REALM student reaps rewards for professional practice project work

Posted 24 August 2017

Josie Hobbs, 21, from Malvern, Worcestershire, is a double prize winner following her success during project work last year.

Josie recently completed the second year of the Rural Enterprise and Land Management degree programme at Harper Adams University. During the year the students were tasked with completing group work, which saw them take on the roles of rural business consultants for two fictional clients.

Josie explained: “Savills worked with us to set the assignment. We had to visit a farm and make recommendations for its diversification. Our four main ideas were to develop crop boxes, create a distillery, start a storage and warehouse business and to open up holiday lets.

“We worked as a group on the ideas and then presented our report to Savills.”

Lecturer Andrew Black added: “This was an example of fantastic industry engagement at the forefront of rural professional practice. Savills supplied us with the case study location and the students had to work hard as a team, not just coming up with business ideas but also handling the logistics of team work in terms of what each of them would work on and how they would work together.

“All of the students’ reports were good, but Josie’s team went above and beyond and Josie herself was the highest scoring student on the module.

“The communication between Josie and the client was all recorded and made fascinating reading. It didn’t seem like an academic piece of work but rather real life business between a rural professional and her client.”

The winning team received a cheque from Savills and Josie received an iPad, sponsored by Beat Recruitment.

Josie has now started a placement-year job with Roger Parry and Partners, Shrewsbury.