The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Principal of St Andrews is made a dame
The principal of St Andrews University has been awarded a damehood. Professor Dame Sally Mapstone has been in charge of Scotland’s oldest university since 2016.
And she has steered it to first place in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022, knocking Oxford and Cambridge off the top spots for the first time in 30 years.
She is one of three St Andrews staff members to be recognised in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
A celebrated medievalist, Professor Mapstone is a leading figure in Scottish and UK higher education policy development and reform.
And she holds a number of prestigious positions.
These include chairwoman of the Higher Education Policy Institute, vice-chairwoman of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and convener of Universities Scotland.
She is also the first female president of the Saltire Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Professor Mapstone is a lifelong champion of diversity.
And she has helped to increase the numbers of students from disadvantaged and careexperienced backgrounds who succeed at universities across the UK.
Director of sport and exercise Stephen Stewart and mathematician Dr Isobel Falconer have both been made MBEs.
Mr Stewart is director of Saints Sports, the university’s department of sport and exercise.
He is a champion of inclusivity in sport and a pioneer of using the power of sport, volunteering and education to support disadvantaged communities.
Mr Stewart began his career as a leisure centre manager in Northern Ireland and came to St Andrews in 2008.
He is a founder of the Wallace Group, a collaboration of seven UK universities that promotes sports and health workshops in developing countries.
And he is closely involved in the Volunteer Zambia project.
Dr Isobel Falconer is a leading maths historian.
Her research focuses on the relationship between maths and physics in the 17th and 19th Centuries.
She has helped modernise the university’s MacTutor history of mathematics archive, a free online resource containing biographies of more than 3,000 mathematicians.
It also has more than 2,000 pages of essays and supporting materials and gets more than two million hits every week from users around the world.