We’ve just received this announcement from our Vice-Chancellor:

Dear All

The Inspirational Teaching Awards are now into their fourth year and continue to be a phenomenally successful innovation. The recipient of each award is presented at a relevant Graduation ceremony in November and the reception given by graduating students and their families is awe-inspiring.  This year, as in previous years, we’ve put prominent portraits of the award winners up in the main entrance of the Owen building and they provide a visible symbol of our commitment to excellent teaching.  They still stimulate glances from students and positive comments from visitors.

The central element of the initiative is student involvement in the nomination and assessment process. Students who complete the Student Barometer survey are asked to nominate those academic or student support staff who have inspired or made a transformative impact on their student experience, inside or outside the classroom.  This year students were also asked to nominate teams as well as individual members of staff.  A separate survey was made available for level 6 students and for postgraduate students.  Each student could write up to 200 words justifying their nomination.  In total 3581 students made nominations, an increase of more than 300 from last year.  More than 1500 individual staff and teams, academics and student support staff were named.

This is the first stage of the selection process.  The second stage takes place in Faculties and Directorates.  Each nomination is put before a Faculty selection panel, which included a student representative to maintain the student voice within the selection process.  The panel then uses a standard set of criteria to judge the nominations, which was based on last year’s award winner’s characteristics.

Sixty members of academic and support staff have been awarded Faculty Awards.  All of these went forward to the University stage from which twenty-two University Inspirational Teaching Awards were made.  In addition five Inspirational Research Supervisor Awards were made and two team awards were made for Outstanding Student Support

The following staff / teams received University awards:

Four of the recipients, Liz Erett, Jane Foggin, David Smith and Tim Williams have received awards for three consecutive years.

I’d like to congratulate all the nominees, all the Faculty award winners and all the staff who were successfully nominated for a University award.  I think this is a fantastic scheme and I’m full of admiration for all the nominees.  It’s a tribute to the University that we had 3581 students nominating 1518 members of staff – all of whom were identified as inspiring or transformational.

Yours

Professor Philip Jones

Vice-Chancellor