Educational Leadership
Name:
Department:
School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences
Biography:
Denise MacDermott is currently the Course Director for the BSc (Hons) social work program at Ulster University and a Senior Fellow of the HEA. Denise is passionate about social work and committed to promoting civic engagement and volunteering. Since 2016, Denise has worked alongside students to encourage and support them in establishing Ulster’s first Stand Up for Social Work Society. This staff- student partnership harnesses co-creation and co- production strategies and helps prepare students for their future careers. This form of collective activism contributes to establishing the students’ sense of professional identity as social workers and locates social work at Ulster University in the heart of local communities.
Impact of Work
Through her key areas of expertise: Service users, carers and survivors’ involvement in social work education, Active Learning Champion, Employability and Widening Access, Denise has implemented a number of pedagogic strategies to enhance the social work course. She is passionate and intensely enthusiastic about continued professional practice and scholarship, building her reputation as a leader and influencer through her contributions to learning and teaching within Ulster and externally at international conferences and through publication. Denise is an External Examiner for the University of South Wales undergraduate social work programmes within the Faculty of Life Science and Education. More recently she has accepted an External Examiner position with Sligo Institute of Technology MA in social work programme. Denise is a Peer reviewer for submissions to Social Work Education, the International Journal and recently co –authored the Quality Improvement Plan to widen the involvement of Service Users and Carers in the Northern Ireland Degree in Social Work (2018-2021).
Future Plans
Denise is part of the UK wide project (Ulster University, Robert Gordon University, University of Essex and Northumbria University) successfully selected to produce British Association of Social Work (BASW) Human Rights Foundation Report in the coming months.