THE new principal of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) is "getting used to doing the nightshift".

That's because Professor Todd Walker is logging in to do the job from his home in Australia after Covid delayed his relocation to Scotland.

Since starting the principal and vice-chancellor job on Monday, his working day has run from 7pm until 2.30am, Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

It's been a "long" first week, he tells the Sunday National, but he's got big plans to turn UHI into the envy of European competitors and put the institution at the forefront of Scotland's coronavirus recovery.

Comprising 13 different colleges and research centres from Oban to Orkney, UHI has 40,000 students and was founded just a decade ago.

Walker, a cancer expert with 25 years' experience in academic leadership and management, spent a short sabbatical at its Inverness campus in a Scots-Aussie information exchange a couple of years ago and liked what he saw.

The National:

When the opportunity to switch from his previous role at the University of New England (UNE) came up it was "too good to miss".

The clinical cytologist and his wife will move to the Highland city when restrictions allow, but for now he doesn't see the distance as a barrier.

"If things had gone as planned, I'd probably have been running the university from my home in Inverness," he said.

"When you aspire to a vice-chancellorship, you certainly don't think this is how it's going to start. Your natural thoughts are about walking around campus, meeting people. This is quite unique."

"This is an institution with the values and integrity and dynamism that I'm used to. It feels like a really good fit."

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While UHI is one-of-a-kind in Scotland, the multi-campus model used and online options offered is more common in Australia. There are more online students at UNE, he explains, than there are people in the town where it is based. The familiarity in approach is what helped attract him to the role.

"We have always embraced technology," he says of UHI, and he's also using tech to help him bridge the language barriers he now faces.

Not only is Sabhal Mor Ostaig – the only college in Scotland to offer degrees taught in Gaelic – part of UHI, the university produces a range of its materials in both Gaelic and English.

Walker plans to make use of UHI coursework to improve his proficiency, but as a starter he's embarked upon the hugely popular Gaelic course through the Duolingo app.

"It's not an easy language," he says. "I try saying things but I just get smiles from people. I always get the accent wrong."

Meanwhile, he's followed poet Len Pennie and other Scots language advocates online to get his head round that too. "I'm trying to understand and learn it more," he adds, "but I can't make too many promises.

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"I practice to make sure how I'm speaking as an Australian is understandable. I'm making an effort to speak more slowly and use less Australian slang. Every now and then a word slips out."

Walker's eventual shift to Scotland will see him retrace steps taken by his family, who moved from the UK to Australia when he was a child.

He's ready with jokes about the Scottish weather and says he knows he's doing it "the wrong way round", but that Inverness trip and episodes of BBC crime drama Shetland, which is screened in Australia, have him prepared for the drop in temperature.

But mostly Walker – whose appointment follows the retirement of Professor Clive Mulholland in summer 2019 – is preparing a strategy to take UHI into the post-pandemic future and make it one of Europe's most respected universities.

"I don't think Covid is going to be over quickly," he says. "As you look around the world there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

"It could be a number of years away. We are trying to embrace these challenges as opportunities – how can we find the space to grow amongst all that uncertainty?"

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The answer, Walker says is, "daring to be different".

"That's not asking staff to work more," he goes on, "it's about saying 'what is it that we do that really differentiates us ?'

"We should be an institution that others cite when they are talking about models of operation as a new university," he says.

"Other universities should be turning and saying 'have you seen what they are doing at UHI?'"

"I'm spending as much time as I can in the first month in listening, understanding, appreciating and then I will start to do more of the linking-together.

"We have got a mentality to take the university to become a truly international institution."