Student of the Year 2008


SCEPTrE / PTCC Student of the Year Award

The award is available each year to any University of Surrey student who has made an excellent commitment to professional training and/or other forms of development relevant to being professional. Contributions to enhancing the experiences and development of other students, or to strengthening relationships between the university and employers, strengthen the nomination.

 

In 2008 there were 11 nominations for the award and at the end of the deliberative process the judging panel decided to spilt the £500 prize into two equal awards for two well deserving students.

 

Samual Jones BSc Music & Sound Recording (Tonmeister) programme.

Sam was nominated by Dr Tim Brookes his personal tutor and visiting tutor during his professional training placement. He says - Sam gained a placement at Air Studios, one of the world's best-known recording studios. Although employed initially as a runner, he worked exceptionally hard from the outset to perfect his technical skills, learning as much as he could at every opportunity. As a result he progressed spectacularly quickly.

 

 

After just two months he was working as first-assistant to the sound engineer. This entailed a huge degree of responsibility, which I know he found daunting, but which he took on with enthusiasm. The perfect professionalism with which he worked led to him being personally requested to work with Coldplay and to him earning sound engineering credits on eight feature films. His employers awarded him full marks in every category in their final assessment, rating him as "a rare specimen of constantly superb performance".

 

Sam has made a significant contribution to the professional development of our current HE2 students, providing them with a detailed insight into recording studio work and invaluable advice on how to succeed professionally. He has done this by way of an excellent written report and oral presentation, together with informal personal communications. He has also assisted me in setting up a new placement at another professional studio.

 

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Harjinder Sidhu BSc Chemical Engineering programme

Harjinder was nominated by Annette Strauss who runs the Leonardo scheme for European placements. She said - Harj embraced the whole placement experience – the work opportunities, the cultural environment and the language.  He went to Germany as a non-linguist but took the opportunity to learn German. He asked co-workers to correct work he had done from language texts. He joined a kick-boxing club to meet local people. He asked them to help him with the language and travelled around Germany with the club.

 

He made a major impact in the company.  Dow Stade was reviewing placement numbers and planned to reduce them.  When Harj left, project leaders were asking for Surrey students and 5 places are available this year.  He networked extensively and was known by a very wide range of people, well beyond the scope of his group.  They still ask after him.

 

He made effective use of his own cultural heritage and ran sessions to help Dow staff develop an understanding of India, where they are developing their business.  This was highly rated by senior staff. He won three separate awards for his placement, one for efforts to help new starters from the UK integrate into the R&D department. He was a credit to himself, his department and the University.  He continues to learn German and has shared his experience generously with other students.

 

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We also want to commend all the other students who were nominated. Although they didn’t win a prize their stories are inspiring.

 

 

Commendations

 

Marcela Acuna-Rivera          SCEPTrE

Bhishma Amlani                    Biomedical Sciences

Iris Chan                                 Dance Studies

Sarah Campbell                    Psychology

Helen Morgan                        Biomedical Sciences

Maria Thadani Mullero          Biomedical Sciences

Helen Pye                              Biomedical Sciences

Natacha Thomas                   Law

James Tollerfield                   Biomedical Sciences