UWE Bristol nursing lecturer and a multi-disciplinary genomics team win prestigious teaching excellence awards

An adult nursing lecturer and a multi-disciplinary genomics team at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) have been announced as winners of Advance HE's National Teaching Excellence Awards.

Dr Julie Armoogum, a Macmillan senior lecturer has been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (NTF). An NTF celebrates individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education.

Meanwhile, UWE Bristol’s Generation Genome Education Team, led by Professor Aniko Varadi and made up of academic genomics specialists, clinicians and professional services staff, are winners of the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE). CATE recognises collaborative work that has enabled a change in practice for colleagues and students at an institutional and discipline level.

Up to 55 individuals are awarded an NTF and up to 15 teams are awarded the CATE from Advance HE every year, making the process highly competitive. Both award winners are from UWE Bristol’s College of Health, Science and Society.

Dr Julie Armoogum

Dr Julie Armoogum has been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for her pioneering work in cancer education at UWE Bristol and beyond.

Over the last ten years, Julie’s work began by integrating cancer education in pre-registration curricular and has culminated in a new Post Graduate Certificate in Cancer Care funded by NHS England. Julie has designed innovative modules with the patient voice as the central thread, enabling students to have a greater understanding of the impact of cancer on patients and families, and to enhance their confidence to care for people affected by cancer. 

As well as embedding cancer education within UWE Bristol, Julie and colleagues from across the UK set up the Aspirant Cancer Career and Education Development programme (ACCEND) which is providing a national framework for cancer education and training for nursing and allied health professionals, and has been cited in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.

As part of the programme, Julie secured funding from Health Education England to lead the development of an online course, Foundations of Cancer Care. The course is hosted on the NHS Learning Hub so any UK student can access the modules, and earlier this year Julie successfully campaigned for wider access to the course meaning anyone with an email address who wants to learn about cancer can now complete the course.

On receiving the award, Dr Julie Armoogum said: “I am very proud to have been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship. One in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime. We must enable the current and future healthcare workforce to have skills, knowledge, confidence and compassion to care for people affected by cancer. Being part of excellent teams both within UWE and externally has resulted in fantastic developments is this arena in recent years and we must continue to build on this to support the workforce to face the challenges ahead.”

Generation Genome Education Team

The Generation Genome Education Team, led by Professor Aniko Varadi, is a group of 10 multi-disciplinary professionals from UWE Bristol, NHS England, NHS England Genomics Education Programme, Macmillan Cancer Support, the British Heart Foundation and Genomics England.

Genomics, an interdisciplinary field of biology, has been transforming the lives of patients through a better understanding of the genetic causes of their disease, enabling more personalised treatments, earlier diagnosis and prevention. The team’s collaboration and co-creation with learners led to pedagogic research underpinning a novel education framework and a postgraduate programme that enables rapid upskilling in genomics nationally and globally with benefits for clinical professionals, patients and services.

Aniko Varadi, professor of biomedical research and team leader of the Generation Genome Education team said: “Our team was successful because we had the right members, created effective channels to facilitate communication among the diverse and geographically dispersed members, provided and accepted different perspectives and reached good decisions quickly. More importantly we trusted each other’s insights and respected each other’s expertise. We are very proud of all our students who completed the course, most of whom are now leading new nurse-led genomic services.”

Professor Amanda Coffey, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at UWE Bristol, said: “I offer my warmest congratulations to Julie and to the Generation Genome Education Team. These are highly prestigious awards within higher education and it’s exceptional to achieve both an individual and team award in the same year. It’s brilliant to see the tremendous impacts our staff have on student experience and improving health and wellbeing, through their innovation, creativity and collaborative working.”