2015 Award winners

Our first conference for Professional@York saw over 141 nominations across 10 categories. Here were the winners:

Outstanding customer service: Team Award

Sponsored by Bettys and Taylors Group

The Borthwick's Searchroom Team - Award Winner

The innovations and improvements the Searchroom Team have made to our customer services have helped to transform the Borthwick into a modern archives service, which serves as a model for other record repositories to emulate.

Outstanding customer service: Individual Award

Sponsored by Harrowells Solicitors

Richard Sykes - Award Winner

Thanks to Richard, TFTV students, staff, commercial teams and their commercial clients are relaxed about the whole process of booking and checking in and out of equipment. The service Richard provides is enormously valued and takes stress away from the rest of the department.

Outstanding project of the year

Sponsored by Pinsent Masons

Chemistry 'Block Effers' - Award Winner

The success of Block F has been in large part due to the 'Block Effers' - the two support teams of the teaching laboratories and the GCCE - who have not only worked together to plan, arrange and carry out the enormously complex move from Chemistry's Block B, but have done so without any interruption to undergraduate students and with only minimal interruption to the research work of the GCCE.

Ambassador of the Year

Sponsored by Academic Registry (University of York)

Amanda Selvaratnam - Award Winner

Amanda's energy and commitment to upskilling organisations using the capabilities of the HE sector, and the University of York in particular, has raised the reputation of York regionally, nationally and internationally.

Customer service (Individual)

Sponsored by Harrowells

Natalie Wood - Award Winner

Working with a cheerful competence you don't often see when pressure is high due to staff shortages, Natalie stepped up to help the departments navigate the last financial year. Proving excellent customer service in difficult and demanding circumstances, Natalie continued the smooth delivery of financial information with no break in the level of service previously received.

Enhancing the student experience

Sponsored by the Vice-Chancellor's Office

Maths Skills Centre and Writing Centre - Award Winner

The Writing Centre and the Maths Skills Centre are two recently-introduced services that have had a positive impact on students experience. The services are in two key areas of academic skill which can have a significant bearing on students’ overall attainment, indeed in some cases enabling their continuation at the University.

Outstanding team achievement of the year

Sponsored by Odgers Berndtson

Fusion CDT Support team - Award Winner

Jo, Laurie and Donna form the administration team and are key in providing the structures that bond the CDT together. Their expertise, professionalism and dedication has been key to the successful creation of a single Fusion CDT identity from five very individual universities.

Outstanding application of technology

Sponsored by CIPD

Caryn Douglas and Tom Smith - Award Winner

With Tom, Caryn has developed a technology-based workflow solution for receiving, distributing, evaluating, sifting, ranking and moderating studentship applications. The solution uses Google Apps to enable a collaborative workflow across the three institutions.

Unsung hero award

Sponsored by YCL and Penna

Norma Wright - Award Winner

Norma deals with this heavy and varied workload with aplomb, a high degree of professionalism and considerable accuracy. Norma’s understanding of the governance arrangements of the University are invaluable in her support for senior University committees and draw on her experience of having in the past been secretary to previous registrars, vice-chancellors and pro-vice-chancellors.

Helen Jacobs - Award Winner

Helen Jacobs exceeds the administrative demands of her job on a daily basis by thinking imaginatively about what might work best for her colleagues and the wider community, and by quietly consulting on and then implementing improvements to ways of working and the material environment.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor's Award for Special Recognition

Sponsored by Jane Grenville

York Sport staff - Award Winner

On Sunday 24 January, a number of York Sport staff members were called upon to assist a colleague who fell ill and became unconscious while working at the York Sport Village.

The colleague was seriously ill and needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) until paramedics arrived to take them to intensive care. In the words of the hospital staff our colleague is "only alive due to the actions of those involved".

The actions of individuals, from those who were directly involved in treatment, those who stepped up to deal with customers during and after the incident, throught to other colleagues who were off-duty but who came to the assistance of their colleagues at such a stressful time, was admirable and of great credit to themselves and the University.