Unsung Hero/Heroes

Carmela Valentine

Carmela Valentine, a member of the Timetabling Team is unanimously loved across the School of Design & Creative Arts for her problem-solving talents, and broad-reaching knowledge. For years Carmela has helped the Creative Arts navigate problems, from the unpredictability of Covid and being of the first to return to in-person teaching, to planning for unpredictable cohort sizes in first year. Even with obstacle compounding obstacle, Carmela uses good wit to ease tensions, logic to guide her trials, and sheer hard work to derive viable and equitable solutions for the School.

The Campus Security Team

This team works tirelessly to keep our campus safe and secure, prioritising student and college welfare at all times. When dealing with extremely sensitive and complex student issues they are compassionate and effective, often in the face of significant adversity and circumstances. So much of the support they offer goes under the radar for the vast majority of colleagues, hence they have been described as the unseen oil that allows all the cogs of the University to operate.  

Kirsty Bramley

Kirsty has played a pivotal role in the success of the GMT (Graduate Management Trainee) Scheme, a program critical to developing future leaders within the University. Each year, she is responsible for the recruitment of new trainees, ensuring a rigorous selection process that attracts the brightest talents. Beyond recruitment, Kirsty excels in identifying and facilitating development opportunities tailored to the unique needs of each trainee, many of whom are new to careers in higher education.

University Counselling Service

The life-changing work of the University Counselling Service is not so obvious to the wider University community. Confidentiality is a crucial aspect of their work, which is done behind closed doors. 2024 marks the 50th year of the Service, in this time UCS has been a refuge and source of healing for tens of thousands of students and staff. Empowering and supporting students to reach their potential has always been at the heart of our inclusive service which has grown and evolved from a one-man-show in 1974, to a team that steps-up to the ever-present and high demand for their services.

Student Records & Operations Team

Since 1 August 2023, SRO staff have made 64,946 changes to student programme records, and 32,080 changes to student module records. That’s over 500 updates every working day on average – the daily maintenance required to ensure that students are registered, their modules are correct, and they can progress and graduate, not to mention leaves of absence, withdrawals, resits, updates after appeals, finance queries, and myriad other updates. They hold a critical role in student fees, exams, student statutory returns, UKVI and Student Loans Company compliance, student subject access requests, and academic misconduct processes. SRO seems to be unsung, but is crucial to the function of the University as a whole.