A NINE-STRONG board has been announced to lead the Scottish University for Industry, which is at the centre of the Government’s drive to promote lifelong learning. Unusually for such appointments, the business voice is not dominant.
The board will, however, be chaired by a business person. Christine Lenihan, aged 44, is marketing director of Pinpoint Scotland, an Edinburgh-based direct mailing and publishing firm. Ms Lenihan has also headed a pharmaceuticals company and currently chairs an audit committee within the National Health Service in Scotland.
She will be joined by three others from the business world - Peter Burdon, chief executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Neil Grant, a planning director with British Aerospace, and Ann Jakeman, director of learning at the Bank of Scotland.
The education and training field is reprsented by Thomas Lange, professor of economics at the Robert Gordon University, Ralph Palmer, former director of skills with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Craig Thomson, principal of Glenrothes College, and Professor Michael Thorne, vice-principal of Napier University.
The ninth member is Oonagh Aitken, chief executive of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, who is a former modern languages teacher in Strathclyde and a senior director in Fife Council with responsibility for education.
Henry McLeish, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Minister, said the board had “a huge wealth of experience in business and education between them which will be a great asset”.
The university, whose brokerage services and database of learning programmes are branded as learndirect scotland, will be launched officially on October 16.