Holloway mourns death of student - The Founder

8 The Founder | Thursday 15 January 2009
College Information
College celebrates success at Volunteering Awards
Royal Holloway’s Community Action volunteering programme recently celebrated
its second year of success at the prestigious Higher Education Volunteering
Awards (HEVA) held at Manchester United Football Club’s Old Trafford
stadium.
Robin Green won an award for his work in developing a scheme where students
teach basic IT skills to young refugees and asylum seekers at Hillingdon
Social Services. The participants not only learnt new, highly valuable, skills
but were also awarded certificates for completed modules. Matthew Goldup
was also among the 25 finalists, chosen from over 750 nominations from universities
across the country. Matthew worked as an ambassador for the Royal
Geography Society at Oxfam in Egham and also provided English language
tuition for refugees and asylum seekers.
‘It is a great honour to receive this award’, said Robin. ‘It is the culmination
of a lot of great team work as well as the efforts of committed student volunteers
who were invaluable in making the project a success. I am very glad that
this project has been recognised by such a prestigious award’.
Under the leadership of Phil Simcock, Volunteer Co-ordinator at the College,
over 750 students have registered as volunteers and many local projects
have benefitted. The Community Action Team has actively sought to gain
recognition for its student volunteers and succeeded in achieving Student
Volunteering England Gold Award status for Robin and Matthew earlier in the
year.
“The College’s volunteering team has grown in strength from year to year
and I am hugely encouraged by the high calibre and enthusiasm of the current
volunteers”, says Phil.
Royal Holloway in top 20 with world-leading
research across all three faculties
The results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008), announced on 18 December, confirm Royal Holloway’s position among the top research-led university institutions
in the UK, with outstanding areas in all three faculties of Arts, History and Social Sciences and Science.
The Principal, Professor Stephen Hill, said, “The results of the RAE 2008 demonstrate that Royal Holloway remains one of the UK’s leading research universities. The College is
ranked 16th in terms of research of 4* standard. Royal Holloway has a broad range of excellent researchers and departments and I was particularly pleased to see that we have
the highest rated department in Music in the whole of the UK. Our results are testament both to the hard work and dedication of our staff and the investment that we have made
over the past seven years.”
The primary purpose of the RAE 2008 is to measure the quality of research activity at 159 UK universities and colleges. The results will be used by the four UK funding bodies to
determine the allocation of £1.5 billion for research annually from 2009.
The new scoring system that applies for the RAE 2008 measures research quality in four categories, with the top score of 4* indicating quality that is world-leading and of the
highest standards in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
In the RAE 2008, 60% of research profile at the College is rated as world-leading or internationally excellent – outperforming the national average of 50%.
Music (Faculty of Arts), which has been consistently awarded the highest research rating in all previous RAEs, has now been acclaimed the UK’s top Department. Biological Sciences
(Faculty of Science) and Economics (Faculty of History & Social Sciences) were likewise among the highest rated in the country, ranked joint 3rd and joint 9th respectively.
With reference to Royal Holloway’s ongoing collaborations with partners including the SWAN alliance and the proposed merger with St George’s, University of London, Professor
Stephen Hill, added, “The strong results in the Schools of Biological Sciences and Management and Departments of Psychology and Health and Social Care provide an excellent
basis for our merger with St George’s, University of London.”
Sexual Health
Following ‘Shag Week’, I have been invited to provide some advice on sensible sexual health precautions and explain a little about what services we provide at the University Health
Centre.
I am sure you have heard this all before, but I cannot stress enough how important the use of condoms is in the prevention of all sexually transmitted illnesses. I would suggest
that even if you are taking the pill, you only ever consider abandoning barrier methods of contraception when you and your partner have been screened at a sexual health clinic.
Putting it simply, if you have had unprotected sex with anyone before you are potentially putting your present partner at risk.
Condoms protect against HIV, syphilis, gonorrhoea and the well known STIs, while they are also very effective against the much more common Chlamydia. If you are concerned
that you may have contracted an STI or want to discuss any aspect of your sexual health or contraception, please feel free to come along to the Health Centre to do so.
Dr Gero Baiarda MB BS DPD MSc
Lead GP Royal Holloway, University of London Health Centre