For this month's Staff Spotlight, we spoke to Isobel Bates, Programme Manager at the Insitute of Coding. She told us about some recent and exciting updates from the Institute of Coding (IoC), her greatest achievement and what she would choose to have if she was stranded on a desert island.
The Institute of Coding (IoC) is a nationwide initiative funded by the OfS which has brought together universities, industry, and training providers to offer opportunities to develop skills for an increasingly digital workplace.
The best thing about my role is getting the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from other Universities and work with organisations that have a common goal to improve and promote digital skills.
Yes, we’ve recently received another significant gift from DeepMind to continue our scholarship programme that launched last year.
The scholarships will be awarded to women and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students living in the UK who are currently under-represented in the field of AI. We have a mixture of MSc and PhD scholarships available.
The DeepMind Scholarship programme is playing a key role in helping us address the under-representation of women and BAME students in the field by encouraging participation in the subject at postgraduate level.
At the moment our focus is on launching an online micro-credential in Data Analytics which will be available from September on the Future Learn learning platform, in the longer term the IoC consortium is developing proposals for university-level modular, stackable delivery, which we hope will help with the future challenge of developing digital skills for the UK workforce.
In 2015 I was incredibly lucky to be one of just 50 women worldwide that participated in a Santander programme for women in university leadership at UCLA in Los Angeles. It was a fantastic programme and I got to make some connections with inspiring women from Universities all over the world (we also had time to check out the wonderful beaches in LA)!
The IoC offices are based in the People’s Palace which means we get a sneaky view into the nooks and crannies at the back of the theatre, it’s really interesting!
I’d say learning in London is a fantastic opportunity and Queen Mary is so special because we have a wonderfully diverse and engaged student body.
At the moment I spend most of my spare time trying to get my children to engage with their studies, but in less busy times I enjoy English Paper Piecing projects and have been trying to make a Liberty quilt for the best part of 12 months.
Very difficult, but it would have to be a Bob Dylan disc, probably Just Like A Woman. I’ve always read and re-read Du Maurier novels so would take Rebecca. As for the luxury – an unlimited supply of gin and tonic?