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.
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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.
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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.