Nichola Connolly and Charon Gates from our Student Leadership Team have been awarded with the SEDA Student Partnership Impact Award from the Staff and Educational Development Association.
The award recognises students who have had an impact at their universities relating to educational development. Nichola and Charon were given the award, along with fellow OU student Imogen Goulden, in recognition of their contributions to student voice and wellbeing.
The three of them are Student Ambassadors within the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport (ECYS), and have made a significant impact as part of the ECYS Student Voice and Wellbeing Group. This group is a partnership of students and staff members, working to ensure that student voice is heard, listened to and acted upon. The group also aim to "empower students to share their thoughts and action change".
Charon, Nichola and Imogen have presented at conferences to raise awareness of the group's work, and recently co-authored a paper 'A view through the looking glass' for the Widening Participation in Lifelong Learning journal.
In addition, they have been instrumental in the introduction of Neurodiversity Cafés, an online space for neurodivergent students to meet and interact with each other. They also (along with their fellow student ambassadors) helped create a student wellbeing induction handbook – a bilingual handbook available to all OU students.
In short, Charon and Nichola (and Imogen) are fully deserving of this award! Congratulations to them!
Read the original OU article on this story