Dear 

With our summer graduation ceremonies just around the corner, it's been great to see the sun shining on campus. We are very much looking forward to celebrating our latest graduates in July in Leeds and will be sharing their success stories over the course of the events.

In anticipation of opening our new Leeds City Campus in the next academic year, we welcomed the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, to 1 Trevelyan Square recently for a tour of the building works. She met with members of the Executive team to find out more about the University's extended offer for students. Read more.

Recently we caught up with alumna Sarah Dickinson (Primary Education, 2010 and NASENCO, 2023) after she was announced as the Telegraph and Argus Primary or Early Years Teacher of the Year for 2024. 

Sarah spoke to us about what the award meant to her, Blakehill Primary School, and all the hard work she and colleagues have done that has paid off. Look out for our news story coming soon.

In March, the School of Sport and Wellbeing hosted a Breaking Barriers: Excelling in Sport and Wellbeing conference. 

The day was rounded off with an amazing alumni panel, including Ellis Pascall (Secondary PE and Sports Development, 2016 and MA Sport Management, 2017), Ellie Olds (Sport and Exercise Science, Nutrition, 2018), Karen Liu (Broadcast Journalism, 2016) and Jodie Wilkinson (Secondary Physical Education and Sports Coaching, 2016) who shared their exceptional career journeys with the audience. More images.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Jodie Wilkinson after the Breaking Barriers event and speak more about how she got into elite boxing after initially just wanting to box to lose weight.

Jodie progressed to Double National Amateur Boxing Champion and has competed at the Commonwealth Games. She showed us her belts and Commonwealth Games medal at our catch up too.

Jodie is now turning professional. After a change of date, her professional debut will now be on Saturday 13 July, which is also Jodie's birthday, at the John Charles Centre, Leeds. Ticket information.

Our Catholic Conference will take place online on Friday 13 September. It will be running from 10:00am – 1:30pm and will focus on ethics and values for businesses of the future.

This conference will include international scholars and business leaders from the private sector. View the full schedule on our events webpage. To book your place on this event, visit our online store.

We were delighted to hear from Blessing Olufemi recently who graduated from Computer Science in 2021. She is currently a Management Information Analyst at Pure Retirement (equity release specialist).

Blessing was in the first graduting cohort from the course and for her it was great to leave University with a new skillset: "I developed a strong understanding of front-end development principles and tools as well as software methodologies and techniques. I left with a strong foundation to explore different avenues in technology which led me to my passion which was data analytics."

Blessing utilised all the support available to her. She said: "The support I had from my lecturers and the Careers+Placements team was invaluable, guiding me through scholarships and different career options post-graduation."

Read Blessing's alumni profile.