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Honorary Fellow, 2003
Bio | Citation

Jean Smith is a former Governor of this University and former Chair of the Joint Welfare & Student Affairs Committee. She joined the Board in 1988 and went on to serve on a great many of the University's main committees including the Estates Committee, the Finance Committee and the Nominations Committee. She has also served as Chair of the Audit & Compliance Committee and as Anglia Ruskin's representative on the Board of the Colchester Institute. Jean also has a distinguished record of charitable service and received the MBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours.

In 2003 Jean Smith was made an Honorary Fellow of our University.

Areas Of Interest: Education
Faculty: No particular faculty affiliation
Citation:

"The Senate of Anglia Polytechnic University is pleased to award an Honorary Fellowship of the University to Jean Smith for her services as a Governor of the University and for her significant contributions over many years to local health authorities and to various charities.

Universities, in general, rely a great deal on the wisdom, dedication and perspectives of lay members in respect of their overall governance, and APU is no exception. In Jean Smith, APU has been very fortunate in this respect. She was appointed a governor of one of Anglia's antecedent institutions, the Anglia Higher Education College in 1989; and continued her membership through the succession of institutional incarnations which eventually culminated in university designation in 1992. Jean Smith only recently retired from the University Governing Body in March 2002, after thirteen years of service, and is widely acknowledged to be an extremely knowledgeable conscientious and wise governor, sensitive to the balance needing to be achieved between academic public service and business values. She has the reputation of being able to ask the innocent allegedly idiot question which causes policy-makers to scratch their heads. She has taken a particular interest in student welfare issues and was Chair of the Joint Welfare and Student Affairs Committee from 1991 to 2002, and is generally recognised as one of the "consciences of the Governing Body". She has been a frequent attendee at these Graduation Ceremonies, and it is right that she should now be one of the beneficiaries, rather than a supportive spectator.

Jean Smith originally joined the Governors by virtue of her governing activities in the National Health Service and quite apart from her work with APU, she has a formidable record of service with various health authorities. She was a lay member of the Essex Committee of Family Practitioners, and joined the NE Thames Health Authority in 1974, and was a governor of both Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. When the district health authorities were formed, she became vice-chair of the North East Essex Health Authority in 1982 and its chair in 1986. For reasons of political preferences her tenures was not renewed in 1990, a source of considerable perturbation to both herself and very many colleagues in the health service. However, she has subsequently maintained her connection with the health service as a member of the Moorfields Ethics Committee.

Jean Smith developed an outstanding reputation for her work for charities, especially school, hospitals, the church, Thailand and the girl guide movement, and since the early 1990's she had raised nearly £20,000 in cycling 17,000 miles on sponsored bike rides and continues to do so - a feat to make the most able-bodied pale with trepidation. She has a remarkable career of leadership in the Girl Guide movement from 1948-96, the pinnacle of which was her appointment as District Commissioner 1972-75. She even sustained a hockey playing career until the ripe age of 69.

She has a family background in farming in the Tendring Hundreds, studied at Northampton College of Agriculture in the 1940's, met her future husband Andrew at the Young Farmers Club (which she fondly describes as a matrimonial agency) and they have both farmed since at St.Osyth, near Colchester.

For her outstanding contributions to local life over the past decades, therefore, may I invite you, Vice Chancellor to bestow on Jean Smith the award of Honorary Fellow of the University."

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