Diversity, Inclusion and the Transforming Student Experience¹

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and may I straightaway add my very warm welcome to York St John University to that of the Vice Chancellor yesterday evening.

What I will present to you today is more a case study than the broad pictures of widening participation (WP) and lifelong learning policy issues and developments so brilliantly painted for us just now by Barbara Ischinger (Ischinger, 2009). I will be taking you on a journey.

We use the language of journeys a lot these days in relation to WP, so it seems quite appropriate to do so now. This is a journey I have been on since about 2005 and because I hate travelling alone it is a journey I persuaded my University to come on too. However, before we get into the journey itself, a little necessary context.