Abstract
Will there ever be a University that provides sufficient staffing resource to provide the perfect academic advising and tutoring service to all students? There may also be the small matter of a debate as to what that perfect service may offer. This article will discuss one University’s approach that sought to makes effective use of staffing resource, offers significant development opportunities for those staff and ensure relevance and connectivity between students and their staff. The model that was designed, and is now embedded, focused on the creation of an integrated system of Student Success Advisers (SSA). These roles were filled by students who had just completed their degree in the faculty in which they are then employed. This new staffing resource targets a specific aspect of support and advising for students that focuses upon student transition and the first year experience. The SSAs are viewed by students as relevant and relatable providing an approachable interface between students and staff, and evidence suggests that it works. The roles were created through the University’s participation in the Higher Education Academy’s What Works Student Retention and Success programme (2012-2016) and now sees 17 SSAs employed across the University. This article will consider the creation of the role and its fit to the the university; offer clarity around role objectives and provide insights from GSSAs on impact of the role. It will then detail how the role grew and became embedded across the university, explaining the integration with the university’s wider student support system to engage students through their transition and first year experience.
Highlights
For the past 6 years Birmingham City University (BCU) has been developing, evaluating and expanding the roles of recent graduates in supporting and advising new students through the transition into and through the University
The role was created through the What Works?2, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, national initiative which provided the opportunity for the University to explore student retention and success through a funded and focused approach
This echoed the perspective of Troxel (2010): (35) who in her synthesis of retention literature recommended that student engagement and active learning should be at the heart of learning and teaching
Summary
For the past 6 years Birmingham City University (BCU) has been developing, evaluating and expanding the roles of recent graduates in supporting and advising new students through the transition into and through the University. Interventions had to fall into at least one of the three categories (active learning, co-curricular, and induction) and “had to aim to improve engagement and belonging through: facilitating supportive peer relations; enabling meaningful interaction between staff and students; developing students’ capacity, confidence, and identity to be successful higher education learners” (Thomas and Jones, 2017) These had been identified as areas of significant impact during What Works?1 project. Change normally starts small and in this case it started with three program teams, Radiography, Media and the Built Environment, who embraced the University’s student engagement philosophy and formulated a shared proposition and specific ideas for impactful change Through this process they were directed by the University’s Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) and Birmingham City Students’ Union (BCUSU) as the partners recognized the need to focus on the person, not the cohort, and to seek to make connections through a variety of means from academic to social to professional. Through these aims the University aimed to develop principles, processes and examples at course and school level of how to improve transition and retention practices that could be embedded across the university and shared with the sector through What Works?2
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