Our ‘In Conversation With…’ events began on Monday, with a panel from the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences answering student questions.  

The panel consisted of: 

• Dr Simon Igo - Associate Dean - Student Experience 

• Dr Emma Holdsworth - Associate Head of School - Student Experience 

• Dr Jess Bishop – Curriculum Lead – Social Work, Childhood, Youth and Education 

The event was chaired by Lucy Goodacre and Emily Long from CUSU. We picked out three of the key questions from the event below… 

How can the school support Course Reps & Student Leaders? What works well and what doesn't?

It's about students having that authentic voice so that they can be seen to be heard, and so that they can have an impact in terms of what we do, either on course level, school level, or even faculty level. We do have a shortfall of a student reps, which is something we'd like to address. 

You can't have too many reps, and so we'd certainly encourage people to sign up! Most courses have should have at least one rep each year, so that's the minimum that we need. Courses can have as many as they like and any student can put themselves forward to be a rep. I think it's a really good way to understand a lot about university systems and what's going on; and you get training for the role! 

How does the school support students' Mental Health and Wellbeing?

We support students through general pastoral support that we provide. It’s either called the APT or the PPT scheme, depending on which course students are on in our school. Every student should have been allocated a tutor when they first enrolled, and that's your go to person for a variety of things, including pastoral support. 

That tutor isn't necessarily going to provide counselling or any of that type of intervention, but what they will do is sign post any student who's in distress to our counselling or to the right team, depending on what the need is. That's what they're there for; to make sure that you get to the right place for support. Certainly within Psychology, we're always posting initiatives and things that we can offer in terms of support. 

What 'Top Tips' do you have for students who are doing their studies or academic writing for the first time?

Plan! Create a study plan and try to organize your time. This is my top tip to students who aren't planning; what you want to be doing is doing really well in assessments and so that's the thing that will cause you a bit of stress and anxiety. The best way to alleviate that is to put a plan in place and make sure you've got a very carefully set out time plan. I would always say, look at your assessment deadline and then pull it forward a week and make that your deadline to complete it, so that you've got a few days to just carefully step back from it. Then really read it through and check your work, because I can guarantee you will automatically have improved your chances of doing a lot better by spending a bit of time editing your work. 

For more information on the ‘In Conversation With…’ events, there is a full schedule available here. A full transcript and video will be made available shortly.