Student representation at senior faculty level
Background
In June 2017, it was agreed by the university’s most senior committee within its academic governance structure that Faculty Boards would be discontinued as, in their words, they had largely become “information outlets” that rarely provoked “any substantial debate”.
We believed that these meetings - attended by the relevant Vice President and other student representatives - provided a valuable, and the only, opportunity for students to be represented at a senior level of the Faculty.
The decisions made by Faculty Boards such as developing academic policy, agreeing Faculty strategic plans and looking at what courses should be run are now made by the Faculty Management Team (FMT) - an executive decision-making body with no student representation.
We were deeply concerned about the lack of students involved at this level of decision-making at the university. As a result, ARU agreed to investigate an alternative way students can input at Faculty level.
The options
The Academic Registry convened a meeting of (Deputy) Deans of Faculty and the SU in late October 2017 to discuss this issue and two principal ideas for a way forward emerged:
- To establish a forum in each Faculty, to provide a regular opportunity to discuss issues primarily identified by the students. This is based on a ‘Student Advisory Board’ model operating in the Lord Ashcroft International Business School
- To allow the relevant Vice President to be a full member of the FMT
The SU position
We believe the answer is quite simple - to make the relevant Vice President a member of FMT. This would send a real signal to students, staff and others that ARU were dedicated to taking the needs of its students seriously.
This option would allow the Vice President to bring issues to the table - as an elected representative - but also to contribute to the discussions that are already taking place within each Faculty, many of which will have a direct impact on students.
Setting up another meeting (the alternative option) would take up more of people’s time and focus largely on being a forum which works one-way, student representatives brining issues to the table.
Moving forward
After a number of failed attempts to contact the Academic Registrar, the SU were told that the issue was to be debated by the Corporate Management Team (CMT) at their meeting in early January 2018. We had not been invited to the party.
The President of the SU lobbied CMT members in advance of the meeting. The feedback we received ranged from support for our preferred option, to a reluctant agreement with reservations. It seems there remains concerns around the SU managing confidential and/or sensitive matters. In the end, we did attend the meeting however no decision was made. It was agreed that the matter was to be discussed at a Vice Chancellor’s Group/Deans (VCGD) meeting on 18th January 2018.
Call to action
We had hoped that a resolution would be found fairly quickly, and as such, it would not be necessary to escalate the matter any further. As that had not happened, and after we were told the President of the SU would not be given the opportunity to be present at the VCGD meeting, we took the action we did* on 15th January 2018.
*https://www.facebook.com/AngliaRuskinSU/videos/1700835013293599/
We strongly believed students representatives should have a seat at FMT, and had told the university just that. But now we needed students to do the same.
Conclusion
VCGD met on the morning of 18th January 2018. The President of the SU received a call from the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education). She said that it was agreed that the relevant Vice President will be able to attend FMT but will required in the terms of reference to not be considered as a ‘full member’. It was also discussed that there will be ‘closed business’ for these meetings in which the Vice President will not be in attendance.
VCGD has drafted a proposal which was discussed at the FVC/LEDIC meeting on 31st January 2018.
Next steps