It was the turn of School of Life Sciences for this edition of our ‘In Conversation With…’ events last Friday. We welcomed a panel from the school to answer some faculty-based questions for students.

The panel consisted of:

• Dr Simon Igo - Associate Dean - Student Experience
• Dr Becky Butler – Head of School

The event was chaired by Lucy Goodacre and Emily Long from CUSU, who were joined by Gabriela Sulikowska, the Vice President for Activities at CUSU. We picked out three of the key questions from the event below…

How can the school support course reps and student leaders?

One of our philosophies, both within the faculty and across the University, is to ensure that we authentically listen to the Student Voice. That's important for us. Without your voice, it's very difficult to take initiatives forwards, getting your perspective and so on and so forth. There are many different channels in which we can authentically listen to your comments, your views and your opinions.

One of the formal approaches that we use is a Student Rep system and what we'd like to do is just encourage as many of you as possible to be part of this system. It's really quite a rewarding responsibility, not least as it's good to have on your CV. These are the sorts of things that employers like to see; that wider involvement within your time at university. At the moment across the faculty, we’ve probably got about a 25% vacancy rate, so we need more Student Reps now. You can be a Course Rep; ideally what we looking for is about one Course Rep for every 20 students on that course. That's the ideal. Of course, if we get more, that's even better.

It's actually really rewarding, so get involved and we will do everything we can to support you with that role. You get that insight into the mechanisms of how things work, how meetings work, how things are documented, etc. We encourage you to do it and we do facilitate and support all the meetings that happen throughout the year to make sure that voice is registered and heard in the school.

Do you have any tips on how to progress in my next few years at University?

The real key is engaging with the course as much as you can; attendance is key. Being present is essential for your course, but it's also more than that. It's getting involved in what the wider University offers. We're very fortunate; Coventry has some great support out there. The Centre of Academic Writing and Sigma Maths are based in the library to help with academic issues. We've got the Talent Team, which are there to help us on placements and getting extra experience; the key is to just get the value for your time.

Get on the student portal too! Find out what's available to you and get stuck in and get involved with as much as you can. That engagement will lead to a sense of belonging at university. Then you'll want to spend more time there it will all comes together with some of the best results and the best outcomes. So often we see that the students that have come out with the higher degree classifications are those that have really got stuck into university life and really made the most of every opportunity that's been out there.

Will the school be organising any educational trips for students this year?

We’ve just launched the Amsterdam trip for the Biosciences; that's just gone out on Aula for an expression of interest at the moment. I think there's three that I've authorized so far and there's also some that are running across the faculty. It is our intention (COVID permitting) that we can have a few trips available to students. All that information is coming out to people on Aula now, we had hoped would be able to start it slightly early in the semester, but as we all know, COVID and the travel restrictions hasn't allowed that. But we're really looking forward to them the staff are so excited. I can't tell you about the trips that are coming up but they’re really enthusiastic about it. I'm really hopeful that there's no more changes in travel restrictions and we can send the students on those trips.

They're open to all years at the moment. I think one of the things that we've struggled to ascertain, which is why there's an expression of interest on the one on the Biosciences, is exactly what the level of interest is going to be like because it's such an unusual year compared to normal. It's expression of interest now, but it's open to all year groups; it’s out on the community page rather than the module pages. We will, if we need to, prioritize our final year students because we are mindful that this is their last opportunity to travel with us. We are mindful of that but yes, we'll just have to see what happens. We have to send people in groups of 20 for insurance reasons, so we're hoping that we've got at least 20 then we're good to go. If we get lots of interest, then we'll add more groups of 20 and will manage it as best we can.

As we approach the half way stage of our ‘In Conversation With…’ events, make sure you are aware of your School’s event; a full schedule is available here. A full transcript and video will be made available shortly.