For first day today I stopped and thought about the couple of months just gone...and clearly remembered this day:
It was a day full of excitement for everyone at Oxford Brookes - a new start of the year, a new SU Exec team, and a new Vice Chancellor!
Here's my speech http://www.brookes.ac.uk/about/structure/management/inauguration/antoinette
Good Morning Ladies and Gentleman.
It is an honour to be here today and on behalf of all Oxford Brookes’ students, past and present, I would like to welcome our new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Janet Beer.
Professor Beer is joining a university of which I am exceptionally proud to be a part. It is a university in the truest sense; a place in which we are free to explore the joy of learning for learning’s sake, to become enlightened individuals with a sense of our place in the world. It is a fusion of ideas, people and experiences. It is, I believe, a university that leaves its mark on the world.
I am delighted that Professor Beer’s academic journey has brought her to Brookes, and I know that she will find us to be both inspiring and ready to be inspired.
My own educational journey has brought me from my home country of Bulgaria to studying here at Oxford Brookes. Along the way, the experience has changed me more than I could ever have imagined. When I am asked what it’s really like to study here, I cannot help but talk about the truly remarkable internationalism of our university.
This vitality will be on show in all its splendour over the next week, as we celebrate this year’s graduations – a perfect welcome for our new Vice-Chancellor.
The graduates will all have enjoyed and benefited from Brookes’ diversity. They will also have succeeded because of the dedication of their lecturers, because of teaching which is exciting and outward-looking, and because of the enabling and supportive environment at Oxford Brookes. Brookes’ approach to learning has, at its core, a belief that practical experience should not be an afterthought, but should be a vital part of degrees that also demand intellectual rigour and creative thinking.
It is no accident or stroke of luck that this is a university in the ascendant, challenging the very best universities in areas like graduate employment and student satisfaction.
Brookes students are encouraged to seize every opportunity that opens up for us, to transform our lives while we are here and to be passionate about our work and our futures. Like every student who comes here, Brookes has changed my life. It has led to possibilities I would never have thought of, and prepared me to meet the future with confidence.
For me, the greatest of these opportunities has been to play a part in the way the university is run. As a student Ambassador, Academic Rep and now an elected officer of the Students’ Union, I have had the chance not only to find out why things work the way they do, but to challenge the university – and myself - to make them work better.
I now know how important it is that students do have a say, not just for the sake of the university but for our own personal development. Brookes has always striven to include students in the decisions that affect them and I’m confident that Professor Beer understands and values this student involvement.
Oxford Brookes has exceeded my aspirations, and I am sure that Professor Beer will find that it does the same for her. Students here are rightly proud of Brookes’ reputation, and we are delighted today to entrust that reputation to our new Vice-Chancellor.
Professor Beer, on behalf of the student body, welcome to Oxford Brookes University!
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