Durham Award

What is the Durham Award?

The Durham Award is a mark of excellence, recognising that Durham students bring so much more than a degree to your workplace. Developed in partnership with employers and students, the Durham Award ensures our graduates can demonstrate they have the skills that you need to help your organisation succeed.

How does the Award work? 

The undergraduate Durham Award is a non-academic, non-credit bearing certificate. It has three main elements:

1) Students are asked to reflect on their personal development across four broad areas of University life:

• University involvement, through colleges, sports teams and societies
• Community engagement, through voluntary work
• Work experience, paid or voluntary
• Additional skills, through relevant training and courses

2) Students complete an application form matching the skills they have developed from these experiences against the key competencies that you have told us you value:

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Commercial awareness
• Leadership
• Initiative/problem solving

3) Students are invited to a short interview (including a presentation) to discuss their application in more detail.

The postgraduate Durham Award is open to any student studying on a taught masters programme, with places limited to 100 each year. It is designed to help students focus on how their masters degree can help to make them more employable.

Students participate in a series of compulsory workshops:

• Identifying your skills
• Understanding yourself
• Selling your skills

and also attend a panel interview. Assessment is by reflective portfolio.

How can I get involved?

The Durham Award has been created in partnership with graduate employers and your support is vital to ensure its success. You can get involved with the Award in the following ways:

Skills Workshops
As part of the Award the Careers, Employability and Enterprise Centre runs workshops which cover the key competencies assessed by the Award, as well as wider employability issues. We are always looking for interested employers to help us in the delivery of these workshops, whether that is in person on the day, or by providing case studies and materials that can be used by the students. These workshops are a great opportunity to meet some of Durham's highly motivated students and work with them in an informal environment.

Assessment of the Award
To ensure the quality of the Durham Award we encourage employers to be involved in the assessment process. You can offer your help in one of two ways:

• Application forms
  We always need volunteers to help mark the application forms. Marking criteria and guidance notes will be supplied. The marking is usually carried out during the early weeks of February.
• Interviews
  We welcome employers to sit on the interview panels for the Durham Award. Interviews are held in sessions which usually run for a complete morning or afternoon. They normally fall from late February to early March.

Networking
We hold an afternoon reception for all successful applicants during the Summer term, to which employers are invited. Students value the opportunity to meet with graduate employers who have been involved in the Durham Award. A similar informal networking event is also held for penultimate year students who plan to apply for the Award in their final year.

Work Experience
To apply for the Award students must have undertaken some work experience (paid or unpaid). We are keen to hear from employers who would be able to offer work experience to our Durham Award students.

Interested?

If you are interested in getting involved in the Durham Award, please contact:

Hannah Speight
Careers, Employability and Enterprise Centre

The Palatine Centre
Durham University
Stockton Road
Durham
DH1 3LE

email: h.e.speight@durham.ac.uk
tel: 0191 33 41423

Award Handbook