The winners of the 2012 NUS Higher Education Awards were announced at the NUS/HEA Student Engagement Conference on 12th June and the evening was a great showcase of the great activity happening across the UK. 

We had an exceptional range of submissions from across the UK, with a strong and impressive collection for each category. Congratulations to the winners!

NSS Promotional Campaign of the Year 

Brighton Students’ Union

Brighton Students’ Union ran a campus-wide campaign over all three of their campuses. They ran targeted course rep training, ran an NSS road show which visited 6 major sites including all HE campuses plus HE in FE sites. They also created NSS 2012 Response Teams which targeted courses that had not reached the threshold during the last two weeks of the survey. Following the close of the survey they conducted an evaluation report on the success of their campaign. 

Innovative Student Engagement 

Hull University Students’ Union

Hull University has an extremely disparate make up of students. Within their course rep system they wanted to understand just how representative their representation system was and where they should target to engage further. They monitored the demographics of students who were successfully elected as course reps and mapped this against the University of Hull’s overall demographics. They worked in collaboration with the university and submitted the findings to the HUU Education Zone Committee. Next year, using the data, they will target the areas in which they are underrepresented. 

Higher Education Campaign of the Year 

Liverpool Students’ Union

Liverpool Students’ Union is nominated for is Hidden Course Costs campaign at Liverpool John Moores University. The first objective of the campaign was to demonstrate which costs were hidden and the second to audit a number of courses to show the amount of money that students were spending. Having taken these results to Senior Management, the university asked all courses to conduct their own audits and then LSU worked with the institution to analyse these results. Through negotiation they agreed on a set of improvements that met the needs of both parties and culminated in £2 million being dedicated to cover additional course costs including free dyslexia testing, £25 of free printing per student, and free CRB checks.

Course Representative of the Year 

John Gusman – Bournemouth University

John has accomplished a significant amount during his time as a rep. He successfully established and led a new student rep society with over 99 members, developed a rep handbook, supported the unions Speak Week campaign, and has an active student engagement blog discussing student engagement issues at both Bournemouth and nationally.  John is described as a ‘devoted rep, proactive, extremely hard working and a true inspiration’