Principal's Medal: Zainab Magzoub
I should now like to introduce the Principal’s Medal. This award was inaugurated twelve 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, and the achievements celebrated are both academic and extra-curricular.
For the academic year 2020 to 2021, the Principal’s Medal is being presented to three outstanding students. Today we recognise Zainab Magzoub, who has just received her Master of Arts with Honours in Arabic, Spanish, and International Relations – and I am pleased to note that she has received a very strong first-class degree.
Zainab applied to join the University of St Andrews via our Supported Pathway programme, which is designed to unlock potential where it had previously not been allowed to flourish. Zainab impressed the interview panel so much that she was accepted directly into the School of International Relations rather than onto the supported pathway, and she has been utterly triumphant in her academic endeavours since then – consistently ranking at the very top of her class. Whilst so doing, Zainab has been an exemplary colleague to her peers, including by serving as a mentor to incoming students on widening access programmes for over two years.
Outwith the University, Zainab commits substantial portions of her time to supporting people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Zainab has worked with the Scottish Refugee Council as a Children and Families Support Worker, and she spends time around her studies teaching English to refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK. Zainab has also advocated to raise awareness of human rights crises as a Humanitarian Schools Speaker for the Red Cross, and she further supports young people as an Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust – for which she was a finalist for the Young Ambassador of the Year award in 2018. These are just a few of the organisations with which Zainab has worked, which range further from Queen Margaret University to Waverley Care, and on subjects from decolonising educational curricula to awareness-raising about the prevalence of female genital mutilation.
In all of these activities, Zainab brings a deep-rooted commitment to supporting others, and to wielding her education for the good of the people around her and the society of which she is a part. That is an exemplary way to use one’s St Andrews education.
Zainab, in recognition of all that you have achieved academically and your selfless support of others during your time as an undergraduate, it gives me great pleasure to bestow upon you the Principal’s Medal. Zainab will join us at one of the rescheduled ceremonies to receive her medal from me in person; for now, I am pleased that Zainab will share a few words of her own.
– Principal Sally Mapstone