Your Student of the Year!

On Thursday 27 June, the winners of this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Awards (VCAs) were revealed as all of our finalists, their colleagues, friends and families gathered in The Forum for the annual awards ceremony. We presented a range of different awards including Student of the Year, Alumni of the Year, Student experience award, Team of the Year, Tutor of the Year and many more.

Aoife Simpson, who studies with our School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, took home the award for Student of the Year recognising her consistently high achievements and dedication to embracing our Graduate Attributes. Here’s what she had to say about her award:

“I am incredibly surprised and honoured to have received the Vice Chancellor’s Student of the Year Award. I came to the University of Hertfordshire with less-than ideal A-Level grades, feeling very unsure of myself and my abilities. Through the fantastic support of staff and fellow students, I made it through a foundation year and went on to complete an MPhys in Astrophysics. 

Alongside my degree, I have developed a keen interest in outreach work which consisted of working with the planetarium both at Bayfordbury Observatory and in schools. I have written and presented my own scripts and I am very passionate about making the STEM subjects accessible to all. It is incredibly rewarding to help the public, especially children, understand a concept which they may have initially found challenging but by working together we are able to give an insight into the science we carry out at the university. 

I strongly believe that outreach and research are equally important and without my outreach work I would not have had the confidence to complete a summer research placement in 2017 and present a poster on my research at the SEPnet Placement Expo at which my poster was placed in the top 6 out of ~ 75 posters.”

Congratulations to Aoife and everyone else who not only won, but also to those who received a nomination in this year's awards! #UHVCA2019

Here's the full list of the finalists for this year's Student of the Year:

• Aoife Simpson
• Aaron Ellis-Montoya
• Alexandra Buckland-Stubbs
• Cage Boons
• Fiona Montgomery
• Libby Cole
• Mitchelle Sanghvi
• Sumaiyah Jamil
• Victoria Singleton