Open University Alumnus of the Year 2014 Jeremy Roebuck!

Jeremy Roebuck receiving his caward

Jeremy Roebuck writes about his experience winning the Open University Business School Alumni contribution to Society for his work with Grow Movement. Well done Jeremy and a thank you from all here at Grow HQ.

 

 

I’ve been a volunteer with Grow Movement for a couple of years now, helping to support clients in Rwanda as well as representing & promoting the charity here in Scotland.

I completed my MBA with Open University Business School (OUBS) back in 1999 and have great respect & admiration for the OU because of what OU study did for my life and for tens of thousands of other people. It was, therefore, a great honour to be nominated by Grow Movement in this year’s OUBS Alumni Awards.

The Awards Day at the OU’s Milton Keynes campus started with a short reception and then a visit to the very high-tech library. The campus is very modern but feels different from other universities I’ve visited as there are no students around – all the OU’s students are distance learners. After the library we had a real treat, a visit to the OU Space Centre and saw the university’s contributions to the spacecraft Beagle 2 (landed on Mars in 2003) & Philae/ Rosetta (landed on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014). As a regular watcher of BBC’s The Sky at Night this was really fascinating; I also got to touch a meteorite older than our solar system!

After a formal lunch with the Dean of the Business School and other senior academics, we moved through to the hall where the awards took place. The presentations started with awards for a number of current students who had achieved excellent marks in their studies whilst also achieving great things in their full time work roles.

Then towards the end of the ceremony, three of us who’d all achieved our MBAs some time ago received awards for services to the alumni community, service to an organisation and my award ‘for contribution to society’.

Throughout the day I had the opportunity to talk with many people, both nominees and OU staff, about what Grow Movement does and all were interested in the work we do. Very kindly the OUBS alumni office (#OUBS) offered to promote Grow Movement to the alumni.

In summary, a great occasion where I was proud to represent both Grow Movement and the OU alumni.