Sharon Copeland

Overview

Sharon Copeland is the Administrative Officer for Flexible Education and Widening (FEWP) at Ulster University (UU).

Prior to joining UU Sharon started her administrative career at Northern Ireland Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education where she introduced and embedded digitation to the record keeping systems within the council.

This experience provided a launch pad for her career at UU in 1989, as a Personal Assistant/Secretary within the Department of Surveying. As well as PA to Head of Department/School she also supported the Research Assessment Centre for Built Environment, which lead to a secondment to her first Administrative role in Research Grants and Contracts (Coleraine) where she gained in depth knowledge of UU Financial and P&C systems.

In 2002 she successfully became the Enterprise Liaison Officer and eLearning Development Officer for the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship, a Centre that resided within the Ulster University Business School, a role that supported embedding entrepreneurship into all courses within UU, QUB and Loughry College. The knowledge and digitising experience that she had, along with her primary Honors degree in Business Studies was invaluable to the development of the first eLearning material for Entrepreneurship modules.

Sharon joined the UU Campus One Team in January 2006 as an eLearning Developer which included a secondment to Staff Development where she supported the Development Appraisal Review project and encouraging academics to embrace eLearning within their own subject areas.

Sharon’s experience has evolved to support internal and external change, with a focus on digitization and associated developments throughout UU. Her expertise was essential to supporting the department to work remotely over the COVID period with ease and she is continuing to update and evolve in her current role as the Administrative Officer for FEWP, leading professional support in the department and supporting the senor team within the directorate.

During her career at UU through part-time study she completed her primary degree in Business Studies with first class honors, Masters in Business Administration and Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Educational Practice. During this time, she also developed her leaderships skills in her own time through a part-time role (over an 18 year period) which also gave her an opportunity to have insight and learning within a public services context, providing an opportunity to develop significant transferable skills.