Excellence Awards Celebrated at SERC’s Downpatrick Campus

Students, staff, friends and family gathered at South Eastern Regional College (SERC) recently (Thursday 10 April), to celebrate the best of the college community at the annual Excellence Awards for Downpatrick and Newcastle Campuses.

Guests, including Councillor Pete Byrne, Chairperson of Newry, Mourne & Down District Council, were welcomed with a drinks reception, followed by a short film involving some of the student body celebrating excellence at SERC, before certificates and awards were presented in recognition of outstanding student achievements and staff success.

The College was delighted to have headline sponsorship from Newry Mourne & Down District Council, who also sponsored the Apprentice of the Year Award. Other categories were sponsored by SSE Airtricity for Trainee of the Year Award and by UK Healthcare for Community Champion of the Year Award.

The celebrations included recognition of 20 students from the Paraibo region of Brazil, who have been studying English and participating in a wide variety of cultural activities with SERC for the past eight weeks. The students are here as part of a UK-wide cohort facilitated by Education Together UK and have been staying with host families across the local community.  

Following the presentations, a Vote of Thanks was given by Chris Bruton, SERC Student Governor.

The Master of Ceremonies for the evening was Catherine McKay of the SERC Governing Body. She said, “This evening, we celebrate the success of a number of our students in their courses. But we are also highlighting and rewarding activity in areas such as entrepreneurship, and work with the Students’ Union - all important parts of college life which deliver real-life learning experiences and help our students develop as rounded individuals. We are also here to celebrate staff, both teaching and non-teaching, who support our students to achieve excellence.”

She continued, “We have seen some great achievements since we last gathered for these awards. For example, students have been winners in inter-college and international skills contests, and staff have won accolades in teaching awards programmes, with one lecturer presented with a Great British Businesswoman award for work in engineering.   In addition, SERC projects have been recognised in Good for Me, Good for FE, a UK-wide programme, which highlights work in the community as well as outstanding support services within colleges.

“We are consistently shown to be the highest achieving college in Northern Ireland. In the last academic year, 7,410 students achieved a regulated qualification, and we had a 90% achievement rate across the wide range of courses we deliver.” Catherine concluded, “I really am proud to be associated with this college. I congratulate all nominees and award winners on your achievements.”  

SERC would like to thank everyone who made the evening so special, the awards judging panel, our master of ceremonies and award presenters, the hospitality team, the student engineering team for the engraved trophies and students and staff who took part in the production of the celebration film.  

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