Meet the Graduation Team at Sheffield Hallam University!
We’re starting to speak to more and more of you, and you’re going to see our faces at the graduation ceremonies, so we thought it was the right time for you to meet your graduation team!
Samantha Jackson
My name is Samantha Jackson and I’m the event manager with responsibility for corporate and graduation events. I’ve worked on graduation for over 20 years and I’ve had a variety of roles: I started out helping with gowning, meeting all the graduates and helping them into their gowns. I then moved to steward on the doors helping guests and graduates to find their seats in the Oval Hall. I’ve managed the phones and dealt with queries, I even used to process all the paper booking forms way back before we had online booking. I remember one year manually allocating tickets for a ceremony and running out of seats – I had the whole ceremony to do again – it used to take a couple of days to ticket a ceremony manually, now it takes about half a day.
These days I’m managing the team that do what I used to do. Graduation is such a special time; it is lovely to see all the graduates and their supporters. Some we get to know better than others but I get such a sense of pride as everyone crosses the stage.
Laura Kelly
Hey, my names Laura and I work as an Events Coordinator in the Corporate and Graduation Events team here at Hallam.
I joined the team nearly 3 years ago now; it’s flown by super quickly and feels like only yesterday that I nervously walked into the graduation office on my first day!
I came to Hallam from a hotel-based events background and had worked in a hotel for over 6 years. Going from organising weddings and Christmas parties, to help pull together 20 graduation ceremonies for over 7000 students and 30,000 guests was certainly a steep learning curve….but I loved it!
In the run up to the ceremonies I ensure our fabulous graduation assistants, Rachel and Joanna, are trained up on all things system/report related (thrilling stuff!) as well as helping out with the day to day queries and general admin that comes our way. There are lots of reports and checks to be done behind the scenes, and this year I’ll also be overseeing the team who will be working hard to ticket all 22 ceremonies for you lovely lot. Wish me luck!
My favourite aspect about working on Graduation would have to be the two weeks we spend up at City Hall. The buzz and atmosphere is just so infectious and everyone is in such high spirits celebrating their achievements, it makes all the hard work organising it extremely worthwhile.
I’m looking forward to seeing all you guys cross the stage this year- see you up there! 🙂
Bethany Lincoln
I’m Beth, and I’m an Events Co-ordinator in the Corporate and Graduation team. I started working in the team around a year ago in July 2017. I started as a Graduate Intern and actually studied Events Management at Sheffield Hallam so I already had a little idea about what Graduation was all about after attending my own.
In terms of my job role now as an Events Co-ordinator, I have a lot of involvement in the website and blog. This year with the help of all the team we launched a new graduation website, so I do hope you’re finding it useful! I also assist with collating nominations for our Platform Party, who are the people who sit on the stage at the graduation, and I help the students who have been nominated for the ‘Vote of Thanks’ speech to ensure that their speeches are ready and as good as they can be. You may also find yourself talking to me on the phone if our Events Assistants Joanna & Rachel are too busy!
The best part of the job for Graduation, as it will be for everyone, has got to be working at the ceremonies. The buzz from the students creates such a great atmosphere to work in and it’s fantastic to watch all of our graduates celebrate their achievement.
Rachel Measures
Hi everyone, I’m Rachel. I’m a Graduation Events Assistant in the Graduation Office, working somewhat seasonally since summer last year – working from July to December 2017; I’ve been back in the office since April 2018 helping the wider events team here at Hallam, and, of course, the graduation team. I help with queries via email, over the phone or in person, along with a range of other administration tasks to help run graduation behind-the-scenes, including blogging.
The best part of the job is being able to work the two-weeks of the graduation ceremonies themselves. It makes all the hard work leading up to them worth it – this year is especially exciting for me as I’ll also be graduating alongside many of you, as I finished my 3rd year a few months ago. It’s going to be so cool working graduation, seeing many of my friends cross the stage and, finally, crossing the stage myself. So excited!
Joanna Sichivula
Hi, my name is Joanna Sichivula. I’m working as a Graduation Assistant, in the Graduation Office and I’m still a student at Sheffield Hallam University. I started working in the office August 2018, so I’m a new member of the team. My role consists of responding to queries, via phone, email or in person. You’d be amazed how much work goes on behind-the-scenes leading up to graduation.
The best part for me so far is working within the team: since graduation is such an important time for many people right now, and it is an important event in the University’s calendar. It helps me to keep organised with such a supportive team around me.
I’m looking forward to seeing the joy on people’s faces when they graduate, knowing all their hard work was worth it in the end.
As always – any questions please take a look at our website or if you need to speak to someone contact the Graduation Office on graduation@shu.ac.uk and you’ll get to speak to one of us!
The Graduation Team