Every year we get around 150 nominations for UA’s Alliance Awards, which are delivered in partnership with TechnologyOne – an average of 20 nominations for each of the seven award categories. The quality of the nominations is always very high, which makes selecting shortlists and winners challenging.
We work with independent judges from across the HE sector to identify the finalists and winners of each award.
There are four finalists on the shortlist for each award, except the Technology One Lifetime Achievement Award: every nominee for that award makes the shortlist, because only Vice Chancellors can make nominations in that category and only one nomination per UA member university is allowed.
We often get asked how the winners and shortlists are selected. Here’s how we do it:
1. Longlisting
First, the University Alliance team read through every nomination to make sure they are all eligible, for example by checking that every nominee is affiliated with a University Alliance or Doctoral Training Alliance member university. We also remove any incomplete nominations.
Then we pull out the nomination text for all eligible nominees into a longlisted judging pack for each award.
2. Scoring
Our judges then score every nomination in their category. There are two judges for each award, and every judge is someone completely independent of University Alliance, working at a senior level within the university sector – you can see a full list of this year’s fantastic judges below.
The judges work independently of each other initially – each separately scoring every nomination in their category from 0-10 across three areas:
- How closely do the strengths demonstrated by the nominee(s) align with the award category?
- To what extent did the nominee(s) go above and beyond?
- How significant has the nominee(s)’ impact been on their institution/those around them?
The judges then return their scores to us, and we add the two judges’ scores together to determine a total number of points per nominee.
3. Tie breakers
Once we have the total score for each nominee, the scores indicate a clear winner and top 4 (for all awards except the TechnologyOne Lifetime Achievement Award, where everyone makes the shortlist). Sometimes though, there are a couple or a few nominees with exactly the same score.
When this happens, we put our judges in touch with each other to look over the tied nominations together and talk through how each meets the various criteria. Between them, they then agree who to put through to the shortlist and select a winner.
4. Announcing the shortlist
Once we’ve got a clear shortlist for each award, we get in touch with all nominees to let them know whether they’ve been successful. The whole process from the nomination deadline to letting nominees know the outcome usually takes around a month. Once all nominees have been informed, we then announce the shortlist publicly. Everyone has to wait for the awards ceremony to find out who the winners are though!
This year’s judges:
We want to take this opportunity to thank this year’s judges, who have given up their time to carefully consider the nominations.
The Innovation Award (supported by Duolingo English Test)
Andrew Disbury, Senior Advisor, Duolingo English Test
Hetan Shah, CEO, British Academy
The Braveheart Award (supported by UCAS)
Sander Kristel, Chief Digital and Data Officer, UCAS
Alison Johns, CEO, Advance HE
The Star Award
Alex Stanley, Vice President Higer Education, National Union of Students
Sandra Booth, Director of Policy and External Relations, Council for Higher Education in Art and Design
The Professionals Award
Anne-Marie Graham, CEO, UK Council for International Student Affairs
Joe Marshall, CEO, National Centre for Universities and Business
The Alliance Award
Ceri Nursaw, CEO, NCEE
Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Advocacy, HEPI
The DTA Alumni Award
Daniel Moore, Associate Director Insight & Engagement, Research England
Tamsin Mann, CEO, Praxis Auril
The TechnologyOne Lifetime Achievement Award
Leo Hanna, Executive Vice President, UK, Technology One
Steph Harris, Director of Strategy, Insight and Member Engagement, Universities UK
With thanks to our partner TechnologyOne and our sponsors: UCAS, Duolingo English Test, The Doctoral Training Alliance, Minerva and AHZ
