Dr Ian Tunbridge, director of Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), has been awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours List for his services to higher education.

Over the past two decades, the former founding dean of the University of Plymouth Colleges Faculty (UPC) has radically reformed the provision of higher education across the South West, significantly increasing participation rates in university level education and making an important contribution to social and economic regeneration in the region.

A delighted Dr Tunbridge said: "This truly is a great privilege, though I'd like to think that it gives recognition to the many people at the universities and colleges I've had the pleasure to work with during my career at the University of Plymouth and CUC."

Dr Tunbridge led the development of the trailblazing partnership between the University of Plymouth and further education colleges throughout the South West, creating what is nationally regarded as the largest and longest established higher education in further education partnerships in the UK. From modest beginnings of around 450 students in the late eighties, the UPC Faculty has become the largest faculty of the university, housing almost a third of its 30,000 student population. The 'dispersed higher education' scheme of the UPC Faculty models itself on the University of Wisconsin in the US and has been praised as a national exemplar of collaborative working, receiving one of the first Queen's Anniversary Prizes for further and higher education in 1994.

Dr Ian Tunbridge: "This truly is a great privilege, though I'd like to think that it gives recognition to the many people at the universities and colleges I've had the pleasure to work with during my career at the University of Plymouth and CUC."

Close friend and successor as dean of the UPC Faculty, Dr Colin Williams, added: "I'd like to congratulate Ian. This is a fantastic tribute to Ian's pioneering work that has given us a faculty that provides genuinely inclusive university education. As a partner in CUC we continue to work together, striving to create better opportunities for all, fuelling the local economy and stimulating regeneration in Cornwall."

Dr Tunbridge was born in Launceston, Cornwall, in 1953. He was the first of his family to go to university and gained a PhD in Sedimentology at the University of Reading. He worked for Shell UK before accepting a position with the University of Plymouth as a lecturer in Geology. After following a traditional academic career for 10 years, he pursued his growing interest in helping people from all backgrounds and age groups to benefit from higher education.

In 1989, he accepted the task of establishing the university's acclaimed regional partner college network, which became the University of Plymouth Colleges Faculty (UPC) in 2003.

In 2007, he took up the newly created post of executive director of CUC, a unique partnership of universities and colleges which is fast becoming recognised as Europe's leading collaborative higher education initiative. To date the partnership has attracted £120m of EU and UK Government investment, allowing CUC's partner institutions to create higher education facilities at a dozen campuses across Cornwall, thereby providing many more opportunities for people to study locally.

Dr Tunbridge lives with his wife and two children in Liskeard, Cornwall. Alongside his other commitments he is a governor of Liskeard School and Community College, chair of the Aimhigher Peninsula Partnership and also sits on the board of the Devon and Cornwall Learning and Skills Council.