Study abroad students at Essex.

A commitment to delivering a truly international education and a revolutionary new way to explore the media has led to the University of Essex being shortlisted for two THE Leadership and Management Awards.

Essex has been shortlisted in the Outstanding International Strategy category for its study abroad programme and in the Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year for its partnership with London-based Signal.

Academic Registrar at the University of Essex Stephen McAuliffe said: “Essex has, since its inception, held an international focus in all that we do. We believe that studying abroad is key to developing global citizenship and enhancing graduate employability. The key to our success is ensuring all who wish for an international experience are able to do so. Rather than an activity for the privileged few, study abroad is now embedded across our academic offer.”

Academic lead on the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Signal, Professor Udo Kruschwitz, said "This is fantastic news acknowledging the fact that the knowledge transfer relationship between Essex and Signal is a shining example of what a collaboration between academia and industry might be able to offer to all partners. We brought in expertise in natural language processing and information retrieval that helped Signal revolutionise the media monitoring market, Signal has provided transformational experiences to our students, and the story continues."

International vision

The Essex approach to supporting students to study abroad during their studies at Essex has been recognised as an example of best practice by the QAA and the UK Erasmus Agency.

All undergraduates can choose to take a year abroad, there are no tuition fees for students undertaking a year abroad and Essex offers targeted funding for students who might otherwise not be able to take advantage of the programme. All departments and campuses are involved in the University’s exchange programmes and the number of students choosing courses including a year abroad has risen dramatically.

Essex is also expanding its international programmes and including internships, volunteering and research placements abroad. At the same time it has introduced structured support to make sure students get the most out of their international experience and can share what they have gained with other students.

New ways to explore the world's media

The KTP between the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at Essex and media tracking company Signal has led to a revolutionary new way to explore the world’s media.

The result of this multi-award-winning KTP is a unique product which analyses over three million news sources daily to create highly-targeted media monitoring feeds so businesses can access relevant information in a single place and extract intelligence and insight in a meaningful way. The software offers de-duplication and advanced filtering options and learns as the user interacts with it.

Although the KTP ended in March 2015, the collaboration between the University and Signal continues with Essex students working at Signal, via paid internships, and Signal colleagues giving workshops to Essex students. Signal and the University also recently co-organised an international workshop on trends in news information retrieval.