A very fine evening at #THEawards 2013

Well we didn't win Outstanding Support for Students this year (congratulations to Essex who did) but we did have a very fine evening. The University of Leicester did win Research Project of the Year though, for the discovery of the remains of Richard III (so I've no hat to eat).

Sandy Toksvig was an excellent host and @timeshighered did a great job with the tweets :)

#THEawards 2013 short list - Outstanding Support for Students

Tonight is the Times Higher Education Awards and the University of Leicester is short listed for 2:

1. Outstanding Support for Students (that's for us in the Career Development Service)
2. Research Project of the Year (for the fantastic and extremely collaborative discovery of the remains of Richard III)

I don't know how we'll do in the former (we're up against Derby, Essex, Plymouth, Stirling and Sunderland) but I'm pleased to get short listed. I'll have some hat eating to do if we don't win the latter though.

It should be a good night (apart from the minibus ride home in the early hours of Friday morning).

The First 90 Days

On 27 January I start as Director of the Careers Service at the University of Bristol. I'll blog about the move some other time, but in an effort to get myself back into the blogging habit (again) I thought I'd mention a book I intend to read as part of my preparation. 3 people have independently, and without prompting, recommended The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. So that's firmly on my reading list. Any other recommendations?

LinkedIn Alumni search

I think I'm pretty late to the party on this... I'd heard that the LinkedIn alumni search was really useful but I've only recently started playing around with it. I knew you could use it to filter by Where they live, Where they work and What they do, but I hadn't scrolled right on the search panel to see that you can also filter by What they studied, What they're skilled at and How you are connected. And all this on a free account. What a great feature!