Mrs Mychelle Pride

With more than twenty years’ experience in the sector, Mychelle’s work has focused on enabling students to achieve to the best of their abilities, improving student voice/engagement, and quality assurance and enhancement. In her current role as Associate Dean Teaching Excellence in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), Mychelle has strategic responsibility for student success including retention, continuation and completion, student voice/engagement, access, participation & success (APS), recognising and rewarding teaching excellence, and leads Teaching Excellence initiatives.

In her previous role as Academic Lead for APS, Mychelle was responsible for producing and implementing the WELS Faculty APS strategy, overseeing APS work across the Faculty, designing and running a programme of more than 40 'unlearn and learn' events, and undertaking several APS initiatives. Before that, Mychelle was Head of Student Experience in the Faculty of Business and Law (FBL). Prior to joining the OU, Mychelle worked as an Assistant Director at the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (dBIS) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on the Teaching Excellence Framework.

Mychelle has an MSc in Mental Health Science from the Open University, an MA in Social Science Research Methods (Social Policy) from the University of Birmingham and an MA in Slavic Linguistics from the University of Chapel Hill, North Carolina . In October 2020, Mychelle started her PhD in Psychology at the OU in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS), researching success for students with mental health difficulties.