About WAPCE
Key Information
Eligibility
We welcome nominations from all staff and students who have lead on or supported Public and Community Engagement activities at Warwick. Recent graduates are eligible to apply for the student awards, provided their nomination relates to activity they did whilst a student at Warwick.
You can apply for several categories, but only for different projects. Each nomination should be unique. In particular if you’re applying for the Team Award or Student Team Award you cannot also nominate yourself or another member of the team for an individual staff or student award that relates to the same project.
Individuals or Teams applying for WAPCE can also apply for the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence (WATE) and the Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence (WAPTE).
If you have been invited to act as a reviewer for WAPCE you will also be prohibited from completing the self nomination process for a category you are judging. You can recuse yourself from the review panel if you would like to be considered for the nomination.
Process
WAPCE is a two stage nomination process
Stage one
This entails completing a short nomination form for people to nominate themselves or others
Stage two
Once the nominations have been assessed by the WIE Team, candidates will be invited to submit a detailed self-nomination for each of the categories for which they wish to apply.
Judging
A group of reviewers for each award will score the applications, before passing these scores to an overview panel who will select a shortlist, to be announced in June. The overall winners will be announced at our awards event in July.
Support
We offer support to applicants throughout the process. Simply reach out to us on wie@warwick.ac.uk. We also have recorded previous support sessions. The latest session from April 2023 is available to view here.
Award Categories
These awards celebrate the best of Public Engagement practice.
We strongly recommend you familiarise yourselves with WIE's Definition of Engagement before submitting in this category, to ensure you meet the eligibility criteria. (Plain text included below)
“Engagement (also referred to as public engagement) is a term that describes how people working and studying at universities interact with external publics/partners to share knowledge, research, and expertise; foster collaboration on new ideas; or collectively co-produce new research, or new ways of working. Its aim is to create spaces that enable curiosity, exploration and conversation for a broad cross section of society. Through these interactions everyone gains valuable insights, in turn contributing to societal development and progress.”
Inspiring Experiences
This award celebrates public engagement focussed on the creation of inspiring experiences designed to disseminate ideas, make space for discussion and share research or other expertise with a public audience. This could include (but is not limited to) giving public talks, running an event for a public audience, and delivering hands on activities. We would suggest that if your project is based more around collaborative working with a partner you might want to consider submitting to the “Engagement and Involvement” category instead. Please note schools outreach activity is not eligible for this award as it is specifically covered by other categories.
Educational and Training Innovation
This award celebrates activity which supports others to develop their public engagement practice. This could include taught programmes which develop students’ skills of engagement with the public, work done to upskill peers – such as conference presentations/ workshop or publishing papers about your engagement practice, upskilling others by including them in your own public engagement work, or any other activity you or your team lead to support others to be better at engagement. The people you’re upskilling can work/ study at Warwick, another university, or be someone outside of the higher education sector.
Online Engagement
This award celebrates public engagement that takes places online. This could be a specific online event, a digital platform or resource used for engagement (e.g. a website), online content such as videos or podcasts, or a sustained programme of social media activity (for example an account used to raise awareness of a topic). Hybrid activity will also be considered.
Engagement and Involvement
This award celebrates public engagement with research, focussed on building deeper connections and collaborating on research and the sharing of academic knowledge with groups external to the University. Normally this would be partnerships with charitable organisations, artists, community groups, or other organisations/individuals, with an aim of enriching civil society. This could include working collaboratively on developing, sharing, or using research. Please note business or industry collaborations, where the goal is commercialisation, would not be considered for this award.