Meet the winners of the RSC’s Higher Education Technical Excellence award

At Dublin City University’s School of Chemical Sciences, teamwork and inclusivity are the order of the day for the technical team, which won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2019 Higher Education Technical Excellence award for ‘exceptional services to health and safety and accessibility in Irish Higher Education laboratories’.

The team, whose roles include supporting student learning, has an ‘open-door policy’ for both undergraduates and postgraduates, says chief technical officer Veronica Dobbyn. She describes the technical office as a central access unit at the heart of the School of Chemical Sciences, where staff and students can seek help at any time.

‘We try to be very inclusive and make sure that students have a good learning experience, because university is a scary enough place for an 18-year-old without coming across additional difficulties in a lab environment. Being accessible is a fundamental underlying principle of the team,’ she says. ‘We are consistently in the laboratory with the students, working as mentors along with academic staff and supporting students to grow in confidence in their practical skills.’