OBE for Professor Val Wass
It is excellent that services to medical education are being recognised and excellent for Keele that the achievements here are also being acknowledged. I am thrilled about this.
Professor Val Wass, Head of the School of Medicine at Keele University, has been awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours for services to medical education - published on New Year’s Eve; her 93-year-old dad’s birthday and he was thrilled..
Professor Wass joined Keele as Head of the School of Medicine in 2009. She has published a number of highly cited papers on evaluation, QA and assessment methodology and is Chair of the RCGP International Committee. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2008. Her research centres on cultural diversity within medical training, professionalism and the development of health care education to meet the needs of globalisation.
She said: "It is excellent that services to medical education are being recognised and excellent for Keele that the achievements here are also being acknowledged. I am thrilled about this. I have also, as someone pointed out, crashed through some glass ceilings. Women are very much in the minority on the UK Medical School Council (MSC); only two of 34 Deans. I was the first woman ever elected onto the MSC Executive: recognition of my medical education expertise I suspect as I had helped move the UK assessment alliance forward. I have also over the years led several major changes in medical education; undergraduate and postgraduate and nationally and internationally; not always straightforward. Experience certainly counts. One learns from one’s mistakes more than one’s successes.
"However all this has been achieved with tremendous support throughout my career from many people in the three medical schools where I have worked and in postgraduate medicine and the Royal Colleges. Being at Keele though has been the real icing on the cake. A hugely skilled and committed team in a wonderful friendly beautiful campus. I am truly grateful and very appreciative of all I have learnt here at Keele. It is a wonderful place to work."
Last year Professor Wass was awarded the President's International Medal by the Royal College of General Practitioners. The President’s
International Medal is only awarded occasionally for "meritorious commitment and service to the development of the college’s international programme.” She has also been awarded the Association for the Study Of Medical Education (ASME) Gold Medal 2015 for outstanding contribution to medical education.
Fiona Woolf, a Keele graduate and former Lord Mayor of London, was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Honours for "services to the legal profession, diversity, and the City of London", in recognition of her longstanding commitments in public life.