Distance learning goes to new lengths

IT SEEMS only yesterday the air was filled with warnings of financial apocalypse from our institutions of further and higher education.

But today we can bring happier news. Cutting through the lurid images of our colleges being reduced to the barrows of Steptoe & Son comes an academic appointment truly vibrant with imagination. Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design has recruited Professor Tony Martin, a leading marine scientist, to its team. He will spend the next four years in the tiny island of South Georgia.

While he will formally take up his post at the college, part of Dundee University, he will be seconded to the South Georgia Heritage Trust and spend his time 7,880 miles away on the island where he will oversee a multi-million-pound project to boost native seabird numbers by removing invasive species, such as rats, introduced during two centuries of human occupation of the island.

Professor Elaine Shemilt, artistic director of the university's Centre for Remote Environments, admitted that "at first glance" the recruitment of an eminent biologist to an art college might appear to be an "incongruous" appointment. Some might feel it equally incongruous after a second or third glance, not least prospective students keen to pursue a career in art and design. But clearly the gannets of South Georgia have much to learn from Dundee.