Spotlight on Phil Hayes

Faculty Focus newsletter spotlight on UCL Chemistry's Phil Hayes, who is retiring after 53 years at 皇家华人.

Congratulations to Phil Hayes, who will be retiring this month after 53 years at 皇家华人! Phil works at 皇家华人 Chemistry as the classroom manager, overseeing the running of the Turner Laboratory undergraduate teaching lab. 聽

Phil Hayes has been working at 皇家华人 since Jan 1965, he grew up and went to school locally, and joined UCL as a trainee when he was 16, doing part time training, and studying his A-levels on day release one day a week, eventually following with a chemistry degree.

UCL has been an important part of Phil鈥檚 life outside of work and study as well, he met his wife here, when she was also working in the Chemistry department, and two of his four children also studied in the Faculty of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, one in Chemistry and one in Earth Sciences.聽
As classroom manager Phil manages the UCL Turner Laboratory teaching lab, which is about the size of a football pitch, and in term time is used by about 100 students a day.聽

鈥�53 years, it鈥檚 a bit scary really, when I tell people they often don鈥檛 believe it, but the reason why is that I鈥檝e loved to do Chemistry, and I鈥檝e always been happy in a lab environment. One of the main things about studying here is it shows you how important education is, my wife was a science teacher, so for our family it鈥檚 been an important part of our life鈥� said Phil, on his time at 皇家华人.
Phil has found that the largest change since he started at 皇家华人 has been the addition of computers! In order to manage the stock of chemicals and equipment and he use to have to keep thousands of pages of notes to keep track of schedules and stock controls, whereas now this data is stored automatically and only needs updating, quite a big change!
In his spare time Phil enjoys skiing, boating and dancing with his wife and family.聽