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Bursary Winners 2010/11 Announced

At the full Committee meeting held on Thursday 18th November, the Sub-Committee for the 2010 Bursary awards (Steve Van Toller, Georgina Hale, Joan Cole and ordinary member Terry Kemp) made a case for a single award to be made this year. The suggestion was accepted by the full Committee and the award was made during a small ceremony held in the Atrium of University House on Wednesday 1st December.

The 2010 award was made to Rich Clabon, a fourth year Engineering student who was award £1,000 to be paid in two tranches. Rich is in the process of developing a new technology which involves the creation of a seamless polo canoe. Traditional polo canoes consist of two halves which tend to split along the top and bottom seams. In an early National Sports competition, Rich had reached the final five but was eliminated because it was felt that his ideas were unlikely to be ready in time for the 2012 Olympics. The original Sports competition was for an award of £25,000 and although our award is far short of this sum it was felt that ours could act as a priming award. Rich’s idea is to develop a scaled down prototype by the Easter Holidays 2011.

Despite snow and ice a number of the Committee managed to get to the ceremony where a certificate and an initial cheque was handed over to Rich.

This year many fewer students applied for our grant but a new early publicity scheme and an increase in the value of the total award to £1,000 should result in the number of applicants increasing to former levels. Thanks are due to Terry Kemp who showed us the value of using our members to assist the Committee in reaching decisions.

The WRSA Chairman hands over the certificate to Rich Clabon at the award ceremony