Talent pays off: when early promise becomes later success

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TALENT PAYS OFF: WHEN EARLY PROMISE BECOMES LATER SUCCESS

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

It’s not easy to find a definition which everyone can agree on. Dictionaries offer us some hints to the core of the concept: success means that something has reached a happy ending, but success also means that something is perceived to be good and is celebrated by others. So, whatever it is that makes us happy when we achieve something after working hard, that is success. But also, once the achievement has happened, if it is also good for others and achieves recognition from them, then that is a resounding Success with a capital S!

To achieve the first part of success, the “happy ending”, we need to call on every inch of our talent, to take a project right to its conclusion – for which success is only one of the possible outcomes, as you wait in hope for the results of your efforts.

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T A L E N T P A Y S O F F : W H E N E A R L Y P R O M I S E B E C O M E S L A T E R SUCCESS

EARLY PROMISE

Sometimes, in the process of moving from promise through to the final outcome, it’s good to be able to call on the initiative of promising young talent. So, getting four Medicine students together to research the issue of high-blood pressure is a success. But when their research wins two awards at the conference of the Spanish Society for High Blood Pressure and another from the Spanish Society for Bone and Mineral Metabolism Research, this is no longer just a happy ending: recognition has been achieved and from the professional association

of Spanish medicine, no less. This Success was achieved by the Pablo Serrano, Esther Ruiz, Daniel Gil, Blanca Carreras, Bettina De Berardinis and Andrea Gea, all Medicine students, under the coordination of their lecturer, Dr Enrique Rodilla.

How about another example? For the promising young talent studying Architecture at CEU, the happy ending is to finish their End-ofDegree Projects: success. But when professional architects consider these projects to be the best that

they have seen over the last two years, then such recognition can only mean that it is a fully fledged Success. No one knows it better than José Luis Moreno Delgado: on the same day that , the professional association of architects in Valencia, the Colegio de Arquitectos-CV, gave him an award for the best Endof-Degree Project in the Valencia region over the last two years, the Fundación Caja de Arquitectos also chose him for an Arquia grant, out of all the architecture students in the whole of Spain. José Luis was the seventh CEU UCH student to receive an Arquia grant in six years. And it was the third edition running that a

CEU UCH student had achieved first prize for an end-of-degree project from the Colegio de Arquitectos

CV, after the awards had previously gone to Loreto Navarro and Pedro Terrades. Success, after Success,

after Success!

H A I L E D B Y T H E PROFESSION

It’s true that professional recognition doesn’t always come so soon. Sometimes, it comes as the crowning moment of an entire career, as the reward for an exemplary record, in both the lecture hall and in professional activity, all day, every day. The Valencian regional government awarded this year’s Communication Prize for Advertising to Chari García Cubells, a lecturer who has taught on the Advertising degree at CEU from its very first year, nurturing creativity in every one of her students. This success in her everyday work has been joined by professional Success: she was recognized at these awards as a leading woman in the advertising world with a long career behind her. A star in industry and in the lecture hall.

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H A I L E D B Y E U R O P E

Sometimes success is acknowledged by the professional peers you rub shoulders with; but sometimes, recognition of your Success is international. Imagine the European Union recognizing your Success once, and then afterwards doing

it again. Susana Sanz Caballero, professor of international law at CEU, has now been awarded two Jean Monnet Chairs. In today’s Europe, in which xenophobia, populism, scepticism and the breaking of old alliances is on the increase, the challenge of those holding a Jean Monnet Chair is to research, educate and communicate to the wider public in order to ensure that the DNA of the EU endures: human rights and values are at its very core.

Other times, Europe makes you number one. For example, the

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine is the first faculty of a private university to be approved and accredited by the European Association of Establishments for

Veterinary Education (EAEVE). This Success, in the form of recognition from this official European body, is the happy outcome of the hard and unstinting work of the whole Faculty and the University. It is a reward to be celebrated.

At CEU we don’t know whether our students will achieve success or Success, but everything is in place to ensure talent is rewarded.