The University Awards are a great opportunity to show appreciation of the hard work that goes on day to day, here at Warwick! Find out more about our award winners in our series of interviews, highlighting their roles and achievements. Here, Diana Holton from Warwick Business School, tells us about winning an Outstanding Contribution Award.

Tell us a bit about your role:

Working on around 15 annual business school rankings, plus reporting on other high-profile University ranking results, the two of us doing this job need careful forward planning to manage tasks and co-ordination to ensure we meet the multitude of ranking deadlines. The priority is always to submit the best possible data within deadline. This means a lot of one-to-one contact with the publication or organisation producing each ranking, and liaison and fact-checking with WBS Careers and Corporate Relations staff, and the relevant alumni and sometimes students of the programmes being ranked. We have always to be aware of personal data, data security, and updating alumni records with absolute accuracy. We also regularly need to contact programme staff, faculty and their support staff, the WBS doctoral programme, Research Impact team and Press Executive, the relevant WBS Senior Management Team members, and even occasionally the University Careers & Skills, Warwick Alumni and Warwick Press Office teams."

Your project

The key issues with business school rankings are two-fold: firstly, to try to ensure that those who use the rankings as a guide to excellence understand that the different methodologies and weightings influence the overall ranking result in a way that may not be relevant for their own requirements. Secondly, there is the challenge of getting students and alumni, when it is their turn to participate in the various annual rankings, to understand how they themselves will influence the School's ranking position. This is a revolving challenge each year, as the participating students and alumni change each year, and they discover in detail about how tight the competition is among the global top schools. We work hard to ensure they feel involved and so will want to complete their ranking surveys in the most positive way and to the required level of participation."

Going above and beyond your role:

The key issues with business school rankings are two-fold: firstly, to try to ensure that those who use the rankings as a guide to excellence understand that the different methodologies and weightings influence the overall ranking result and may not be relevant for their own requirements. We try to get this across using news reports and postings on the WBS website and relevant social media. Secondly, this translates into the challenge of getting students and alumni, when it is their turn to participate in the various annual rankings, to understand how they themselves will influence the School's ranking position. This is a revolving challenge each year, as the participating students and alumni change each year, and they discover in detail about how tight the competition is among the global top schools, and how the ranking itself may not necessarily be a strong or rigorous exercise. We work hard to ensure they feel involved and so will complete their ranking surveys in the most positive way and to the required level of participation."

How does it feel to have won the Outstanding Contribution University Award?

My reaction was both delight on finding out I was among the winners, but also quite a bit of embarrassment because my work means that just about every stakeholder in WBS played a part too."

What would you like to say to the person(s) who nominated you?

A lot of staff and students took the time to nominate, if you had the chance what would you say to the person who nominated you for this award? Wow, and Thank You for your lovely words and for finding the time to complete the nomination form with such strong and positive appreciation of my efforts.

Why do you think people should nominate next time (for the 2018 University Awards):

There are so many staff who deserve to win recognition and awards for their work, but the only chance of this happening is if someone (or better still many ones) nominate them."

We hope you enjoyed the University Awards Evening on 12 May. Did you have any highlights?

I was really excited to find out I'd been shortlisted, then really sorry to learn that the Awards event was on Friday 12 May - the one Friday in May when I was away."

The University Awards are a great chance for the University to improve and learn from staff initiatives over the year. If you could change one thing at the University, what would it be?

I am sure it is not just those of us involved in business school rankings who long for one single database and system which records and keeps track of applicants who become students who become graduates (or even systems which can share all their data with relative ease would be very welcome)."