Union Awards 2019: Celebrating the Union's best

The ninth Union Awards ceremony was held in Metric on June 6th, and saw the Union recognise and commemorate its top contributors for the year.

Winners included students and societies who demonstrated outstanding effectiveness in their roles, and have laid down a legacy that will benefit students long-term. The winners are chosen from nominations, by a student panel appointed by the Union President which usually includes members of the Union Council.

Ten specific awards were given. Campaign of the Year went to the Believe and Do Good campaign by the Muslim Medics and Imperial Islamic Society, while the Event of the Year was given to the Dance Imperial Show, a collaboration between all six dance societies at Imperial. The CGCU and Docsoc won the Contribution to College Life Award for their Diversity in Engineering initiative. The best previously-existing and new Club, Society, and Project of the Year awards were given to Design Engineering and to ICSM Coding respectively.

The awards for academic and wellbeing reps were distributed across many departments. Mathematics had both the best wellbeing rep team and individual academic rep, which went to Bogosi Shashane. The best undergraduate academic rep team was ICSMSU’s, while the top postgraduate team was Geotechnics’ Augustin Ruiz Lopes and Julia Moeller. The award for individual wellbeing rep went to the RSM’s Arman Sarjou.

Alongside these, 37 Union Colour awards were given to individual students who have made repeated contributions throughout the year. This is significantly lower than in previous years – 69 were awarded in 2017 and 2018. A further 17 Outstanding Service awards were given to those who went even further “above and beyond” their role. Eight of the most significant contributors - those who have contributed over a number of years - were awarded Fellowships, which include honourary life membership of the Union. The winners of these awards can be viewed on the Union website.

Among the Fellowship earners was Joe O’Connell-Danes, described as the “heart and soul” of the newspaper in his nomination. Joe served as the Arts and Entertainment Management Chair during the year, and (amongst other things) facilitated the media coverage of Meet the Candidates as well as the IC Symphony Ochestra's upcoming tour of China. He shared what the award meant to him:

“Receiving the fellowship was a nice recognition of the work I've put in over the last few years. The nature of my role is very operational - it involves working behind the scenes on issues that aren't very creative or glamorous, and if you’re doing it well nobody should really know much about it. In fact, the highlight of the awards evening wasn’t my Fellowship, but Dance Imperial winning Event of the Year for the Dance Imperial Show. The award was a nice indication that people have recognised the work that goes into this ‘behind the scenes’ maneuvering.”