Welcome from Dr Chris McInerney
Dear student volunteers,
The Transferable Skills Unit (TSU) in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) is delighted to congratulate all recipients of bronze, silver or gold President’s Volunteer Awards, and we acknowledge the hours of effort that you have put in to achieve the award.
We also encourage you to recognise and celebrate that you have gained much more than an award. No matter what type of volunteering activities you have undertaken, you have inevitably added to your bank of skills. Think about it.
How many of you can now say that your capacity for communication has improved, that your ability to understand and solve problems has been enhanced, that you are better able to collaborate with others, both inside and outside UL. For some of you, you will have unlocked the secrets of your creativity, or you may have discovered the joys of critical thinking. Others still will have increased their digital skills or will have added to their level of sustainability literacy and agency.
Be in no doubt, you are more skilled now than you were before you began your volunteering journey. And if you are only at the early stages of that journey, imagine how much richer your skill set can become though further volunteering.
But consider also, how will you demonstrate to others, including potential employers, that you have these skills. It’s no good to simply say, ‘I’m a great problem solver’, you have to be able to show it, talk about it and evidence it. The TSU is working closely with the President’s Volunteer Award to encourage you to take the next step. Don’t just gain skills, showcase them.
In the TSU, we will be facilitating students to recognise their skills, record them using an E-Portfolio and, ultimately, gain rewards for doing so. We will be focusing on seven core skills:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- Problem Solving
- Digital skills and
- Sustainability literacy and action
For each of these, we have developed a competency framework that will allow you to break the skills down and see examples of how you can provide evidence of your skillset. The key thing to remember here is that you already have a lot of this evidence at your fingertips. It may be in the form of a module assignment, your volunteering experience, something from Co-op or Erasmus. Or you may be gaining really valuable skills from being involved in a club or society or as a class rep. in Student Life or in the Postgraduate Student Union.
In short, our message is Think Skills – Recognise, Record, Reward. As a recipient of a volunteering award, you are already well on your way. You have skills. Name them. Get to know them. Understand their worth and understand their power.
Dr Chris McInerney, Director of The Transferable Skills Unit.
