The week in higher education – 24 November 2022

Public engagement is rising at King’s College London, after research associate Syabira Yusoff won The Great British Bake Off. Dr Yusoff, a cardiovascular researcher who moved to the UK from Malaysia in 2013 for a PhD, pushed the boundaries of science communication and cake decoration by adding a strand of DNA to her semi-final showstopper bake. She affectionately referred to her lab mates as her baking “guinea pigs”, explaining that she was at work when she learned that she had made it into the national competition. “Even though I was thrilled, I couldn’t scream,” she recalled. Since her win, she has “been recognised on the street and in the department. Everyone is very positive, supportive and kind.” Keen to capitalise on a homemade celebrity, King’s is paying homage to Dr Yusoff’s win by selling her red velvet sandwich cookies in its cafes and restaurants as of this week.

Menus are changing at the University of Stirling, too, where from 2025 the noble haggis – that great chieftain of the pudding race – will no longer be available. The Scottish institution’s students’ union has become the first in the UK to switch to a plant-based menu, meaning steaming entrails can no longer form part of annual Burns Night festivities from 2025 onwards. The union will warm up to a post-haggis world by going 50 per cent plant-based from next September. The change was received coolly by the Countryside Alliance, which told The Scotsman that the union should serve local meat and dairy rather than pushing through an “illogical” ban. Keen to weigh in, Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr called it a “worrying indictment of student politics” and said it was “very unusual to ban British-raised chicken and beef on environmental grounds, while importing avocado [and] asparagus”.

On top of delivering lectures, marking papers and fulfilling all the other responsibilities associated with helping young learners, one academic was asked to fulfil an extra task for a student last week – helping them purchase Taylor Swift tickets. Austin Shull, an associate professor of biology at Presbyterian College in South Carolina, received an email from one of his students asking him to watch her laptop during a class while she was in a virtual queue online for tickets for the singer’s upcoming tour. He shared a screenshot on Twitter of the “question of the year”, which referenced a popular Taylor Swift song begging him not to be an “anti-hero”. “You have to serve many roles when you’re a professor and adviser,” he added. The tour sold out amid unprecedented demand, but Dr Shull confirmed that the student had managed to purchase a ticket with his help. We’re glad to hear there will be no Bad Blood between student and teacher.

A Durham University pro vice-chancellor was investigated after he was alleged to have called rugby players at the institution “fucking morons”, it has emerged. More than 100 players claimed that it was their “very clear recollection” that Jeremy Cook, a former army colonel who now oversees student experience at the institution, had used the language during a meeting called to address complaints that a first-year student was urinated on during an initiation ceremony, The Daily Telegraph reported. Subsequent investigations led to several players being suspended from university sport, but the institution said it “strongly refute[d] allegations that staff placed undue pressure on students during the original investigation”. While Mr Cook insisted that he did not swear, he said he was asked to “consider apologising for the strong way” in which he spoke to the students and said he was “happy to do so”.

Already home to about 50,000 students and staff, the population of North Carolina State University will grow by two more this week with the addition of two very lucky birds. Usually eaten by families as part of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, two turkeys are typically pardoned each year by the US president and allowed to live out their lives free from harm. The custom is loosely linked to Abraham Lincoln, who some scholars say pardoned a turkey in 1865, but the modern ceremony dates back to George H. W. Bush in 1989. Since then, both Republican and Democrat commanders-in-chief have given clemency to turkeys during the Thanksgiving holiday and spared them from ending up on a kitchen table. This year, the two birds – one official National Thanksgiving Turkey and one alternate – will instead be sent to NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for the first time.