Alumni celebration event

Distance learning, Events 3 Minutes

Earlier this month we were delighted to welcome back some of the alumni from our Postgraduate Certificate in Person-Centred Dementia Studies to help us celebrate a wonderful milestone, the course has been running successfully for five years! Although the course is fully-online we decided to make the celebration event hybrid to enable some of the former students to meet in person – possibly for the first time! It was also great to see Dr Izzie Latham, one of our former Module Leads who has since moved on to pastures new, and our current External Examiner Dr Ian Davies-Abbott, but we were sad that a couple of other current and former colleagues weren’t able to join us for various reasons.

Everyone was welcomed to the event by Course Lead Dr Chris Russell who set the scene for the day and gave an update on the state of the field of dementia studies, covering some of the key topics that have arisen recently and highlighting new reports and resources that our former students might find interesting. He concluded his section by drawing attention to some of the achievements – both academic and extracurricular – of our students, including winning The Hennell Award, taking part in a 100km challenge and presenting their own research at a national conference.

Image of a slide showing a selection of photos of our students as graduation, being presented with the Hennell Award, at the end of the 100km event, and presenting at a conference.

This took us nicely into a session on ‘alumni reflections’ where students were encouraged to share how they have used their learning in practice since completing their studies. Facilitated by Nicola Jacobson-Wright, this session also formed part of a research project that Nicola is currently undertaking on ‘Exploring the impact of research based online pedagogy on dementia care practice’. We had two focus groups in the room and a third one for the online attendees to consider a series of questions posed by Nicola, and we got to hear loads of amazing examples of how our students are putting their learning into practice. Thank you to everyone for being so involved in this session and we look forward to seeing Nicola’s findings in due course.

After lunch, we switched from looking back to looking ahead as we welcomed Dr Shirley Evans, Director of the Association for Dementia Studies, to talk about plans for expanding our offering to become a Masters course and get feedback from the group regarding what they would like from a Masters. This will hopefully help us to develop a course that meets the needs of our students, and maybe we’ll even get some of our PGCert alumni coming back to continue their studies with us…

Image showing three photos, two of students sat doing group work at tables, and one of Shirley talking to the group

In the final formal part of the event, Izzie got everyone thinking about what they wish they’d known before starting their studies, and any advice or top tips they wanted to share with new students or those considering starting the PGCert. We had loads of great comments, so once we’ve had a chance to collate them we might be able to share them more widely.

At this point in the day we sadly had to say goodbye to our online attendees before concluding the event with a celebration cake (virtual cake doesn’t work very well!). We also had a chance to grab a group photo with our alumni before everyone headed off. It looked like some new connections were made between students and there was a lot of networking taking place, so who knows what our amazing students will go on to do next!

Image showing a selection of photos including a group photo, students sat at a table waiting for cake, the cake before we got started on it, and the cake after we'd finished demolishing it!

Course Lead Chris Russell, reflected:

“Everyone in our team is so proud of what the students on the course achieve. Person-centredness runs through their veins! It was such a great pleasure for us to welcome the alumni to the university, to catch up and look ahead to future success together!”  

Thanks to everyone for being part of our celebrations and we look forward to keeping in touch in the future.

If you’re considering starting your studies but have a few questions, why not be part of our online open evening which is taking place 3.30-6.00pm on 29th April. To book a slot at the open evening, please contact Chris via dementia@worc.ac.uk

Image showing coloured speech bubbles with question marks in them and a white box saying ‘online open evening 29th April dementia@worc.ac.uk’

Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow 

We’re also on Instagram, Threads and LinkedIn so have a look and find us there too. 

Published by Association for Dementia Studies

We are a multi-professional group of educationalists, researchers and practitioners who are expert in the field of person-centred dementia care and support. Our aim is to make a substantial contribution to building evidence-based practical ways of working with people living with dementia and their families that enables them to live well. We do this primarily through research, education and consultancy.

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