PALS staff nominated for One UCL Award

The 'One UCL Awards' recognise, celebrate and reward UCL staff who have demonstrated outstanding performance in their roles, contributing to the success of the university. A number of UCL PALS staff have been nominated for the Award (some received multiple nominations). Here is the list of UCL PALS nominees and a summary of the nomination text(s):

Alice Tucker, Office Manager, Educational Psychology Group, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Ways of Working: Personal Excellence Award

• Alice leads the administrative team within the Educational Psychology Group, providing outstanding support to over 100 doctoral students and a large team of academic and professional tutors. Alice has consistently demonstrated that she is a highly competent, insightful and effective manager in charge of a purposeful and collaborative administrative team. She is conscientious and innovative, with good problem solving skills and a great sense of humour. She is regularly commended by course members and external examiners for being incredibly organised, helpful and knowledgeable. I have nominated her due to her exceptional personal and professional contribution to our group.

Angela Pozzuto, Finance Officer, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Outstanding Contribution to the Staff Experience Award

• Angela provides rapid and essential support to our staff in applying for and managing grants. She answers our queries quickly and efficiently, and always cheerfully (even though we're usually in a hurry). She is incredibly knowledgeable or willing to find the answers to our many questions. She is quick to find workable solutions to budget concerns and will talk us through various options with admirable patience. My team would be lost without her and value her contributions enormously.

Dr Caroline Newton, BSc PALS Programme Director, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution

• As Programme Director, Caroline has consistently offered support to both the team and students, prioritising high-quality education and the wellbeing of all. She embraced the challenges this year with enthusiasm and dedication, encouraging the team to support one another in delivering innovative teaching. Her exceptional leadership has played a large role in the reported high student satisfaction this year.

Professor Sophie Scott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution (nominated twice)

• As the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Professor Sophie Scott has been a ray of light to members of the department over the past year, truly going above and beyond to lead the department through an exceptionally difficult year. She brings her characteristic humour and positivity to every lecture, meeting and seminar, and is always happy to take the time to chat to any member of staff or student despite her enormous workload. She has had a positive impact on every single member of the department through organising regular catchups and social events, which she attends without fail.
• I nominate Professor Scott because of the way that she has led our institute during the COVID pandemic. As a large research department she immediately realised the importance of community and introduced measures and events to support all, especially PhD students and ECRs. We feel extremely lucky to have a leader who has the energy and commitment to attempt to bring us joy in such uncertain times.

Safia Chaudhary, Teaching Administrator, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Ways of Working - Outstanding Individual Contribution to Achieving our Mission Award

• Safia is the highly-valued teaching administrator of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, overseeing two Master’s programmes. In the 18 months that she has been in post, Safia has innovated the programmes and significantly enhanced the service to students. For example, she devised a pre-sessional Moodle page for new students and a weekly student newsletter. Safia provides individualised support to the teaching team in an unassuming, friendly and effective way. She has been instrumental in achieving the Institute’s mission to educate the next generation of world-changing people in a research-intensive environment.

Sharinjeet Dhiman, Departmental administrator, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Ways of Working - Personal Excellence Award (nominated twice)

• Sharinjeet brilliantly and efficiently juggles three separate professional service roles: 1. Administrator of UCL- Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit including managing an international peer-reviewed journal; 2. Administrator of the Overseas Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy); 3. PhD administrator in the Department.    She carries out each role with superb integrity, empathy and intelligence.  Sharinjeet is the most organised person I have ever encountered.  She is proactive and creative, finding new ways to improve the quality and efficiency of work systems at UCL.  Positively and with good humour, Sharinjeet embodies the UCL ethos of taking great care of students, staff and ourselves.
• Sharinjeet is an extraordinary administrator and a very highly valued colleague. She has multiple roles in the department and is deeply committed to each of these. Although she is modest and softly spoken, she commands the respect of everyone she works with because of her commitment and hard work. I have worked with her in numerous administrative roles and these would have been so much more difficult (if not impossible) without her support. Despite the chaos created by the pandemic, Sharinjeet's support as PhD administrator and administrator for the clinical psychopharmacology unit has allowed our work to continue virtually seamlessly.

Stefanie Anyadi, Teaching and Learning Team Manager, Faculty of Brain Sciences (SLMS)

Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution (nominated 5 times)

• Stefanie is the Teaching and Learning Team Manager for the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences (PaLS), and she contributes to many aspects of the day-to-day operations in the Linguistics department. I am nominating Stefanie because of her outstanding leadership over the last year in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, both in Linguistics and across PaLS. Stefanie has taken a leading role in implementing new, rigorous procedures to monitor student wellbeing and engagement during this period, including fortnightly wellbeing surveys, a new system for monitoring personal tutoring engagement, and attendance monitoring.
• Leadership on care for student wellbeing against the background of exceptionally trying conditions resulting from changes in practices due to the pandemic.
• Stefanie Anyadi is the teaching and learning team manager in the division of Psychology and Language Sciences. In her role she is responsible both directly and indirectly for the undergraduate programmes in Linguistics. Stefanie has made an immeasurable contribution to the pandemic response and student experience. She steered her team to make the myriad changes, meet innumerable tight deadlines, and communicate clearly and honestly with students and applicants. Stefanie also designed and implemented enhanced monitoring of students' well-being, using attendance data, personal tutor reports, and bi-weekly student well-being  questionnaires.
• Stefanie has shown outstanding leadership in proposing and implementing a raft of changes to help students and academic staff through the pandemic.
• Stefanie has been an incredible force in leading PALS and more specifically linguistics successfully through the pandemic; guiding both students and staff through all the necessary changes to enable teaching and assessment continue seamlessly and successfully online. On top of that she has invoked new initiatives to improve our student's experience and well being during this more challenging time. Stefanie seeks excellence and incites those around her to do so as well.

Psychology and Language Sciences Professional Services Team

Ways of Working - Outstanding Team Contribution to Achieving our Mission Award

• Team members: John Draper, Stefanie Anyadi, Hannah Spikesley
• For striving towards UCL’s future, with vision, a sense of ownership & innovation in their work.

• Find out more about the One UCL Awards here.