Celebrating Placement Success
Oxford Brookes Business School celebrates its annual Placements Awards Ceremony
Student placements are a strength of Oxford Brookes Business School, and even in the midst of a global pandemic we have seen another bumper cohort of 228 student placements making a difference to a wide variety of businesses. This year saw students placed in a wide variety of organisations including Big Group, Porsche, IBM, ALDI, the Savoy, the Mayday Trust and Airbus. The variety of businesses hosting placements represents the broad range of partners that Oxford Brookes Business School has developed regionally, nationally and internationally.
The event was coordinated by Suze Matthews, Heather Woodruffand the Work and Voluntary Experience Services(WAVES) team in the Business School, and is a celebratory highlight of the Business School calendar. This year many of the excellent placement students worked both onsite with businesses and remotely during the COVID-19 lockdown, which is testament to their agility and resilience.
This year the Annual Placement Awards ceremony was held virtually, with Oxford Brookes Business school staff and students attending online along with our incredible placement employers to celebrate the outstanding achievements of our placement students. The awards recognised the strengths, skills and dynamism of this year’s placement students, with the runners-up and winners receiving a trophy and gift voucher.
The ceremony was compered by the Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience, Lindsay Williams, with the awards being presented by the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean,Professor Tim Vorley. At the beginning of the awards Tim said “The number of entries made it extremely difficult to choose between themany excellent nominations from placement line managers”, he continued “it istruly impressive to see the impact that out students have when working onplacement”.
The winner of the Commitment to Customer Client or ServiceAward was Amelia Marcus, and her line manager at IBM said “Amelia has been thebest student we have recruited into the Tax Department during my time at IBM.She has had to deal with clients across the world and has provided excellentclient service at all times”.
The winner of the Creativity and Innovation Award was TheaHurley-Bennett, who undertook her placement with L’Oreal, and her manager said“Her exceptional work on this project will not only drive incremental sales forthe business, but change consumer journeys, experiences and perceptions of theDecleor brand during a challenging time”.
In a fitting end to the evening, the student nominated awards saw the Best Placement Line Manager Award shared between Jessica Houston(PWC) and Deborah Cridford (London Fluid Systems Technology), and Joy Butcherreceive the Outstanding Placement Tutor Award.
In closing the evening Tim said “Tonight has highlighted theimpressive achievements of our students on placement, all of whom are superbambassadors for Oxford Brookes Business School!”
For more information about placement opportunities contact Heather Woodruff hwoodruff@brookes.ac.uk