Alumni Relations

In September the OU will welcome three lucky new students. They are the winners of recent competition run in the 'Work' section of 'The Guardian', the prize, a chance to study with on an Open University course.

6,000 people applied, but the prize is no mean feat. Two winners will study for an undergraduate degree and one for a postgraduate degree which will take a huge amount of commitment, time and self-motivation. This opportunity reflects the work/study balance faced by many OU students.

The three winners are: Sophie Tease, Brian Magorrian and Steve Lawson will commence their studies in September 2012.

Platform caught up with them to find out more about what they hope to achieve from their degrees.

Sophie Tease: plans to studying: Degree in Economics and Mathematical Sciences.

How does it feel to have won the competition?
I was very surprised when I found out that I had won! I had been browsing OU courses before the competition was announced but there was no way I could justify or afford to do another degree at this time. I entered the competition on a complete off-chance and couldn't believe it when I won. But I am really excited about the chance to study a new subject. I love learning and I am very interested in economics, my chosen subject

Are you studying for career or personal development?
I want to work in policy and would like to understand economic theory in much more detail, especially in light of the global financial crisis. The more I have studied law, the more it seems that I need a proper grasp of economics in order to engage in the debates. Plus I have always enjoyed maths and regret giving it up at school so this is a chance to refresh my skills and learn how to interpret empirical social science research.

I studied Law at Bristol University and am currently completely a Masters in Law at Harvard. I am focusing on policy areas such as education, climate, energy, financial regulation and poverty.

My reasons for studying further are pretty much evenly split between personal enjoyment and career goals. I also really like the model of studying part-time while working.

What are your future aspirations once you have completed the course?
My career goals are to work in policy formation or implementation, either for government or NGOs.
 

Brian Magorrian: plans to studying: BSc in Psychology

How does it feel to have won the competition?
It felt great to win the competition. I was delighted to have the opportunity to study with The Open University (an institution I have held in high regard). I look forward to having fun learning and grabbing this opportunity which I am fortunate enough to get.

Why are you studying Psychology?
It’s an interesting subject. I wanted to do something that I am really interested in as I feel one will be more inclined to put more effort in if one is interested in the subject.

What studying have you done in the past?
Mental health nurse training. ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels (including Film studies which was very enjoyable), diplomas in health care, teaching and assessing courses in nursing, a C.B.T course and several others in the health care field.
What are you reasons for wanting to study: career, personal development?
I want to enhance my knowledge and understanding of a subject which is very relevant to my work. With the future of healthcare somewhat uncertain in some ways I am keen to bolster my credentials so I can do my current job even better and allow myself to include knowledge and skills acquired in possible job applications in the future.

What are your future aspirations once you have completed the course?
Well...I don't know for sure but I hope to continue to help people with mental health problems. I might be able to work in a different area of mental health to my current one. Time will tell. Of course i have to continue to pay the bills as well!

Steve Lawson: plans to studying: MSc in Software development

How does it feel to have won the competition?
It is amazing to have won, I was so surprised when I found out! Very lucky.

Why have you chosen this subject area?
I have been working in this area for a few years and intend to continue to, so this course will improve my skills and knowledge.

What are you reasons for wanting to study: career, personal development?
Since graduating I have considered further study, it would need to be part-time to fit in with working full-time. When I saw this competition I thought it would be the perfect opportunity
.
What was your first degree in and where did you study?
I graduated with a BSc Mathematics from Imperial College in 2002.

What are your future aspirations once you have completed the course?
I plan to continue working in software development. There are always new technologies to learn and work with which is something that I enjoy.

Find out more:

• Study with the OU
   
• The Guardian: Work & careers

OU alumni and graduate Senate representative De Petrina Stevens discusses what will be covered in the next Senate meeting....
 
Perhaps it is true that not all graduates and alumni are familiar with the workings of Senate, and I know that I was unaware of its true role before I became the Graduate representative on Senate. I thought you may be interested to read the constitution of Senate, as I had occasion to be reminded of it myself when reading the papers for the next meeting. It states “The Senate is the academic authority of the University which, subject to the powers of the Council, is responsible for promoting the academic work of the University both in teaching and research. It oversees the University’s academic management, including the curriculum and all aspects of quality and standards associated with the University as a degree-awarding body. It has the power to make regulations, including those which (subject to the approval of the Council) delegate any of its powers. Senate meetings concentrate on major issues of academic strategy, policy, priority and performance.”

It would be impossible and indeed inefficient for the whole of Senate to be initially involved in too much detail. In order to be more effective in overseeing the University’s academic management, Senate has to delegate more detailed governance to various committees whose members are taken from Senate.

One of those committees is the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee (QAEC). Its role is to assure Senate that quality assurance and enhancement arrangements are appropriately established and implemented, and to oversee the University’s engagement with external quality assurance processes. The committee also monitors and reviews action and institutional performance, assures quality and standards and advises other governance bodies or management so it has a pivotal role to play.
The QAEC has to meet not less than three times a year and reports each meeting to Senate. These reports have not in the past been evaluative and Senate will be asked to comment on the suggestion that in future they also provide an annual evaluative report. Suggestions made by Senate will provide the committee with a context for developing its first evaluative annual report, so comments from you are welcome.

The Student Support Review Update
You may remember a while back, around June last year to be more precise, I was talking about the recommendations of the Student Report. As possible future students, should you be thinking of returning to study, or as someone who may suggest OU study to another, understanding the restructuring of student support may be helpful.

There were two recommendations; the first being that a student support structure should be based around the curriculum area, rather than the geographical area in which the student is studying. The second recommendation was that the University should organise the new curriculum-led support structure through the creation of Student Support Teams.
The Student Support Review is implementing these two recommendations in developing Curriculum Support Teams (CSTs) within the Study Experience Programme (SEP), (who said/hoped acronyms were dead?!).

Each of the four nations of the UK will host their own CSTs. It is hoped that UK-wide support for nations will help them sustain a close relationship with the university, whilst encouraging a distinction in their provision for students.
The most suitable way to transition the move from the geographically-based support structure to the new curriculum-led student support structure is to ensure sufficient time for the change to happen with the least disruption to students as possible. The projected system will therefore not be fully in place until October 2013, with regular monitoring and communication enabling as smooth a changeover as possible.

Please let me have your comments at any time.

Covering topics like how to juggle study and a very busy life, studying abroad, boosting both careers and confidence, here are some informal video chats with graduates collecting their awards at The Barbican degree ceremony, London, on 30 March 2012.

 

Jose Ribeiro, originally from Portugal, graduated with a degree in International Studies after five years of study to enhance his work as a member of air cabin crew. Jose hopes the degree will enhance his career and expand his horizons and his top tip for current OU students is to keep good time management.

 

Bobo Ling Bobo Ling graduated with an Open Degree combining her love for psychology and film history…

 

Irene Adler travelled from Austria to graduate with an MBA at the OU’s Barbican degree ceremony. Irene travels to Europe and Asia for work and often found herself studying on planes on business trips. At a tutorial in Austria she even found a fellow business traveller and met up in Shanghai, in between business trips, to talk OU study.

 

Originally from Edinburgh, Christopher Cosgrove graduated with a humanities and music degree to complement his passion for music and to enhance his career, and is now considering postgraduate study with hopes to one day become a teacher.

 

Miranda did a BA in English Language and Literature and says “go for it” to anyone thinking of OU study. She’s now hoping her degree will open the door to new job opportunities.

 

“I wanted to change my career prospects,” says Stephen Tiplady, who’s currently a factory worker and hopes to get into environmental work.

 

Abera Desta works for an international NGO in Ethiopia. He chose to study his MBA with the OU because of its excellent reputation and the calibre of OU MBA alumni in Ethiopia.

 

Living and studying in Italy Jonathan Jones is an engineer working in the oil and gas industry and chose an Open Degree for flexibility and personal achievement…

 

“I loved every minute of it” says Margaret Cox, who was born and raised in Malta. She didn't have access to higher education when she was younger so is delighted to have realised a dream with her OU degree.

If you have a brilliant business idea, you could win a cash prize of up to £20,000.

Open to both students and anybody who has graduated with the OU within the last five years, the second edition of the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards offers a cash investment to those who can demonstrate a commitment to the development of an innovative business proposition.

What’s on offer?
All 57 UK universities in the Santander Universities network have been invited to submit two student or alumni business proposals for the national competition – one each for undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The prizes are:
Undergraduates: 1st prize £5,000; 2nd prize £3,000; 3rd prize £1,000.
Postgraduate: 1st prize £20,000; 2nd prize £10,000; 3rd prize £5,000.

How to enter

• To request an information pack please email Platform
• Send your completed business plan of no more than five double sided pages plus a maximum of two appendices to Platform entitled ‘Santander awards’
• Business plan text must be no smaller than Arial font, 10pt
• All applicants must be students at the university or alumni who have graduated within the last five years

Deadline for entries: Friday 20 April ** Now closed**

All entries will be judged by a panel at The Open University. The best proposals will then go forward to the national competition.

 

• Apply for an Openings course
• Leaving a gift in your Will

Joe Smith, Senior Lecturer in Environment at the OU believes more people now doubt that climate change is caused by humans.  The term Climate sceptics’ applies to us all but he suggests that the phrase ‘Climate Dyspeptics’ would be better used because it describes not a position but a condition – rather than dividing into believers and deniers it suggests a feeling of discomfort about climate change instead.

Strange but true: the number of people who doubt that climate change is human-caused has, if anything, increased in the UK and US over a period when uncertainties in the science have been narrowing. However to think that this is all down to radical libertarian thinktanks like the Heartland Institute or energy industry lobbyists is a dangerous distraction. Attempts to spin climate change have been going on so long they have their own historians: Oreskes and Conway’s Merchants of Doubt shows the similarities – and links – between the tobacco and climate story. But this is of the ‘Pope is Catholic’ category of news. To think that lobby groups and think tanks are the reason that plenty of people are at best ambiguous about climate change is to fail to understand how many of us feel about relatively new and demanding ideas about humanity’s relationship with its environment.

Globescan, Eurobarometer or recent Yale/George Mason University studies show polling that offers fairly consistent accounts: somewhere between 15 and 35% of people are not convinced climate change is happening and/or don’t believe it is human caused depending on the framing of the question. These can be read as ‘glass more than half full’ results, but it is impossible to build robust international political support for mitigation and adaptation policies without engaging more people with a good sense of the best available scientific thinking on the topic. But the words that are used to describe the negative feelings that a substantial minority of the population have about climate change science and policy may be part of the problem. Terms like sceptic, denier and contrarian are not just inaccurate, but more to the point, create a stark and false binary of ‘believers’ and ‘deniers’.

One of the most widely used phrases is climate sceptic. But scepticism is a part and parcel of any good research and journalism. Indeed we need all the scepticism we can get from researchers, policy analysts and journalists if humanity is going to do a good job of responding to new knowledge about the world. So let’s just say we’re all climate sceptics now and leave that phrase alone.

'There are many climate dyspeptics who are fearful about or irritated by the way climate issues have been presented in the media and with some good cause'

I’m mostly serious in suggesting a new term: climate dyspepsia. An ugly term for sure, but it is useful because it describes not a position but a condition. Certainly this seems to capture the anti-science, crotchety and closed-minded attitude of some sour cherry-picking bloggers and pose-striking journalists. But it also suggests much more widespread feelings of discomfort. It summarises the state people are in when they find all the talk about climate change science, policy or politics difficult to digest. I come over climate dyspeptic myself fairly often – probably because I spend quite a large proportion of my life working on the topic.

There are many climate dyspeptics who are fearful about or irritated by the way climate issues have been presented in the media and with some good cause. The climate research and policy communities need to be more considerate about how people feel about new knowledge about climate change. They also need to be more willing to trust people’s capacity to cope with more open accounts of complex long-term problems. Often this will not be about doing things differently but about naming them differently. There are three things that could be presented in a new way.

First the science of climate change needs to be told as a broad and unfolding process rather than a fixed result. People have a good nose for authenticity and know that over-hasty phrases like ‘the science is finished’ misrepresent the work. And what work it is: climate science includes some of the most ambitious questions that humanity has ever set itself – why is it so rarely experienced as such?

'It is remarkable, but too rarely noted, that almost all of the extraordinarily broad range of policy, business and community responses to climate change carry other benefits'

Second the policy response needs to be framed not as the pursuit of a single final UN agreement that arises out of a great big finished fact, but rather explained as a long term collective risk management process. Everyone who drives a car understands the need for rules about car insurance; everyone in a country with a health system understands the principle of collective risk burden sharing. In fact we tend to do more than tolerate these responses to risk: we treasure them. Climate change policy is no more than an extension of these principles. It is an idea that almost everyone can get behind. Politicians need to inhabit climate policy and not palm off their job on researchers who have a different job to do. Elected politicians have the legitimacy and responsibility to make decisions about the most substantial risks facing their societies and need to step into these big shoes.

Thirdly it is remarkable, but too rarely noted, that almost all of the extraordinarily broad range of policy, business and community responses to climate change carry other benefits. This is the fact that will make the political task achievable. Some of the most compelling developments in design and engineering of our age are at least in part catalysed by knowledge of climate change. Furthermore they are delivering improvements in the quality of everyday life and the long-term profitability and sustainability of business. So here’s a cheering thought: the things that people are actually doing about climate change can overcome the sickly feelings that can be brought on by all the talk of it.

For a follow up post to this one, see here.

Find out more: 

• The Science behind climate change explained
• Environmental studies at the OU 

 

Roxy Freeman grew up in a travelling family and learned to milk goats, ride horses, dance and forage for food. And then she stumbled on academia, which opened up a whole new world. Now an OU graduate and journalist with a bestselling memoir, Roxy talks to Platform about her journey...

“I grew up on the road, my family was always on the move and education was not a priority. I learned a lot of things growing up in a traveling family. But my skills were practical not academic. I could cook, milk goats, ride horses, look after babies and children, dance and forage for food.

“I value the lessons I learned as a child and they have helped me get on in life, but I craved more. I started my formal education at the age of 22. The first year was a struggle but learning for the first time was a revelation. It felt like someone had switched my brain on for the first time.

“My parents are not Romany gypsies –they chose a life on the road, but it was the only life my siblings and I ever knew. I don’t think academia suits everyone; some of my siblings have got on fine without it and have carved their own careers in vocational areas. But the opportunity to study is important; the desire to learn should be fulfilled no matter what upbringing someone has had. I started late, and I struggled, but thanks to the OU I did graduate and since graduating my confidence has rocketed. Having certificates made me feel a little bit more accepted in a world that is largely alien to me.”

Roxy tried traditional university before she found the OU but couldn’t get along with the inflexible hours, the travel to campus and the inability to fit work around a rigid study plan.

“The timetable made it impossible for me to work at all. I had no financial support what so ever and lived a 40 minute drive away from the campus. I realised that there was no way I could support myself if I continued with the course. I couldn’t fulfill my study dreams, but I wasn’t ready to throw them away either, so started looking for an alternative option, something that would work around a part time job and was a bit more flexible. The OU sounded ideal. I found a course online and within just a few weeks received my first bundle of study material.”

Roxy studied for a BA in European Studies but confesses to not having a career plan when she started out. Little did she realise that her OU degree would help discover a passion for writing and open the door to a career in journalism.

'I found that changing my scenery often gave my studies an extra boost. None of my friends attending traditional universities had that freedom, and none of them graduated debt free like I did!'

“I wanted to know more about the continent I called home and the modules sounded interesting. I studied history, economics, governance and politics and did a diploma in Spanish language. By the time I graduated I knew I loved writing and research so I went on to do an NCTJ (National Council for Training of Journalists) certificate in journalism at a local college.”

But her OU journey wasn’t all plain sailing – it’s no mean feat studying in isolation and spending summers revising when your friends are enjoying holidays. But it was worth it, says Roxy.

“My OU study had its highs and its lows. It takes a hell of a lot of determination and dedication to complete a degree, especially when you’re doing most of it on your own. Sometimes it felt like an uphill battle, but I was lucky to have some excellent tutors that I could call or email when things got tough.

“My exams always seemed to fall at the end of summer, so when my friends were all enjoying their holidays and going to festivals I was locked away with a pile of books. But it also offered a lot of freedom. I spent a few months of every year abroad, I’d do some extra shifts at work and then pile all my books into my car and go to Ireland, France or Spain and stay with family or friends. I found that changing my scenery often gave my studies an extra boost. None of my friends attending traditional universities had that freedom, and none of them graduated debt free like I did!”

After completing her OU degree and NCTJ qualifications, Roxy applied for an internship at The Guardian and then started to work as a freelancer. One of the first commissions she got as a freelance writer was from the editor of G2, a piece on going into education at the age of 22. The piece was featured on the front of the G2 supplement and gained a lot of attention.

'Getting a degree gave me confidence in my writing and confidence in myself, without those things I would never have written my book'

Roxy gained new contacts following the article including an editor from Simon and Schuster who spotted the potential in both her writing and her personal story.

“A year later I completed my book, Little Gypsy: A Life of Freedom, a Time of Secrets. It went straight into the bestseller’s charts and has had some great reviews. Getting a degree gave me confidence in my writing and confidence in myself, without those things I would never have written my book.”

Roxy has also written on issues that travelers and gypsies face and hopes to help dispel some of the negative stereotypes.

“But I don’t want to only write about my life and experiences,” she says. “I love to write and I think a good writer can write about anything. One of my main passions is cooking and I love to write about food. I recently started a food blog, I love documenting my foodie exploits and sharing some of my foraging experiences.

What’s next for Roxy? She’s busy with journalism and writing and aspired to be a food writer one day, but for now she’s content to simply see what happens next.

“Little Gypsy caused quite a whirlwind, and six months after its release my life is only just settling down again. I’m not sure about embarking on another book just yet but when the inspiration takes me I’ll get to work.”


Find out more

• Roxy Freeman
• Little Gypsy: A Life of Freedom, a Time of Secrets