HEA call for nominations for this year’s Partnership Awards

[Jill Anderson]

To recognise and celebrate successful partnership working between staff and students, the HEA is calling for applications for two partnership awards, one of which is jointly awarded with the National Union of Students (NUS).

The first award, the HEA Student and Staff Partnership Award, invites joint submissions from staff and students who have worked together to effect change and enhance the student experience locally. This could be through a formal research or enhancement project, or locally developed working practices.

The second award is a joint HEA and NUS Students’ Union and institution Partnership Award. Joint submissions are invited from representatives of institutions and their students’ unions, associations or guilds that have demonstrated successful partnership working to enhance the student experience through joint institutional initiatives around key learning and teaching priorities, development of strategies or policies and governance.

The winner of each award will be given a £1,000 development grant to be used to disseminate and/or further develop their work. Completed applications should be sent to the HEA by 9 May 2014.

The awards will be presented at the HEA annual conference in July 2014. The conference theme this year is Preparing for learning futures: the next ten years, and includes four conference strands: the future is now; the future is connected; the future is global; the future is unwritten.

The first Partnership Awards were launched at the 2013 HEA annual conference, to celebrate its theme of Powerful partnerships: defining the student experience. The HEA and NUS Students’ Union and Institution Partnership Award was won by Birmingham City University and its Students’ Union who demonstrated a successful partnership approach which placed the values of student engagement at the heart of all activity on campus.

Matthew Holman and Dr Robert McKay of the University of Sheffield were awarded the HEA student and staff partnership award for their work around collaborative module design in the Arts and Humanities.

Last month, both the 2013 award winning teams presented at an HEA Inspirational Leadership seminar where they reflected on their experiences of leading partnership work together, and identified some of the challenges and lessons learned for those embarking on similar leadership journeys. You can watch a video of this presentation here.

Further details about this year’s awards, including the application form and guidance notes, can be found here.