Student Partnership Impact Awards (SPIA): Recognising and rewarding students as leaders

Abstract

In 2022, the Staff Educational Development Association (SEDA) developed the Student Partnership Impact Award (SPIA), providing students and recent alumni with an opportunity to be professionally accredited for their leadership abilities through partnership. SEDA is a professional association for educational developers based in the UK. The SPIA award aims to expand SEDA’s community of educational developers by reaching out to other national and international students and staff working in partnership. SEDA’s development team, of which I am part of, carried out a review of the award procedures for quality assurance purposes.  The review process found a lack of leadership narrative in unsuccessful applications. This stemmed from applicants not being ultimately responsible for a project and, as a result, these applicants subsequently seemed unable to claim any leadership, which set the tone of applicants being subordinates to the staff project lead. These findings raised for me and the development team further questions about students’ exposure to leadership skills development and students’ ability to recognise their own leadership skills as part of their employability skills development. This case study explores thematic factors affecting students’ ability to confidently articulate themselves as leaders in a student partnership setting and what we can do as staff to support students in developing those graduate attributes. It also provides reflections and ideas for colleagues considering putting students forward for professional accreditation or potentially developing their own awards scheme