This year, the Conference was host to a number of Awards to colleagues.
At lunchtime, Mike Thorne presented certificates to the winners of this year's Vice Chancellor's Awards, and the winners in the new 'Highly Commended' category. The Vice Chancellor's Awards seek to publicly recognise and reward outstanding contributions made to our community. Every academic year, up to 8 awards are made, each with a monetary value of £2000.
Mike followed this with the presentation of a trophy to the Faculty of Education, which won the Anglia Ruskin University Institutional Repository (ARRO) Competition for 2011. The Competition challenges each Faculty to submit research material to ARRO. The winner is the Faculty with the highest number of accepted submissions per FTE academic members of staff by 31 May.
For the Conference finale, Mike unveiled this year's Teaching Fellows. Our University Teaching Fellowship Award Scheme celebrates excellence in learning and teaching practice with the bar set very high. Winning is a significant achievement, only six can be awarded each year, and winners form the pool from which we develop our candidates for the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Awards.
Finally, Mike announced the learning and teaching projects which are to be supported by the Learning and Teaching Project Fund, and whose outputs will form the basis for the presentations and workshops at next year's learning and teaching conference.