journey has been impacted by my relationship with OpenTEL in that it\u2019s given me confidence in pursuing my own pathway and has put me in touch with colleagues who can offer me sound advice (and if necessary critique), which enhances that confidence.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Finally, my advice for PhD research students is this:\u00a0 there are few more difficult experiences than that of spending years as an isolated researcher.\u00a0 Happily you don\u2019t need to go through that.\u00a0\u00a0 So do lend your full support to OpenTEL, giving what you can to the group and getting what you can from belonging to it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tim Lewis<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our first academic of the month is Tim Lewis\u00a0Senior Lecturer in Languages and member of our steering group committee.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":0,"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1429,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/opentel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}