Premium Live Webinar: Delivering Employability Support With an Ethos of Social Justice
This webinar will take place on Tuesday 4 June 2024 from 12.30 - 1pm. Come back to this page to watch live. Click here to add a reminder to your calendar.
What to Expect
London Metropolitan University is dedicated to student success, social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. 97% of students fall into one or more widening participation categories and 81% of students are mature. Through institutional initiatives such as the Education for Social Justice Framework, a student focused Careers Education Framework was developed and implemented through successful collaboration internally and externally. This session will:
Identify how Careers and Employability and Work Based Learning services have been involved in a university wide collaboration to develop and implement an embedded, adaptable Careers Education Framework based on an ethos of social justice
Consider the benefits of collaborations with staff and student expertise across the university to tackle the inequalities facing London, to improve graduate success and to deliver social justice
Discuss the successes/challenges that have been faced on the journey and current developments
About the speakers
Vanessa Airth, Head of Work Based Learning, Policy and Practice, London Metropolitan University
Vanessa has worked in Higher Education since 2001 and has 19 years’ experience of developing and managing work based learning programmes. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a Master's Degree in Learning and Teaching in HE.
Responsible for the management and strategic direction of Work Based Learning in all curricular at London Met, she manages a small team and is experienced in building relationships with employers and embedding employability in the curriculum. She has delivered talks at conferences on best practice in these areas. Vanessa also has responsibility for compliance and relationship management for degree apprenticeships at the University.
Her previous experience includes public relations, arts fundraising and retail banking and she enjoys weight training, play drum kit and walking in the Highlands of Scotland.
Neelam Thapar, Head of Careers and Employability, London Metropolitan University
Neelam Thapar has 32 years’ experience in Higher Education in placements, careers guidance, embedding employability in teaching and learning and working with employers. Neelam has provided strategic and inclusive leadership in embedding careers education and employability development and leads the Careers and Employability Service, working with university wide teams, to engage with the needs of diverse groups of students to support graduate success.
Neelam has been involved in the development of London Metropolitan’s Education for Social Justice, ensuring that careers and employability underpinned the pedagogy development of graduate attributes to develop students as inclusive leaders and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (2023) and University Teaching Fellowship (2022) in recognition of her educational leadership and impact. Her passion for advancing social justice is influenced by her own lived experiences as a first-generation Asian female with a disability, Thalassaemia.
Neelam holds a MSc in Education and Training, Diplomas in Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance, Personal Performance Coaching and Neuro Linguistic Programming and is a mentor on the London Higher Global Majority Mentoring Project and Advance HE Aurora Programme. She spent over 10 years as volunteer trustee of a charity, United Kingdom Thalassaemia Society, with responsibility for co-leading a national Asian Awareness Campaign and is now an Ambassador for the charity.