On 7 August, Dr Xuan Feng, Nottingham University Business School China Associate Professor in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, was awarded the 2025 National Teaching Fellowship by Advance HE.
The prestigious Advance HE Award goes to individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education.With up to 55 new awards made each year, achieving a National Teaching Fellowship is widely recognised in higher education within the UK as well as internationally as a mark of quality.
Lying at the heart of Dr Feng’s contribution is her innovative “ECO-approach”, which integrates her global HR expertise with cutting-edge pedagogy to advance student employability. This pioneering ECO-approach emphasises Experiential learning and Collaboration through industry-supported learning experiences, ensuring curricula meet global job market demands. The model fosters student ownership via tailored mentoring and coaching, ensuring graduates achieve both immediate career success and long-term professional growth.
By creating a dynamic ECO-system – where industry, policymakers, and alumni co-design solutions – Dr Feng’s pedagogical innovation exemplifies the transformative power of cross-cultural, research-informed, and industry-connected teaching. While her ECO-approach has achieved exceptional student employability outcomes, her broad impact extends to shaping institutional strategy, national policy, and international practice through rigorous pedagogical research and deep industry engagement. This Fellowship celebrates her as a global leader in advancing educational excellence with measurable real-world impact.
On discovering she had been nominated for the Fellowship, Dr Feng said: “It is an extraordinary privilege to be awarded the National Teaching Fellowship as a contributor to Nottingham’s global educational mission. In this era of unprecedented challenges, we must transcend disciplinary and cultural boundaries to advance student development and employability – fostering transformative collaborations that empower our talented students to realise and maximise their potential for global impact.”
Published on 07 August 2025