“I am a part of the university”

Abstract

Across the student journey, student engagement approaches, roles and projects offer opportunities for non-traditional students to join the conversation, become part of educational development projects and work with staff as equal partners. This chapter will explore what student engagement means in practice for those in the thick of it, the mature students themselves. This was a position the author was recently in himself and, in this chapter, he will discuss and reflect on how student engagement, and everything that goes along with that term, has influenced his higher education (HE) journey throughout both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies; most notably, how his role as a Student Ambassador for his university has fostered engagement that has benefited both his overall experience and his university. The author will also discuss the viewpoints of and first-hand accounts by other mature students who have been engaged as Student Ambassadors, in order to understand what student engagement means for them as individuals and how it has shaped their own HE journeys. This discussion includes stories and reflections that the students feel show their personal experience of engagement in practice through participating in such roles. The author will argue that engaging non-traditional students, including mature students, in extracurricular opportunities such as Student Ambassador roles can benefit everyone involved; he will also propose that there is no such thing as a ‘fixed notion of student engagement’. He will explain why it almost certainly should be considered a dynamic and highly individualistic concept – especially in relation to non-traditional students.