Congratulations to Abbi Flint of the United Kingdom, the 2010 International Affiliate Forum Grant (IAFG) recipient. Ms. Flint is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Change at Sheffield Hallam University in northern England, where she has been employed since 2001. She is a member of AIR and the European Association for Institutional Research.

The 2010 IAFG grant provides registration funding for one recipient to attend the 2010 AIR Forum in Chicago, Illinois. The application process was open to AIR members or members of AIR International Affiliate Groups who live outside the United States.

Ms. Flint spoke enthusiastically about receiving the grant, “I was incredibly pleased to be awarded the IAFG grant. I applied when I realized there is so much more to learn and I’m keen to be actively involved in the supportive network and community of IR professionals that AIR provides. Although there are differences between the U.S. and UK higher education systems, many of the issues facing IR are common: tension between accountability and improvement functions, issues with engaging faculty staff with IR, assessing institutional level learning outcomes, etc.”

Ms. Flint shared that she is looking forward to learning from the experiences of colleagues in Chicago and conveying her own experiences from the UK perspective.

“I know the people I will speak with and the sessions I will attend at the AIR Forum will be of enormous benefit to my own practice as an early career institutional researcher, and will be shared with the rest of my IR team when I return to the UK. We are still in the process of developing and refining our approach to IR and the learning I bring back from the Forum will help in developing our thinking,” said Flint.