There are two key components to my strategy;
1. Visibility. In the past students have often felt alienated from academic representation because they didn't know who to go to about their issues, despite there being a list of academic representatives available on SUSU. Throughout the year I am doing my best to challenge this by making my role as visible as possible, and making sure that students are aware of both how to raise an issue and how to get involved as a rep themselves.
My first priority after I received my SUSU training was to send out a number of emails to students, other reps, and relevant members of University staff including my contact details and encouraging them to get in touch with me. This included the attached email distributed to all Humanities Students, which also encouraged them to nominate themselves to become course reps in the (then) upcoming SUSU election. I noticed that certain departments severely lacked student representation, so I specifically targeted these areas and took steps to promote academic representation more widely to these students This included a piece in the History Staff-Student Newsletter containing pictures of myself and the History Department President with our contact details, and a visit to a first Year Music lecture, which resulted in three students contacting me to express an interest in becoming course reps.
2. Communication between Academic Reps. In order for student feedback given to course reps to be used effectively to promote change that students want to see, it needs to be communicated well through the appropriate channels. This means that Department Presidents should be encouraging student feedback by increasing course rep numbers and making themselves available to be contacted by any student who would prefer to speak to them directly. Once the Department Presidents have had feedback from course reps at their SSLC I make sure that they communicate this feedback to me too, via their SSLC minutes and a monthly report I ask for each month. I supplied each President with a template that included four questions to be answered;
1. What kinds of issues have students raised to you this month?
2. How do you feel that your most recent SSLC went?
3. Is there anything new or exciting happening in your Department at the moment? Would you like this to be promoted further?
4. Is there anything I can be doing to better support you?
I've found that this is really helpful for making sure that student issues are being passed up the chain of Academic representation without imposing too many additional meetings on the Department Presidents. I compile these responses monthly and report them to the Faculty Officer for Arts and Humanities, and Jo Lisney, VP Education and Democracy, as well as using them to inform my decisions in meetings where I am the only student representative.
Another thing that I've done to ensure between communication between Academic Reps is making a change to the Humanities School SSLC Terms of Reference to state that if a Department President cannot attend the meeting they must send a course rep in their place. This ensures that feedback from each Department is heard at a higher level, and allows for comparisons to be made between issues impacting multiple departments.
I hope that by implementing this strategy throughout the year, Humanities Students will feel listened to and well represented, which in turn will improve their student experience.
1. Visibility. In the past students have often felt alienated from academic representation because they didn't know who to go to about their issues, despite there being a list of academic representatives available on SUSU. Throughout the year I am doing my best to challenge this by making my role as visible as possible, and making sure that students are aware of both how to raise an issue and how to get involved as a rep themselves.
My first priority after I received my SUSU training was to send out a number of emails to students, other reps, and relevant members of University staff including my contact details and encouraging them to get in touch with me. This included the attached email distributed to all Humanities Students, which also encouraged them to nominate themselves to become course reps in the (then) upcoming SUSU election. I noticed that certain departments severely lacked student representation, so I specifically targeted these areas and took steps to promote academic representation more widely to these students This included a piece in the History Staff-Student Newsletter containing pictures of myself and the History Department President with our contact details, and a visit to a first Year Music lecture, which resulted in three students contacting me to express an interest in becoming course reps.
2. Communication between Academic Reps. In order for student feedback given to course reps to be used effectively to promote change that students want to see, it needs to be communicated well through the appropriate channels. This means that Department Presidents should be encouraging student feedback by increasing course rep numbers and making themselves available to be contacted by any student who would prefer to speak to them directly. Once the Department Presidents have had feedback from course reps at their SSLC I make sure that they communicate this feedback to me too, via their SSLC minutes and a monthly report I ask for each month. I supplied each President with a template that included four questions to be answered;
1. What kinds of issues have students raised to you this month?
2. How do you feel that your most recent SSLC went?
3. Is there anything new or exciting happening in your Department at the moment? Would you like this to be promoted further?
4. Is there anything I can be doing to better support you?
I've found that this is really helpful for making sure that student issues are being passed up the chain of Academic representation without imposing too many additional meetings on the Department Presidents. I compile these responses monthly and report them to the Faculty Officer for Arts and Humanities, and Jo Lisney, VP Education and Democracy, as well as using them to inform my decisions in meetings where I am the only student representative.
Another thing that I've done to ensure between communication between Academic Reps is making a change to the Humanities School SSLC Terms of Reference to state that if a Department President cannot attend the meeting they must send a course rep in their place. This ensures that feedback from each Department is heard at a higher level, and allows for comparisons to be made between issues impacting multiple departments.
I hope that by implementing this strategy throughout the year, Humanities Students will feel listened to and well represented, which in turn will improve their student experience.
