Hot on the heels of last week's news that former Poppleton student Jeremy Tiptree (BA Honours Business Studies, 2001) had made it on to the shortlist for appointment as a trainee barista at Caffe Nero (Ring Road branch) comes another story of student success.

In just two weeks, Alicia Dodgson (First-class BA Honours Psychology for Business, 1997) will join the staff of Boodles Department Store in the High Street, where she will be in sole charge of the first-floor nightwear counter. Alicia was only too happy to stress the value of her Poppleton course for her new job. She told The Poppletonian: "I can't even begin to imagine how I'd ever have had the confidence to sell cheap ill-fitting nightwear without the thorough grounding I received at Poppleton in Bandura's Social Learning Theory and Newell's Unified Theory of Cognition."

Doctor Fritz Itzig of our Psychology Department said that he and his colleagues were delighted by the news. "Alicia's capacity for recognising the epistemological and ontological implications of contemporary psychological theory meant that she always stood out from her fellow students. All of us here feel certain that she has a big future in pyjamas."

Keep it Mum

What should staff do when parents ring and ask about their sons and daughters? Last week we learnt that an academic at Lancaster University had been reprimanded for making "illicit disclosures" to a mother who asked for details of her son's progress.

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A similar reprimand has been issued to Maureen, Departmental Secretary in our own Department of Media and Cultural Studies. She recently responded to a mother's complaint about not hearing from her son for over three years by disclosing that the student in question had been sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for cocaine dealing, stabbing a senior member of staff and setting fire to the Chemistry Block.

Maureen now fully accepts that this violated the terms of the Data Protection Act and has agreed that her Employee of the Month photograph should be removed from the Media Studies concourse.

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Thought for the Week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

The door to opportunity is always labelled PUSH

(This struck me as being nicely in tune with our vice-chancellor's announcement that his door "is always open" - even if he's not actually in the room.)

String Along with Us

Plans are afoot to re-form the university's string quartet. There are currently vacancies for the following players:

First violin

Violin

Viola

Cello

Interested? Contact Marjorie Dragpoole through her atrium pigeonhole.

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