Bristol PLUS Award students undertake a huge range of activities, and develop an abundance of skills and experiences. The Outstanding PLUS Awards launched in 2021-22 to further celebrate students for making outstanding personal contributions, whatever their chosen activity. 

In this blog, we’re looking at two of the Award categories, and some examples of nominees from our very first Outstanding PLUS Awards cohort.  

If you’re interested in finding out more about what our Outstanding PLUS Awards students got up to, check out the other related posts on our blog and you can find more information on our webpage.

Diverse Partnerships 

This category is all about building partnerships, and articulating the relationships that you’ve built. This is an important skill that can be developed in lots of different activities, here are some of the activities nominees used last year:

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  Patty Miranda was last year’s winner in this category. Her nomination articulated how she built partnerships through her activity of raising awareness on the effects of climate change, presenting at COP26

• Shahid Khalid was awarded an Honourable Mention from the judges for his nomination in this category. His activity was presenting to school students, to encourage more BAME representation in STEM subjects.
• Yun Yang, completed an internship and built working relationships with colleagues from diverse career paths
• Nicholas Ming brought Badminton players together, by creating the Malaysian and Singaporean Badminton Team.

Civic Superstar 

This category is about making a positive difference to a community and articulating how you went above and beyond to support others with an outstanding contribution to your role. 

Last year’s OPA nominees used a wide variety of roles and activities towards this category:

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  Tania Nzembela worked as a hospital support worker, and was last year’s winner in this category. Tania made a positive difference to her colleagues and patients in the hospital community

• Marah Alassaf was awarded an honourable mention in this category – in her role working as an interpreter she went above and beyond to support the refugee community
• Shraddha Sriraman volunteered educating young people about knife crime
• Ijeoma Egbarin represented her peers in student leadership roles, as president of the ACS (African and Caribbean Society), and chair of the Black Students Network.

Thinking of nominating yourself for the Outstanding PLUS Awards?

Be open minded; try not to restrict yourself to a single category based on its title. Consider other categories and how you might adapt articulating your PLUS Award activity to fit the criteria.

Our OPA categories are designed to be broad, and you may even find that your activity fits into more than one category!

Check out our related posts on the blog to find out about the other OPA categories, and get full details of how to apply in the Outstanding PLUS Awards Guide.

Remember, to be eligible, you will need to have completed your PLUS Award in the same academic year. So sign up for the PLUS Award when registrations open in Welcome Week!