RTS Coffey Award for Excellence

We’re thrilled to announce that one of our most recent BSc (Hons) Broadcast Systems Engineering graduates, Alex Snell, has been awarded the Royal Television Society’s Coffey Award for Excellence. This is essentially the runner up prize for the Young Technologist Award and we’re extremely impressed that Alex did so well, having only just graduated!

Alex commented, "The breadth and depth of knowledge and resources I had access to at Solent allowed me to excel and fulfil my potential extremely well. I was really impressed by the professionalism and quality of the tuition from day one and it was consistent for me throughout my time at Solent. There were constantly opportunities to get experience and develop, and I very much bought into the idea that you get out what you put in. On that philosophy, I was able to work at STEM events to inspire the next generation of engineers, work on live television for BBC Children in Need, and take a year out to deliver services for Ericsson Television. The year out took me to places I would never have imagined, and grew my personal and technical skills immensely."

Alex’s extensive interaction with industry – including his year out – were crucial to his nomination for Young Technologist. Senior lecturer, Paul Bourne commented how impressed the course team were by Alex’s dedication to the professional development of others as well as himself, having shared much of his extracurricular knowledge and experience with his peers via class sessions and the University’s virtual learning environment.

Alex continued, "I heard about the RTS Young Technologist of the Year award through ex-media tech lecturer, Sean Lancastle. I was advised that it is aimed more towards early career graduates, and not undergraduates, but I decided to apply and see what happened, as I considered myself to have a decent amount of applicable experience. After hearing I had delivered a successful written application, I went to a panel interview in London to be quizzed on my written answers. The interview soon took the form of a debate, and some very interesting (and nerdy) conversations ensued. Shortly afterwards, I was informed that I had achieved The Coffey Award for Excellence in Engineering. Given my limited experience, I was really humbled to be awarded this prestigious prize. This also makes me the second Solent grad in recent times to be on this honours list. This will give the start of my postgraduate life a real boost, and I would like to thank Solent and the media technology team for allowing this to happen."

The interview panel were particularly impressed with the breadth of Alex’s knowledge and commented that they were confident he would be a leader in the move from traditional engineering into the world of IP.

Alex truly threw himself into the field while he was at Solent and we are thrilled that his achievements have been recognised so quickly. The course team are also glad that our industry network and the extracurricular activities we are able to offer have such a direct impact on the students.

We’d like to also congratulate Gareth Reid, who graduated from the BBC Broadcast Engineering scheme in 2013 and won the main Young Technologist award.