Winning a Guardian University Award can be a game–changing accolade. We caught up with a few 2016 winners to find out how their achievement made a difference.
Sustainability
The environmental action plan at the Royal Agricultural University
Winning has pushed us forward
Pearl Costello, environmental officer at the Royal Agricultural University
The Royal Agricultural University won in the sustainability category for its ambitious action plan that led to a 14% reduction in carbon emissions on campus in one year.
“We weren’t expecting to win because we were up against some really big universities,” says Pearl Costello, environmental officer at the university. “But I think the judges were able to see how much we’ve achieved on a small budget – and our action plan has so many different aspects to it.”
The university has installed bird boxes, waterless urinals, new energy efficient boilers, LED lighting, student accommodation smart metering, and rainwater harvesting to make their campusmore biodiverse and energy efficient.
The action plan is linked to the university’s teaching – by 2021, all courses will involve an element of sustainability, as they will need to demonstrate this as part of the course validation process. “Sustainability is part of a lot of our teaching anyway, but this process of showing that at the validation stage will help make that official,” says Costello.
“The award has really helped because, although we had support for the project across the university, being recognised at such a high level has demonstrated that we are pushing this agenda forward across higher education. Some new students have mentioned the award to me as well, which shows that people have noticed off campus.
“Now we want to keep pushing forward: winning has motivated us. I have lots of plans for the future – they are still very much in the thinking stage at the moment but I would like to see the university aim to be a zero-carbon campus one day. This academic year, we have been making an effort to involve students in our plans, asking them how they would like to see the campus in 30 or 50 years’ time.”
Student diversity
The Open Book programme at Goldsmiths, University of London
“It’s given us kudos in the college
Joe Baden, director of Open Book
The Open Book programme at Goldsmiths, University of London, won the award for student diversity. The programme works with students who have a history of offending, addiction and mental health issues, and those who have never considered further or higher education. Students are offered taster classes in a variety of subjects and many make the transition to a foundation or bachelor’s degree.
The programme’s director Joe Baden says: “The programme has developed over 12 years and has been really successful. We’ve seen some amazing outcomes for the students we’ve taught – there are so many examples I could talk about. One former student I met up with recently, an ex-offender, went on to do a degree at Goldsmiths and then won a scholarship to do a master’s in journalism and is getting married this year. Another went on to a master’s at LSE, and one is running a women’s drop-in centre.
“Winning the award has really given the programme kudos around the college, and people phoned us up to congratulate us – it’s raised the profile. We are usually found out about through word of mouth, but this helped spread awareness more broadly.
“Next, we are working with a homeless charity to secure student accommodation for young people at risk of homelessness who want to access our courses, and we are launching a programme of learning inside Isis young offenders’ institute in south-east London.”
International projects
A rabies surveillance project in Tanzania, set up by the University of Glasgow
We were delighted to win recognition for our work
Katie Hampson, lecturer at the University of Glasgow
Rabies is deadly, and control of it relies on effective surveillance. The University of Glasgow’s winning project is a mobile phone system, piloted in Tanzania, which allows vets and health workers to upload rabies reports quickly, from basic phones, to a database that can be accessed by others.
The tool has helped communities track the disease, access vaccinations and demonstrate to the government the need for further action. Katie Hampson, a lecturer in the university’s school of life sciences says the project was developed by one of her PhD students. The results so far have been impressive and the university is hoping to use the same technology for different healthcare contexts.
“What happens next depends on whether the Tanzanian government will find the funds to continue to support the technology and give out dog vaccinations without donor funding – we hope they will. Data is coming in as we speak, we are still analysing it, but there are signs that the technology is helping reduce the spread of rabies.
“We were delighted to win the award. It took a while to get the project going, so it was great to get off the ground and for it to have had an impact in Tanzania and then to be recognised in this way. Our department was delighted to win, and so were our colleagues in Tanzania, who came to London for the ceremony.”
Social and community impact
Rehabilitation programme for sexual offenders, run by Nottingham Trent University
We were overjoyed that people believed in what we were doing
Belinda Winder, professor at Nottingham Trent University
The winning project in the social and community impact category was a joint endeavour by Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) sexual offences, crime and misconduct research unit and Whatton prison. They created the Safer Living Foundation, which trains volunteers to work with and monitor sexual offenders due to leave prison and continues working with them once they have left to help rehabilitation and prevent reoffending.
Belinda Winder is professor of forensic psychology at the university and academic lead on the programme. She says: “We were pretty flabbergasted to win – watching the announcement video at the conference, we felt like we were at the Oscars. It all seemed a bit surreal and we were overjoyed that other people also believed in what we were doing. That was perhaps the most humbling and amazing part of it.”
Winder says that since the win, the charity has started broadening“The project is going from strength to strength and we have also developed several further projects, including a prevention project and a young person’s project, so the charity is really building momentum in the prevention of further victims of sexual crime.”
She adds: “The idea followed a decade of NTU psychologists working closely with the prison on applied research into preventing further victims – it was unique partnership between a prison and a university. I think we were picked by the judges perhaps because of society’s increasing recognition that the work we do needs to be done – sexual offending is not something we can sweep under the carpet.”
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