Mel Leitch has been an active member of the Technician Commitment community since it was founded. He lives in Newcastle with his wife and children and is the Deputy Head of Infrastructure in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University.
Holly
Welcome, Mel! You’ve been involved with TC for a while. Could you tell me a bit about that journey?
Mel
I started at Newcastle University in 1984 as a trainee technician and followed a research technician pathway in Neuroscience. I moved away from the bench into supervision and management to further my career since my technical skills didn’t seem enough by themselves. I have since followed a management pathway.
What we are now broadly calling research culture is an adventure that started back in about 2014! A group of us in Newcastle went to a HEaTED meeting in Northumbria University and there was an inspiring talk about professional registration. We launched a whole string of activities that had professional registration as the foundation. The time was ripe to pick the ‘low hanging fruit’ and we very quickly managed to gain momentum. People engaged well, including senior university management. I formed a wonderful professional friendship with a colleague called Linda Robinson in Organisational Development at Newcastle and we started to coordinate our efforts. Kelly Vere was instrumental in supporting this early work and getting us off to a great start.
When the Technician Commitment was launched, we provided some feedback into what it might look like and we started to run with it at Newcastle. I really enjoyed that work - it took me out of the laboratory and enabled some important and fun initiatives with great people. These activities were immensely valuable for the whole of our technical community and wider sector.
Holly
So Newcastle was a founding signatory.
Mel
Yes, it was one of the original 36 signatories.
Holly
It sounds like finding allies in areas such as Human Resources would be top of the list when offering advice to colleagues in institutions who are looking to take action around the Technician Commitment’s aims.
Mel
Yes - as a community we can’t change things by ourselves. We've got to partner up with someone else outside of our technical community to make change happen. At Newcastle, less than 10% of the overall staff are technicians and in my experience, the partnership with Organisational Development colleagues has been key.
I think the other thing is getting the right people on the bus and ensuring they are sitting in the right seats. Whatever the direction of travel is, it usually turns out well, and if you need to change course, you can do that easily because you've got a great team which is also agile.
Holly
So you live in Newcastle – can you tell us a little bit about what you like to do in your own time?
Mel
I do a lot of camping and caravanning with my family. We belong to the Camping and Caravan Club so we tend to stay on a lot of off-grid locations where there are lots of youth activities for my 2 daughters.
I’m also a keen motorcyclist. I did the North Coast 500 on a motorcycle last year. That was brilliant – I had no idea that they had such lovely beaches right on the very north coast.
As a RoSPA tutor and IAM RoadSmart National Observer I have trained other motorcyclists in system riding using roadcraft. I was also chairman of the local IAM group but when I took the directorship of the National Technician Development Centre, I stepped down from a lot of the motorcycle training!
