2010 News
- News Archive
Feast Day Mass and Awards Ceremony Held
Staff, students and invited guests joined together at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham to celebrate the Feast Day Mass on Wednesday 8th December.
The Mass was celebrated in the University College Chapel and the Right Reverend John Arnold, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster was the main celebrant. He was joined by other priests from the local deanery and Fr Philip Smith, a former student who was ordained recently for the Archdiocese of Southwark.
The St Henry Walpole Award for Teaching and Learning was presented during a dinner after the Mass. This is the thirteenth successive year that the St Henry Walpole Award for Teaching and Learning has been awarded.
The winning submission came from Patsy Burn and Mark Griffin, Drama lecturers in the School of Communication, Culture and Creative Arts. They received a prize of £1,000 for ‘Re-Imagining the Space’, an innovative community engagement project co-produced with the National Trust at Ham House to celebrate the property’s 400th anniversary.
Patsy and Mark encouraged a team of twenty Drama St Mary’s students to take a lead in coordinating over 3,000 participants drawn from local groups, community choirs, families and friends of the Trust in a day of celebrations, processions, concerts and performances at the house last May. The work has helped foster a unique partnership between St Mary’s and the Trust, with new initiatives planned for future.
Dr Tig Calvert and Natalie Airs from the School of Management and Social Sciences were highly commended for their work in a new Level 3 module, ‘Positive Psychology – Positive Learning and Positive Experience’. It delivers a new teaching and learning experience in an exciting and current field of psychology, and assists students in developing a specialist and highly transferable skills set.
Also receiving commendations were Jon Goodwin, Richard Blagrove, Dan Cleather, Stephen Patterson and Neil Bezodis from the School of Sport, Health and Applied Science for their work on the Distance Learning MSc/PG Diploma in Strength and Conditioning. This innovative programme has provided the field with the first distance learning programme of its kind in the UK.
The programme offers accessible postgraduate study for a group of graduate practitioners, who are primarily based in a workplace setting and often work with elite performers in an irregular and demanding schedule. It also provides an opportunity to gain professional accreditation with the UK Strength and Conditioning Association.
The programme contains a number of innovative approaches delivered via distance learning, in particular the use of technical video demonstrations and a highly interactive online discussion forum.
Each commended group was awarded a prize of £500 for their work.
