Principal's Medal: William Sproxton-Miller

I should now like to introduce the Principal’s Medal. This award was inaugurated eleven years ago with a gift from three anonymous donors and is supported by Ede and Ravenscroft, believed to be the oldest firm of tailors and robe-makers in the world. 

The award of the Principal’s Medal recognises students who display exceptional endeavour and achievement during their time at St Andrews. The awards are open to final-year undergraduates and postgraduates in any discipline. The achievements celebrated are academic as well as sporting, musical, or other attainments. 

For the academic year 2019 to 2020, the Principal’s Medal is being presented to three outstanding students. This afternoon we recognise William Sproxton-Miller, who has just received his Master of Arts with Honours in Medieval History – and I am pleased to note that he has received a first-class degree.

William’s nomination references his outstanding intellectual accomplishments: he has made the Dean’s List for each year of study at the University, demonstrating his sustained commitment to excellence. William has also obtained nine other academic prizes, including most recently the Mediaeval History Dissertation Prize for his thesis on medicine in Anglo-Saxon society. In William’s nomination, one tutor writes that he possesses a ‘razor-sharp intellect’ which makes ‘him one of the very strongest students whom [they] have taught in [their] twenty-five-year career.’ But, critically, the nominator adds that, and I quote, ‘what makes William truly extraordinary is his genuine care for others, his innate curiosity and creativity – and his complete lack of ego […] he is kind, gentle and considerate to his peers’.

William demonstrates this consideration for others through extensive voluntary work with Transition St Andrews. As a first-year, William attended gardening sessions and quickly became manager of the St Mary’s Community Garden. It is estimated that William has volunteered well over 1000 hours at the Community Garden where he has expanded the vegetable beds and grown produce for staff, students, and community members alike. On top of this, another of William’s nominators writes that: ‘William has made St Mary’s Garden a safe space where people can arrive stressed, sad, isolated or grieving, and leave more calm, content, connected and fulfilled.’ 

William, in recognition of all that you have achieved both academically and personally during your time as an undergraduate, and as you prepare for your next steps in the police force, it gives me great pleasure to bestow upon you the Principal’s Medal.

– Principal Sally Mapstone