This award will be given to an institution for outstanding success in building institutional partnerships, overseas operations and a strategic approach to international staff and student recruitment. The judges will be looking for evidence of success on financial measures, but most important will be the way in which the strategy has enhanced the profile of the university and delivered on its ambitions.

• Explain how your institution’s overseas operations have increased international capacity and cultivated institutional partnerships.
• What impact has your international activity had on your global profile and financial position?
• Show evidence of your strategy’s effectiveness. This may include how you established your institution’s brand; engaged with overseas partners; dealt with changes in government policy or the wider environment in which you operate; employed technology and maintained effective communications with staff overseas; and learned from other sectors.

*This award will be given for an outstanding overall strategy at an institutional rather than departmental level, and so should include multiple components in a single entry.

This award will go to the institution that demonstrates the greatest breadth and depth of leadership and management skills. We want to hear what makes your senior team special.

• Outline all the areas in which your team has excelled and ensure that you provide benchmark data to show exactly how your institution has delivered across the board.
• Describe the impact of your work.
• Provide examples of creative management across the institution, ways in which you have anticipated change in the higher education system and environment in which you operate, and any relevant leadership in your dealings with external stakeholders.
• Describe how your work improves on standard practice in the sector.

*This award will be given to the outstanding team at an institutional rather than departmental level.

This award will recognise the academic whose imagination and passion have transformed a course and inspired students. Entries will be accepted from institutions, teachers themselves or their colleagues, but in all cases the institution must support the submission, and student testimonies must be included in the supplementary documentation.

Judges will be looking for:

• evidence of how the nominee evaluates and develops their professional progress with regard to teaching.
• exceptional engagement with students and how this has impacted positively in and beyond their academic role. If applicable, explain how this has had an effect beyond their institution.
• evidence of a sustained commitment to advancing and positively influencing the student experience.

*Entrants to this category may include information from the past five years, but please note that judges will still be looking for evidence of impact the individual made during 2023

This award recognises an institution that has developed and delivered an exceptional approach to embedding entrepreneurship within its culture and programmes. Entries should demonstrate a significant impact at regional, national or international level, but also show how the university itself has benefitted.

In particular, judges will be looking for an institution:

• whose vision and strategy place enterprise, entrepreneurship and innovation at the heart of the organisation.
• where an environment has been created that encourages entrepreneurial mindsets and behaviours in staff, students and alumni and ensures that ideas and innovation are nurtured and given the support they need to flourish.
• where the strategic approach to entrepreneurship has the potential to influence and improve other institutions’ work in this area, whether directly or because it is transferable in the sector more widely.

*Please note that this award focuses on entrepreneurialism at an institutional level, so if your entry is based on an initiative that was first conceived to address a departmental or faculty need, please tell us how this came to benefit the university as a whole.

For this category, we are looking to reward an institution that has demonstrated clear leadership on environmental issues, encompassing innovative approaches and showing clear evidence that the work is transferable across the sector.

Your entry may focus on any of the following:

• Initiatives at an institutional level, in research, teaching and learning, or other core university functions.
• Initiatives at a sector level.
• Collaborations with governments or other agencies.

Please describe your institution’s approach, provide evidence of demonstrable progress or success, and outline any wider impact across the sector or society.

This award will be given to the team or institution that has made the most impactful attempt to aid the wider community socially, culturally or economically.

• Describe the background to and context of your initiative.
• Explain the nature of the work and the challenges involved.
• Provide evidence of demonstrable progress or success.
• Show how the project has made a difference to the target community.
  

This award will be given to the institution that helps students to gain the maximum benefit from their study. Both pastoral and academic support packages will be considered, and this category is open to those working in departments across an institution, as well as dedicated Student Services teams.

• Describe the background to and context of your approach or initiative, including any distinctive traits in your student body.
• Explain the nature of the support package. Detail how it works and explain why it is innovative and effective.
• What were the results? Have you improved student outcomes? How were the measures received by student bodies? Provide evidence of demonstrable progress or success.
• Outline your principal achievements.
• Summarise what you were trying to achieve, how you set about achieving it and how you plan to monitor the impact of the scheme.

This will be awarded to the individual or team at a higher education institution for innovative arts, humanities or social sciences research that has a far-reaching impact and has caught, or has the potential to catch, the imagination of the public. Submissions should demonstrate the economic, social, cultural or other public benefit of the research.

• Explain the background to your project. Why was the research necessary and what were its primary objectives?
• Describe what the work involved and what challenges arose.
• What did the results reveal and what are the potential wider benefits to society?
• Has the research led to other projects or new avenues of exploration?

Judges will look for evidence of significant or novel results, creative collaborations, and imaginative communication of research results.

This will be awarded to the individual or team at a higher education institution for innovative research in STEM subjects that has a far-reaching impact and has caught, or has the potential to catch, the imagination of the public. Submissions should demonstrate the economic, social, cultural or other public benefit of the research.

• Explain the background to your project. Why was the research necessary and what were its primary objectives?
• Describe what the work involved and what challenges arose.
• What did the results reveal and what are the potential wider benefits to society?
• Has the research led to other projects or new avenues of exploration?

Judges will look for evidence of significant or novel results, creative collaborations, and imaginative communication of research results.

Universities have always educated ambitious young people from their local communities, but with increasing pressure for student bodies to expand and better reflect wider society, recruitment campaigns need to be broader in scope, ambitious, creative and flexible. What made your campaign innovative, and how did it differ from traditional campaigns in your region?

Your submission may address some or all of the following:

• How you have enhanced or transformed your brand to make your university a favoured destination for incoming. students, both domestic and international, and including those who may not previously have chosen to go into higher education.
• If your marketing team collaborated with other university departments or external partners to create bespoke, targeted campaigns aimed at specific groups of prospective students, please describe how that relationship worked.
• Whether the aim of your campaign was to increase student numbers overall, to attract students from overseas, those from under-represented backgrounds or a different demographic, tell us how you performed against pre-campaign targets?
  

This award recognises a teaching and learning strategy that is distinctive and innovative, has enhanced both the student and staff experience, and reflects an institution’s core values.

• What were the main features of your institution’s teaching and learning strategy and how were they implemented?
• How have you embraced and supported the use of new technology to facilitate innovative teaching?
• How have you created an environment in which teaching is highly valued across the university?
• How do you recognise and reward innovative teaching?
• Outline how you have enhanced the learning experience for all students – undergraduate and postgraduate – and helped them to maximise their potential.

Judges will also look for evidence of how this strategy successfully dovetailed with others as part of the university’s overall strategic plan.

This award will be given for an outstanding overall strategy at an institutional rather than departmental level, and so should include multiple elements in a single entry.

This award recognises the innovative use of digital technology to improve any function at a university, be that at institutional, departmental or faculty level. Entries may therefore focus on leadership, management, administration, teaching, research or knowledge transfer.

We will accept submissions based on technological breakthroughs that were conceived and developed at an institution, or the innovative use of existing technology to improve a university’s operations and outcomes across its core functions.

Judges will be looking for initiatives that have delivered efficiencies and enhanced productivity, so submissions should ideally demonstrate savings in terms of cost or time as well as improved performance. Providing that impact can be demonstrated, judges will consider projects that are not yet concluded.

• Show how the initiative addresses a specific institutional need or challenge.
• Describe why the initiative is innovative, and outline the technologies and approaches used.
• Demonstrate the effective use of leading-edge practices, and how your approach embraces digital technology to implement improvements.
• Describe how those involved have overcome cultural, financial and other barriers to succeed.
• Is the innovation scalable, and could it be replicated elsewhere in the sector?