Mick Roebuck
Mick Roebuck College Principal 1992-1996
I was appointed Principal of the college in the Summer of 1991 and began work on the 7th January 1992 just after my 43rd birthday and I was told I was the youngest College Principal in Scotland at the time. The college was due to become incorporated on the 1st April 1993 as an independent body with its own Board of Management chaired by Mrs Irene Matheson.
The first task was to prepare for that event by ensuring we had enough staff and facilities to operate our own financial systems, personnel function and estates management. There were other tasks such as agreeing on maintenance of the road up to the college with WIIC and the Stornoway Trust and agreeing on the boundaries between the main building and the castle with WIIC where none had been necessary before.
We had to create a vision for the college going forward which essentially was that we should focus our attention on meeting the needs of the local communities we served across the Western Isles. The senior management team of Callum Ian Macmillan and Kenny Paterson were particularly active in promoting this vision of a college for the community.
We established learning centres in Barra and Benbecula to begin that process as well as establishing partnerships with a range of organisations such as the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association; Harris Tweed Authority; ATB; Gaelic Television industry; Western Isles Enterprise and Western Isles Council.
We worked to enhance rural skills training including short courses; evening classes and apprenticeships in crofting and weaving; sea fishing; fish farming;hospitality and catering. The college played an active role in testing the new double width loom and then in providing training and support for weavers through a college designed programme supported by HIE and the Harris Tweed Authority.
One of the ways in which a college can encourage adults to return to learning is to provide an evening class programme and this was one of the early successes with a remarkable number of adults attending the first-year partly due to the great enthusiasm of Eddie Richardson who ran the programme. One of the highlights for me was the Saturday morning sheep dog handling course run on the college croft run by the late Calum Macdonald who was a Scottish Champion sheepdog handler and trainer.
We developed an HND in Multi-Disciplinary Engineering for the shipping industry and students progressed to officer engineer post in the merchant marine through our links with P&O;Cunard and many others. My good friend Donnie Smith who was involved in that programme passed away just a few weeks ago.
We were aware that there was no college provision for students with special educational needs and we were fortunate that we had tremendous support from Bernard Chisholm who was then working in the WIIC social work department and was able to access finance for the college to build polytunnels on the croft and provide meaningful training for these young people as well as allowing the college to appoint a specialist lecturer in that area of work.
Finally, we were involved in the very early days planning for the creation of the University of the Highlands and Islands and I chaired the shadow Academic Board working with Sir Graham Hills the Academic Advisor appointed by HIE with whom I shared a vision of a university which could offer courses from those with special education needs to degree level programmes franchised both from local universities and from American universities who had links with the Highlands and Islands through the earlier emigration of family members. These later courses it was hoped would attract significant numbers of students from outside the area to make it more financially viable.
Sadly, a number of people I worked with at the time have passed away including Sir Graham Hills and D K MacLeod my Depute Principal at the time. I would like to thank all those people who worked both for the college and with the college over those 4 years from 1992 to 1996. I was privileged to serve as Principal as these years were some of the best years of my working life. Congratulations on 70 years of service to the community and to many more years in the future.