Saints Skills Builder Award

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This award is for students who want to strengthen and develop a range of skills by undertaking varied activities.

It is based around the University’s 20 graduate attributes, which comprise the knowledge, skills and capabilities that the University seeks to give all students the opportunity to develop throughout their time at St Andrews.

Aims

The award aims to develop your ability to:

strengthen a range of graduate attributes through curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.
analyse and reflect on your own skills profile and develop a positive approach towards skill development.

Video transcript

The Saints Skills Builder Award is a new award at the University of St Andrews, which recognises students' personal development of their graduate attributes.

The University's 20 graduate attributes are grouped into five key areas: Social and Responsible, Valuing Diversity, Global Outlook, Leadership Skills, and Entrepreneurial Mindset.

You can develop these graduate attributes through a range of curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities.

For example, being a member of a society or club like a basketball club or beekeeping society, taking on a leadership position in a group assignment, attending a seed workshop, or conducting fieldwork as part of your module.

By developing and reflecting on these graduate attributes, you will support your studies and research, as well as increasing your employability after your time at St Andrews.

This award is a great opportunity to build up your employability skills and learn how to best articulate these skills for future employment or future studies.

All undergraduates and postgraduates are eligible for the award, which is recognised on your HEAR transcript.

How do you gain this award?

Firstly, log on to the graduate attributes portal.

Next, select My Saints Skills Builder Award in the menu on the left-hand side of the webpage.

There are four sections to the Skills Builder Award.

Firstly, you document and reflect on the co-curricular training that you participated in at the start of your degree programme.

This is where you learned about good academic practice, equality, diversity and inclusivity, and other core university values.

You then identify the overlap between your own personal values and the university's graduate attributes to reflect on what topics you place personal value on.

Next, in the second section, you complete an Ability Profile where you reflect on your current ability and skill level of each of the graduate attributes and what level of ability you would like to develop for each graduate attribute.

At the end, you will be shown a spider's web of your current skill level in relation to your desired level.

You will also be given suggestions of which graduate attributes you might want to develop further.

After analysing your skills, you start logging all your activities which are developing your graduate attributes.

You can sign in and log these activities at any time during your degree.

You will notice that every time you log a new activity, your pie chart on the right-hand side of the screen will change in relation to which of the five key areas of the graduate attributes you have been documenting in this portal.

Once you have logged 20 activities in the portal, you perform a final reflection about your skills development journey.

Then press submit and congratulations, you have successfully completed the Saints Skills Builder Award.

More information can be found by visiting the Saints Skills Builder Award web page.

Eligibility

This award is open to all matriculated undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of St Andrews.

Criteria

The award is completed using the University’s Graduate Attributes Platform, and clicking on the ‘award’ icon in the left hand menu.

To gain an award you must do three things:

Undertake a skills analysis to reflect on your current skills and pinpoint areas to develop.
Undertake and reflect on a number of activities that you have completed whilst being a student at St Andrews. These might be curricular activities (e.g. assessments, field trips, group-work, research skills); co-curricular activities (e.g. workshops provided by CEED or Careers, being a class representative, a study abroad experience) or extra-curricular activities (e.g. volunteering, clubs/societies, a caring role, work experience).
Answer several reflective questions about the skills you’ve developed through these activities.

Timings

This award is open-ended. You can start and finish the award at a time to suit you. Activities can be carried over from previous years. This means you could begin developing your skills in your first year and choose to complete the award in your second, third or fourth year if you wish. Alternatively, you are also welcome to complete the award in one year.

If you wish to have the award recognised on your official Higher Education Achievement Award (HEAR) transcript you must complete the award criteria before 23 May in your graduating year. The Award will be added to your HEAR transcript in the June of whichever year you complete it.

Getting started

Visit the Graduate Attributes Platform and click on the ‘award’ icon in the left-hand menu.

Graduate Attributes Platform