Annual Report

1998-99

 

Sporting success
Bristol Reds (top sporting awards) were won this year by Guy Smith-Bingham (racquets), Anna Blacker and Sarah Kircheimer (lacrosse), George Gilpin (rifle), Chris Whitely (men’s rugby), Matt Harrison (men’s football), Jon Bainbridge (skiing), Rob Pugh (snooker), Cath Kohl (women’s rugby), Chris Hebert (ultimate frisbee), Jamie Adams (archery), Kirsty Bonar and Simon Fisher (sailing), and Fu Sekine (korfball).

The men’s ski team won the British Universities Sports Association championships at Les Arcs in the French Alps this year, the first time a non-Scottish university had won. Women sailors had a successful year, winning the BUSA Ladies’ Team Racing Championships and gaining second place in the BUSA Match Racing Championships. The University mountaineering A team were national champions at the BUSA National Climbing Competition held at the Bargoed Wales Climbing Wall in Merthyr Tydfil, and the B team beat all other competing first teams to come second in the championship.

Dramatic success
The University’s Drama Society swept the boards at the 44th National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough. Two productions, The absence of war and ourney’s end, were chosen to be performed alongside 14 other productions selected from UK groups. The absence of war by David Hare, a political satire loosely based on the 1992 General Election, received three awards: the RSC’s Buzz Goodbody Director Award: Roland Smith; Award for Acting: Ben McCann; and Commendation for Ensemble Work. Journey’s end by R. C. Sherriff, a World War I drama set in the trenches, received the award for Best Set Design, and Commendations for Acting went to Richard Pope and Ollie Walters.

Students from Clifton Hill House in their production of The Boyfriend

Among other accomplished dramatic performances during the year was The Boy Friend produced by first-year students at Clifton Hill House. Tickets were sold out for all five performances of the show. Fundraising for the Meningitis Trust included performances by the band and cast to large audiences of shoppers in Bristol city centre and a total of £1,288 was raised. Annie Burnside, the Warden of Clifton Hill House, says, ‘It has been an amazing experience for the cast, band and team, who worked together with such rapport.’

Individual awards and prizes
It is impossible to do justice to the many successes of numerous students, undergraduate and postgraduate, during the year. What follows is only a sample.

Rebecca Holland, a third-year chemistry student on an industrial placement, carried out a project which resulted in substantial cost savings for the company. She was named Britain’s ‘most enterprising student’ by the Shell Technology Enterprise Programme, a national scheme to encourage students to take up work experience.

Karen Young, a fourth-year medical student, won the prestigious Arthritis Research Campaign Prize in Rheumatology, as one of only 27 medical students in the country to be awarded this prize.

Emily Tregoning and Matthew Alabaster graduated last year with First Class Honours, Emily in Civil Engineering and Matthew in Aeronautical Engineering. Each has been awarded The Royal Academy of Engineering New Engineering Graduate Prize of £1,000. Bristol was the only university in the country to have two prize-winners in this competition.

Andrew Foyle, who graduated last year in History of Art, has received the 1999 Hawksmoor Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Architectural Research of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

Daniel Pang, a fourth-year veterinary student, spent six weeks this summer studying orang-utans in Borneo after receiving the Veterinary Student of the Year award from the pharmaceutical company Vericore.

Daniel Pang with friend

Cathy McKay, a postgraduate student in Chemistry, was awarded first prize at the Annual SmithKline Beecham Symposium for final year PhD students. Her research programme has led to the development of an efficient method for the preparation of an antibiotic which is used to treat skin infections.

Lutz Raddatz received the Rank Prize Funds award for the best PhD thesis in 1998 in the general fields of Optics, Optical Physics, Photonics and Optical Engineering. This eminent national prize resulted from the invention of a technique for increasing the information capacity of the dominant type of optical fibre used in computer networks and has since been adopted by the worldwide Gigabit Ethernet standard.

Bethan Williams, who graduated in 1998 from the Graduate School of Education’s PGCE course as a music teacher, was chosen as ‘The best young teacher of 1999’ in the West of England as part of the new Teaching Awards scheme sponsored by Lloyds TSB.

In the 1998 RSA Student Design Awards, Colin Davies, Alex Baalham and Alex Johnston each received a £3,000 Rolls-Royce plc Travel Award, and James Watson, Robert Sedman and Tom Knight each received a £1,000 Travel Award. All were students in Civil Engineering who graduated in 1998.

The Appendix to the Annual Report contains a fuller list of awards and prizes.

Students helping the community
In April the Students’ Union invited members of the University and local community to a reception to tell the University’s neighbours how the Union operates. Among its important activities are its RAG, which raises thousands of pounds for charity, and the Student Community Action. SCA is one of the largest single bodies of organised volunteers operating in Bristol and this year has run 18 different projects. Seventy elderly people from throughout Bristol enjoyed a dinner dance which it organised, with a dancing display of traditional and modern dancing by the University Ballroom Dancing Society, and the guests were later encouraged to join the students on the dance floor. Other SCA volunteers run a Victim Support Group, with particular emphasis on students and young people.