28 February 2025 
Monica Madeley, Projects and Engagement Officer
The HESPA Awards are an annual highlight for the association, giving us a chance to focus on some of the fantastic strategic planning teams, and projects that contribute so significantly to the success of our universities, year-round.
We are incredibly grateful to all involved in the awards, both those who submitted a nomination (an incredible 46 of you) and those who judged them. The quality and range of award submissions was impressive, as always.
We were very proud to be able to announce our award winners as part of the HESPA Conference last night and send massive congratulations to all our winners.
HESPA Innovation Award
Winner: The Open University
The Open University won the HESPA innovation Award for their AskOU project which enhances student support with Generative AI.
The Open University’s AskOU leverages generative AI to assist staff in crafting draft responses to student inquiries, ensuring efficiency while maintaining human oversight to guarantee accuracy, personalization, and alignment with OU standards. Designed with appropriate data privacy measures and access permissions, the tool aims to streamline operations and improve the quality of student support. AskOU reflects a thoughtful approach to using AI, helping staff work more effectively while enhancing the overall student experience.
HESPA Data Story Award
Winner: Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham Trent University won the HESPA Data Story Award for their School Insights project.
School Insights, is an innovative business intelligence tool which empowers NTU academic and professional staff by providing 82 performance measures spanning 6 years of operations all on one page. Accessible to all staff at NTU, it enhances decision-making and drives academic excellence. This was a visionary Business Intelligence project which required an innovative technical approach in order to solve the problem of delivering multiple different types of measures in one place.
HESPA Strategic Planning Award
Winner: The University of Sheffield
The Strategic Planning and Change department at the University of Sheffield has helped the University move to new academic schools (45 academic units into 21 academic schools) over the last 18 months. The department has supported the whole process – from problem analysis to implementation – with all the teams within the department contributing to different elements of the change and working in partnership with colleagues from across the University.
HESPA Paul Youngson Award
Winner: Darius Austin, University of Chester
Darius’ contribution to strategic planning at Chester has been to make great strides in answering one of the most difficult questions: How much does my course cost? In doing so Darius has been innovative and above all, built relationships and engaged with Faculty colleagues in a way that has left them empowered to drive their own optimisation rather than “the University” doing it to them.
In addition to our award winners, the following nominations were singled out by our judges as highly commended:
The dashboards make research funding data available through decision-maker focused PowerBI dashboards, has enabled targeted actions within faculties/departments on where funder diversification would be beneficial, where attention to application development quality is required, how to quickly understand the risks and opportunities from international partnerships and resulted in a marked shift in efforts to improve project cost recovery, ownership of targets by senior leaders and directly influencing the current and future institutional financial sustainability relating to research income.
A collaborative project, connecting the student experience, student data and academic tutors in a shared goal of supporting students to engage with their studies and achieve positive outcomes. Using existing learning analytics, behavioural trends were identified, and robust risk factors were established. Data driven, automated reports were designed to flag individual ‘Retention Risk’ students to Academic Personal Tutors, who could then initiate appropriate support mechanism to help the student to re-engage with their studies. The HEART project resulted in improved student engagement, retention, and achievement, with fewer students withdrawing from their studies and a higher credit attainment rate overall.
Supporting the University to take good decisions’ underpins the GaSP team’s purpose and ‘can do’ approach. Student intakes planning is critically dependent on good decision-making, informed by unpacking the Strategy statement ‘no growth for growth’s sake’; understanding and explaining what their data is telling them; and partnership-working to deliver the ‘institutional intent’ around Size and Shape. ‘In the context of what is a very large, complex, and devolved institution’ the team are “responsive to feedback, have a culture of continuous improvement, and are important in developing analysis and understanding as well as the data itself”.
The Manchester 2035 Delivery team, led by the new VC, coordinated the development of the new institutional strategy. Involving colleagues from Planning, Communications, Strategic Change Office, Media Services, Civic Engagement, and the President’s office, the team drove a strategic approach through various engagement activities for staff, students, alumni and broader community with an emphasis on EDI and sustainability. In total, over 3,000 engagement activities were recorded to date. The collaborative and inclusive effort ensures that diverse voices contribute to shaping their future, setting a solid foundation for achieving the 2035 vision.
