Helen Vaughan

As a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Physics, I work with and for undergraduate students. My main aim is to create well-structured, interesting physics courses to help students become the Physicists that they want to be.

I started my journey into Physics with a MSci and PhD from Durham University.  During the latter, I gained a Teaching Fellowship from the Ogden Trust and taught at a local high school for a year.  After a short post-doc in time-resolved spectroscopy of conjugated polymers, I took on my first HE teaching and scholarship role.

In 2011, I joined the University of Liverpool as a physics lecturer where I worked in a team to establish the Central Teaching Labs (CTL), a facility that supported students to develop practical skills in the physical and environmental sciences.  At CTL, I led outreach initiatives including the Science Jamboree which reached over 2000 young people in 7 years, revamped the year 1 physics laboratory and was awarded a Teaching Fellowship to investigate and develop laboratory curriculum design and assessment. I also achieved a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, won some internal teaching awards and, in 2015, was part of team that received a national recognition with a  Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. I became a Senior Fellow of the HEA in 2015 and  Senior Lecturer in 2019.

I’ve been involved with education research projects from Supervising BSc and MPHYS projects to national collaborations such as ASCENTS 1-2-1 mentoring that placed UG Stem students in local secondary schools.  I am also part of the Evaluation and Innovation in Science Education Research Group.

During COVID, I set up and ran a network in collaboration the Institute of Physics; The Physics Learning and Teaching network met regularly and shared the strategies for remote physics teaching to the benefit of many practioners and students across the UK and Ireland. From there I took a role on the IOP’s Higher Education Group Committee with the view to keep those connections going.

In 2023, I moved to University of Strathclyde to take the next step in my adventures in teaching, curriculum design and Physics education research and scholarship!