Faculty hosts second AHC Student Voice Summit
Nearly 50 students and staff from across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures have gathered this month for the second AHC Student Voice Summit
Nearly 50 students and staff from across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures have gathered this month for the second AHC Student Voice Summit.
The summit saw participants reflect on the student voice within the Faculty and build understanding of the challenges and obstacles to achieving authentic staff-student partnerships. Attendees worked together to develop ideas for solutions to these challenges and to plan new initiatives.
The Student Voice Summit in action
The event was attended by a diverse range of participants, including student reps, members of the Faculty Student Advisory Board, student interns, members of the Student Education Service, academics (including Directors of Student Education and Heads of Schools), representatives from Leeds University Union, the Executive Dean, the Pro-Dean and Deputy Pro-Deans for Student Education and other staff across the Faculty and University, who were passionate about empowering students to have an informed say on matters that affect them.
The Summit was modelled on an event which took place in 2019 and aimed to forge new connections and develop a community and network of key Faculty student voice stakeholder/practitioners to enable ongoing ideas exchange and cross-Faculty support. The 2019 event paved the way for initiatives such as the Faculty Student Advisory Board, which won a Partnership Award this year.
The organising team – Antony Butcher, Steven Clark, Jo Moran and Rebecca Sykes from the Student Education Service, as well as Deputy Pro-Dean for Student Education, Sascha Stollhans – said:
“We’d like to start by thanking those who were able to attend last week for their enthusiasm and participation. We’ve come away inspired by your ideas and are looking forward to reflecting on how the Faculty can further support and enable everyone to embed the student voice in everything we do in our different schools and areas of work.”
I was delighted to attend the Student Voice Summit and see for myself the true value of our students working in partnership with our academic and professional staff to work out new ways forward for student education in the Faculty. Such continuing and deepening collaboration is the surest way to achieve the excellent outcomes we all want. I’m already looking forward to the next Summit!
Organisers will be meeting over the summer to review the ideas discussed at the event to reflect on how the Faculty can support these, as well as looking at how they can support student voice activity across the Faculty by establishing a new network.
In the meantime, full notes and presentations from the event can be found online, via this link (you will need to sign in with your University username and password for access).
