We’re here today to celebrate the University of Leicester Student Awards.
Students work really hard throughout their degree academically
but they also do a phenomenal amount of things outside their degree
and we think it’s really important to give them the opportunity to share their successes,
whether that be through music or sport or through volunteering.
It’s kind of like the cherry on the cake on top of a great experience at Leicester.
It means that I’ve shown resilience and have shown strengths
so hopefully employers will recognise that as well.
It’s absolutely amazing to have won the award because I’m just hoping that if anything it just raises awareness
to get involved with these different volunteering opportunities.
It’s just to have that confidence to step out of your comfort zone,
to reach out to those different opportunities that you’re offered,
to help other people and to also enhance your own skills to.
We’re out as part of our volunteering initiative helping a local community support group called Park Lodge
and they help provide a home for homeless young people, and we are sorting out the garden for them,
laying gravel down, putting some benches in, sorting their planting out.
As part of our volunteering policy all of our staff have got 2 days a year
which they can use to undertake volunteering initiatives across the city of the county,
helping local community organisations.
Well the University was founded by the people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland for the people
and so I think we want to give something back.
Obviously we’re involved in world-class research and high quality education
but there’s also an important part of what we do is staff coming out and students coming out,
volunteering, supporting local community initiatives.
So as part of our De-Stress Festival we’ve put on a series of events for our students to get involved with.
Exams are a really key time for our students
but it’s also really important to try and maintain their wellbeing at the same time.
So we’ve put on these activities to give them a chance to come away,
take a breather, get involved with something different
and then they can go back to their studying and really focus on that.
Today we have with us a crew from the long running BBC programme The Sky at Night
who’ve come to talk to us about our work with the NASA mission Juno,
which is currently in orbit around Jupiter.
For me the greatest milestone of the Juno mission has been getting up close and personal to the auroras.
So what we’ve seen is the electrons, the charged particles that are barrelling down the magnetic field
causing the auroras and Juno has actually measured those.
So for me the revelation behind that process has been most interesting.
It’s really important that we scientists work with the media
and particularly for us at the University of Leicester it’s great for us to get our story out there
so that people can understand the great work that we do.
It puts Leicester on the map, particularly as somewhere that’s great for Space
and I think it’s something that we all should be doing as an academic community, is talking to the public.
It’s great to be in diverse, radical, optimistic and always sunny Leicester,
where I hope to talk about gender injustice, the problems and maybe some of the solutions.
But I’m optimistic it’s a radical moment in world politics,
we just need to make sure that the woman’s cause is at the heart of that radicalism.
As far as I’m concerned getting the opportunity to go to university, a long time ago,
was a complete game changer for me.
University is just a life changing experience and my view is as we’re living longer and retiring later
we should let them have a longer and more fulfilling youth,
and that means education for everyone including into their early 20’s and that’s what university can achieve.