It All Adds Up for Demi

Ex HCC student Demi Oshindele has achieved first class honours in Mathematics from Queen Mary University and credits the College and its excellent employer partnerships as key to his success.

Demi, aged 22, studied A Levels at HCC in 2005 and was part of the first group of students to participate in the exciting internship programme which the College organises with prominent investment bank UBS every year.

The programme, which takes place over the summer, gives students the chance to work in the bank’s busy Liverpool Street office alongside finance professionals and provides them with a taste of corporate life.

Demi acknowledges this experience as a significant factor for his success and is grateful to the College for the opportunity to get involved in the scheme. His hard work and commitment on the placement impressed UBS so much that they gave a glowing reference to support his university application – which has subsequently reaped great rewards.

He said: “The UBS internship was very good for me. The experience helped strengthen my chances of going to university and now I have completed my degree with a distinction. I am very happy and thankful to the College and UBS for such a great opportunity.”

Demi is currently teaching Maths at a local secondary school, and hopes to pursue a career in finance risk management in the near future.

Principal's question time

Last Friday, students at HCC got the chance to ask the Principal, Ian Ashman, any burning questions they had about life at the College.

Around 45 students gathered in the Lecture Theatre to quiz Ian and other members of the Senior Management Team.

In the week leading up to the event, a huge number of students posted questions into one of the 'Have your say' boxes around the college. These questions were then collated and also posed directly to the Principal on the day. The main topics discussed were; student finance, 14 - 16 courses, food and many other general issues.

This was the second Principal's Question Time event at HCC and there's proof that learner voice is really being heard:

At June's question time event, students said: “Not enough electronic course materials are available on the VLE.”

We have: given all students access to their Individual Learning Plan (ILP), grade book and progress report on the VLE. You can access these anytime, anywhere. Almost all other course materials are available on the VLE (including scheme of work and student handbook) – with any new materials uploaded on an ongoing basis.

Students said: “We would like more modern classrooms and better IT.”

We have: just completed a huge eight-week programme of works on the Shoreditch Campus, involving the refurbishment of classrooms. All classrooms have projectors and electronic white boards and the computer network capacity is noticeably faster. The college has invested over one million pounds for ILT resources.