Making an outstanding contribution
27 Sep 2022
Ellen Stephenson - Sport Coordinator
As nominations open for next year’s Distinguished Achievement Awards, we reflect on the 2022 winners.
Today, we are shining the spotlight on one of the individual award winners for the Professional Services and Cultural Institutions category – Ellen Stephenson, Sport Co-ordinator in the Directorate for the Student Experience.
Ellen was given her award for consistently showing resilience, professionalism and positivity in her role as Sport Coordinator despite all the challenges faced in 2020 and 2021.
Specifically, she delivered her core priorities, and took on additional workload and line management responsibilities which meant she was overseeing 70+ contracted coaches as well as the Sport Intern.
Ellen had to be creative to ensure students were able to access valuable volunteering opportunities as well ensuring that students still felt connected to sport. As part of this she organised a weekly drop in session for students to discuss concerns, share ideas and find out what they could access during COVID restrictions.
Alongside this, Ellen was successful in getting a position on the BUCS Workforce Development board where she works with peers across the sector to keep up to date with workforce and volunteering opportunities and programs, as well as sharing good practice from the University.
As part of this she has made significant changes to the relationships with coaches, ensuring improvements to the way they are paid and taking time to value their contributions.
More about the Awards
For both the individual and team awards the judges are looking for outstanding contributions plus evidence of how the individuals or teams have shown flexibility and agility and a willingness to embrace new challenges and change and, also, to show their determination to continuously improve.
We are looking for team players not only within their own areas but across organisational boundaries and when working with external partners, teams also have to demonstrate that they have a shared ethos and have worked synergistically which has led to either a significant one-off achievement or to sustained high-level performance.