PEOPLE - RETIREMENTS

Andrew Willis (r) has retired from the University after 20 years of service, pictured with Adrian Beck

Retirement of Andrew Willis

A tribute to Andrew Willis by Adrian Beck

Adrian Beck, Reader in Criminology, pays tribute to Andrew Willis, Senior Lecturer, who has retired after 20 years at the University of Leicester in the School of Social Work and the Department of Criminology.

Prior to joining the University of Leicester Andrew was a Lecturer in Criminology at University College, Cardiff. In 1987 Andrew joined the School of Social Work at the University of Leicester managing probation officer training as part of the MA in Social Work. In addition, he also initiated Criminology teaching in the Department of Sociology, a precursor of the arrangement for the BA Criminology some 15 years later. He became Head of the School of Social Work in 1990, followed by his promotion to senior lecturer in 1993.

At the same time, he began to become involved with the newly developing Centre for the Study of Public Order, which had been established by Professor Benyon in 1987, and played a significant role in the establishment of an MA in Criminology as well as the Centre’s rapidly growing interest in Security and Risk Management. This was a time of rapid expansion for the Centre and Andrew played a pivotal role in the early successes of the Centre, both in terms of its teaching portfolio and its research work. In particular, Andrew was intimately involved with the development of a suite of Distance Learning courses as well as pioneering research work on retail crime and police co-operation in Europe.

From 1996, Andrew formally joined the Centre for the Study of Public Order, later the Scarman Centre, to take the lead role in the Postgraduate Certificate in Criminal Justice and Police Management, taught as part of the International Commanders’ Programme (ICP) with National Police Training (NPT)/Central Police Training and Development Agency (Centrex)/the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) at Bramshill.

This partnership with police practitioners became an important part of the work of the Scarman Centre and Andrew excelled in delivering at the interface of higher education and professional training in criminal justice (probation and policing). He was a superb teacher with a striking success in making academic material accessible and relevant to skilled practitioners. Over a period of 12 years and through two contracts secured by competitive tender, the ICP programme attracted some 460 police officers from 66 countries. This work flourished under his careful stewardship and in 2000 he secured a contract for the academic accreditation of the UK police fast-track promotion scheme.

From 2002 to 2005 Andrew was Head of the Scarman Centre and through a series of internal and external reviews oversaw its transition from entrepreneurial centre to the Department of Criminology. This was a difficult time for the Scarman Centre/Department of Criminology and it was through Andrew’s exceptional administrative and managerial skills that it emerged as a vibrant and highly regarded centre of criminological excellence with in excess of 200 undergraduate students, more than 35 full-time taught postgraduate students and over 500 distance learning students.

All the staff in the Department will miss Andrew’s presence – he could be relied upon to offer a considered and valued view on a range of academic issues and he played a pivotal role in the personal development of many staff who worked in the Department. It has been a pleasure to work with him over the past 20 years – I personally owe him a great debt of gratitude for helping to establish my own academic career and for the role he played in creating a Department which is vibrant, progressive and well regarded. We will all miss his commitment and unstinting support of the establishment of criminology at the University of Leicester and we wish him a very happy, healthy and well-deserved retirement.

Adrian Beck, Reader in Criminology