Winners announced – National Enterprise Educator Awards

Written by Kate Beresford

 

Enterprise Educators UK is delighted to announce the winners of the 2018 National Enterprise Educator Awards, celebrating the UK’s top enterprise and entrepreneurship educators. The award ceremony was held at Aspire in Leeds during the Gala Dinner for the 13th International Entrepreneurship Educators Conference, hosted by Leeds Beckett University.

The National Enterprise Educator Awards recognise excellence within enterprise and entrepreneurship education in UK higher and further education. The Awards reward and celebrate those who have demonstrated an exceptional and inspirational commitment to supporting student and graduate entrepreneurship.

The first award of the evening, the FE Team Enterprise award, sponsored by NatWest, was presented to Laurence Scragg and Pauline McDonald representing a team from Dundee and Angus College by Heather Waters and Natasha Barbar-Evans of NatWest (pictured above). The College is committed to embedding entrepreneurial learning into all that they offer, utilising a range of opportunities including workshops, business start-up, competitions and mentoring delivered in a purpose build incubator facility – the only one of its kind in all of Scotland’s Colleges. Highly commended in the FE Team Enterprise category were Borders College Enterprise Mindset Challenge and Start Up Space and John Mather Trust Enterprise Competition, City of Glasgow College and Bridge 2 Business: Young Enterprise Scotland.

The second winner at the event was the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Bristol for their entry in the HE Team Enterprise category, sponsored by Simply Do Ideas. Dave Jarman, Dr Kirsten Cater and Mark Neild  received the Award from Will Webberley of Simply Do Ideas on behalf of the team from the University of Bristol . The Centre’s core work runs 11 undergraduate ‘…with Innovation’ degree programmes and a one-year taught postgraduate MSc programme. The Centre also provides service-teaching to a number of other programmes and an online course through the University’s flagship ‘Bristol Futures’ programme. Highly commended in this category were IMPACT Social Innovation Challenge, Queen’s University Belfast and WE Innovate: Inspiring female entrepreneurs in STEM subjects, Imperial College London.

The final category of the evening, Enterprise Catalyst, sponsored by SimVenture Business Simulations, recognises an individual who is driving transformational change in enterprise or entrepreneurship education. The winner was Jeremy Shorter who was presented with his award by Peter Harrington and Paul Brough-Jones of SimVenture. Jeremy has designed and built King’s College London’s Entrepreneurship Institute Skills programme, revolutionising the way enterprise education is delivered. Through new experiential, co-curricular courses and large scale events including the London Venture Crawl, he has helped introduce hundreds of students to entrepreneurship. Highly Commended in this category were Will Pritchard of Keele University and Dr Richard Tunstall of the University of Leeds. 

EEUK would like to congratulate all of the winners and say a big thank you to the sponsors and to everyone who applied for this year’s awards.

For full details regarding this year’s awards please visit www.neea.org.uk