New Reading Experience and Development (RED) Award launched

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

This coming academic year sees the launch of a new scheme to help those students who take part in other activities in addition to their academic studies gain the recognition they deserve.

The Reading Experience and Development (RED) Award rewards students for undertaking extra-curricular activities as well as helping students to get the most out of their experiences, in terms of their professional and personal development.

RED Award Project Officer, Vicky Clarke, said "In a time where graduate recruiters are looking at more than just academic achievements, the Award is a great opportunity for all university students whether undergraduate or postgraduate, full-time or part-time, taught or research, to expand their horizons.

"As well as helping to develop their skills, students will also gain recognition as the Award will be formally recorded on their degree transcript."

Students will have to complete a minimum of 50 hours of activities; this is broken down into 35 hours of core activity (such as work experience, volunteering or paid work), 10 hours of volunteering and 5 hours of training and development sessions (which they can select from the Careers Advisory Service "Headstart" programme, the "Living Positively" Counselling programme or the training programme run by RUSU). Students will then need to attend a skills capture sign-off session in order to achieve the Award.

The website will shortly be available at www.reading.ac.uk/redaward. For more details or if you have any questions please contact Vicky Clarke at v.clarke@reading.ac.uk.