Phil Foster, Senior Teaching Fellow
My role
My current role is a mixture of teaching, tutoring, and academic support for our Full-Time MSc and Professional and Executive Programmes student populations across our global centres. I also provide management support to our Chinese Summer programmes and continue to build relationships with our industrial partners and contacts. I am a module tutor for an MSc module on Procurement and Managing Inventory in the Supply Chain and Logistics MSc programme. I can also fix various printer issues, give advice in the office on a variety of software issues and even make a good cup of tea!
My main contact is with the teaching staff across WMG, academics from the wider university and many other academic institutes and industries that I have worked with over these past 35 years.
My early career
I started work in the telecommunications service industry with BT before joining the computer services sector with a number of different data processing and CAD/CAE/CAM companies. This is where I first encountered WMG as a Service Engineer. I installed some of the first CAD equipment into WMG’s old CAD Training Centre, which is where I then started working shortly afterwards.
The best part of my job
I have had the opportunity to fulfil many roles whilst working at WMG and I was also awarded an MSc from Warwick in 2000 which tied in with the research project I was working on at the time. In my current role, I like the diversity of my work, the people I encounter and the benefits I see from the student and partner successes and achievements, both in a professional and a personal capacity.
Best thing about WMG
It is hard to describe a singular “thing”. My own views are the opportunities that arise regularly whilst working at WMG within the “family” atmosphere across the department. I started as a qualified and experienced CAD/CAM engineer and went on to manage a very experienced team of CAD/CAM/CAE developers. At other times I have taught basic engineering principles to undergraduate students and I have lead world class multi-million pound research projects using funding I was awarded from the European Commission (where I even had the unique opportunity to present to Nelson Mandela) - working at WMG opens up all sorts of opportunities. I firmly believe our strength is in our diversity, often misquoted and overly used, but history shows it fits perfectly with how WMG has arrived at this place.
Life at Warwick
I enjoy the unique surroundings and the University's Tennis Centre which I have recently joined.
Phil Foster:
Senior Teaching Fellow,
Supply Chain and Logistics Management