It has been revealed that a doctor from the University of Cumbria has been leading a double life – in a good way.

Leadership and coaching lecturer Dr Ron Lawson is an academic at the university’s business school working with learners in Cumbria and Lancashire – and is a student at its Institute of the Arts too.

On course to complete his MA in Contemporary Fine Art this summer, Ron is a painter and sculptor in his native North East, where his next project is to produce a piece of public art that will play a vital part in a new urban regeneration scheme.

The commission, announced by Sunderland City Council, is to create a bust of a miner who was a pillar of the local community where a new residential development of council-built homes is to take shape.

Ron said: “With my own coaching and leadership students, who are often professionals and from their own corporate or business world, we explore reflective practice and use an arts-based approach to help them to overcome challenges and how to do things differently. Today, through my own studies, I suppose I’m practising what I preach to my own students.

The university’s next open day on Saturday June 19.