Criteria for the award included academic excellence, overcoming adversity, entrepreneurial skills, and contribution to charity or community.
Chloe receives the award from Vincent Keaveny, City of London Alderman & Sheriff (Gerald Sharp Photography ).
The WCIT Outstanding Information Technology Student Awards were created to recognise outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate IT students within the UK. Following the success of the inaugural awards in 2015, The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists was very pleased to support the scheme for its fifth year in 2019. In doing so, they hope to encourage students to pursue careers in IT, to encourage an entrepreneurial and charitable ethos among those students, and, more pragmatically, to give financial help to students on IT courses.
Twelve universities selected a candidate and provided a written citation in support of their nomination. Of these, individuals from five universities made the competitive shortlist for the final, including our student Chloe Houlihan who won a Silver Award.
Chloe is enrolled in the final year of our BSc in Computer Science (Software Engineering) with a Year in Industry. She passed all her first and second year modules at first attempt and with very high grades, achieving first-class average in each year, which placed her in the top 5% of her year. However, what is absolutely exceptional about Chloe is the level of leadership and collaboration skills that she has developed:
- As Careers Officer for our student-led Computing Society, Chloe organised a highly successful employers' networking event for students and industry partners. She also produced lesson plans and taught campus-wide coding workshops in Python and Java to help students from other departments acquire valuable coding skills that would make them more employable.
- At Nomura, where she did her placement year, her supervisor commented "Highly effective: offers to assist when others need support; seeks to collaborate with others; willingly performs a variety of roles as work requires; has shown leadership through getting things done and coaching others to follow suit". Nomura are very enthusiastic about continuing to develop links with our department and we have another undergraduate student on placement at Nomura this year.
- Chloe is always willing to give back; she has volunteered this year to coach our current UG and PGT students on interview skills, and she has also prepared and delivered a presentation to the new cohort of Year-in-Industry students in the Department of Electronic Engineering.
The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists is the 100th livery company of the City of London, bringing together the centuries-old livery tradition and information technology, a key industry of the new millennium. Since 1992, when the Company was awarded livery status by the Court of Aldermen of the City of London, it has been actively demonstrating the relevance of the livery tradition to modern day society. The Company uses the time, expertise and resources of its members to promote the information technology profession and undertake a range of charitable and educational activities. The Company currently has some 800 members, all of whom have important links with the IT profession.
For further information about The Worshipful Company, please visit www.wcit.org.uk.
