Honorary Awards - July 2012
Sat, 05 May 2012 14:49:00 BST
Honorary Awards - July 2012
WEST Yorkshire’s top policeman, the Bishop of Wakefield, a famous musician and an author of acclaimed fantasy novels are among the eminent recipients of honorary degrees awarded by the University of Huddersfield in 2012.
Among those receiving the special degree Honorary Doctor of the University is the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Sir Norman Bettison (pictured left). A pioneer of neighbourhood policing and the member of a key committee of police chiefs set up to counter violent extremism, Sir Norman’s police career began in his native South Yorkshire in 1972 and his posts have included Chief Constable of Merseyside.
He was Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire from 1993 to 1998 and returned to the county to take the top job in 2007. He was awarded the Queens Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 2000.
Also receiving an Honorary Doctorate is the Rt Rev Stephen Platten (pictured right), who has been the Bishop of Wakefield – Huddersfield’s diocese – since 2003. A theologian who has written, contributed to and edited a large number of books, he has also chaired an organisation which organised pilgrimages from Rome to mark important Church anniversaries. He was ordained in 1975 and before his move to Wakefield, he was Dean of Norwich.
Also to be honoured is Alan Garner (pictured left), widely regarded as Britain’s finest author of fantasy novels, rooted in the folklore of his native Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, where his family have dwelt for generations.
August 2012 will see the appearance of his ninth novel, ‘Boneland’, the conclusion of a classic sequence featuring recurring characters that he began in 1960 with ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’. His other novels – which have caused him to be described as superior to Tolkien – have included ‘The Moon of Gomrath’, ‘The Owl Service’ and ‘Thursbitch’.
An honorary doctorate goes too to leading pharmacist Jonathan Mason (pictured right), who has strong family connections with the Kirklees area.
He has made an international impact with his innovative work in developing pharmacy services that have helped to reduce health inequalities and to improve standards of care.
In 2008, he was appointed National Clinical Director for Primary Care and Community Pharmacy and has travelled England, meeting pharmacists, doctors, other healthcare professionals, commissioners and decision makers to champion the role of community pharmacy in improving the use of medicines and promoting and supporting healthy lifestyles.
Also to be honoured is organist and conductor Simon Lindley (pictured left), who has family roots in the Huddersfield area. He is the organist of Leeds Parish Church and Leeds Town Hall and works with a roster of leading choirs, including the Huddersfield Choral Society.
One of the best known musicians in Yorkshire and a frequent performer at Huddersfield Town Hall, he also has a national and international reputation and has recorded big-selling CDs, including organ concertos by Handel.
The award of Emerita Dean is awarded to Sue Bernhauser (pictured right), who retires this year as Dean of the School of Human and Health Sciences. A nurse by profession, she practised in both learning disability and adult nursing and held ward manager posts in Southampton, Portsmouth, Glasgow and Dorset before moving into nurse education, culminating in her University of Huddersfield appointment.
She has played a significant role in many of the major reviews of nurse education within the last 20 years and as Chair of Council of Deans she worked closely with the Department of Health. She has argued passionately in favour of nursing’s transition to an all-graduate profession.
Sue Bernhauser is a member of several high-profile advisory committees and was on the Prime Minister’s Commission looking into the future of nursing and midwifery. She is a member of the Partnership Board of the Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust.
Receiving his award at the University’s Oldham Campus is Oldham-born Brian Cox who has become arguably the best-known scientist in Britain. To his early career as a musician in chart-topping band D’Ream and his success as a physicist, leading to a professorship, he has added that of a television personality, winning enthusiastic audiences for series that include ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ and ‘Stargazing Live’.
Brian gained a first class honours degree in physics at the University of Manchester and a PhD in high energy particle physics at the DESY Laboratory in Hamburg.
Meanwhile, his musical career also began in his home town of Oldham as a keyboard player with the bands Dare and D’Ream, which topped the UK charts in 1994 with ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.
In his academic career, Brian Cox went on to become a communicator of science, presenting documentaries and writing a book, ‘Why Does E=MC2?’. A Professor and Royal Society Research Fellow in the Particle Physics Group at the University of Manchester, Brian Cox is currently working on one of the most high profile scientific experiments ever undertaken: the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN in Geneva which is attempting to answer fundamental questions about the origins of the Universe.
