The Strathclyde Bright Futures Society, a student-led society run at dozens of universities throughout the UK, has won two awards at the National Awards Ceremony, beating more than 50 other UK universities.
Strathclyde Business School student Mark O'Neill is vice president for Business and Humanities in the Strathclyde Bright Futures Society and the society's two co-presidents are fellow SBS students Youssel Hounat and Julius Matuzevicius. The society helps students increase their employability and helps employers find and recruit the right graduates and school leavers for their business. The three students travelled to London for the awards on March 31 in which they won 'Society of the Year' and 'Event of the Year'.
Mark said, "This academic year (2014/15) was huge for Strathclyde's Bright Futures Society. As the largest employability-related society, we managed to run 13 events on campus throughout the year, which have helped our members (over 1000) and other students to increase their employability and to improve skills and qualities required for particular industries or companies.
"Our biggest event was our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) networking event which took place in October and attracted over 300 students. This event was open to all disciplines. Students came along and networked with large corporate companies such as Rolls-Royce, Shell, PwC, Barrat Group and others. The feedback both from students and employers was fantastic – they were overwhelmed with our levels of professionalism and enjoyed the opportunity to meet with so many recruiters right on campus.”
Bright Futures Society is a national commitment which is run by over 55 universities throughout the UK. At the end of each year, a National Awards ceremony is held. Mark added, "This year we were successful enough to win the ‘Event of the Year’ award for our STEM event and ‘Society of the Year’ for the second year running. Both of these awards are a testimonial to our hardworking committee members and the university itself. As always we plan to grow bigger and better next year."