Robert Crawford has been appointed Glasgow Caledonian University's director of business development
Glasgow Caledonian University has recruited economic development guru Robert Crawford as its director of business development and commercialisation to spearhead its work in economic growth and social regeneration.
Principal Pamela Gillies said: "This is separate from fundraising. It is about working with industry to develop joint ventures and harness all the intellectual and social capital of the institution."
Dr Crawford, chief executive of the Mersey Partnership, said: "I'm 55, at the time of life when I only do things if I'm really excited and interested in what's being proposed.
"I'm very struck by Pamela Gillies's energy and vision. I've spent a large part of my life engaged in economic development and I've seen the real transformation that education can make," he said.
Dr Crawford noted that he had personal experience of this kind of transformation having left school at 15. "I was a disaster. My recollection is that they asked me to leave." After a period of unemployment, he joined IBM in Greenock, where he was encouraged to attend evening classes.
He went on to graduate in economics and politics from Strathclyde University and won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He then took a PhD at Glasgow University followed by a Leverhulme Fellowship at Strathclyde's Fraser of Allander Institute.
Dr Crawford said: "Education is at the heart of personal and social transformation. I that think every university has inherent value locked in it and the question is how you get that value to the marketplace."