Your Voice

Student Representatives (or Reps for short) are incredibly important volunteers in your School Community as they lead and empower you to make changes in the University. They gather feedback from students and then put forward your views on your course, department, and any other aspects of University life at Student-Staff Forums and via the Student Experience Officers.

How does it work? 

Student Reps

• Work closely with Programme Directors and other staff to help shape development of their academic programme.
• Gather academic and course-specific feedback directly from students (such as module design and learning experience)
• Gather feedback on general non-academic issues affecting students in your group (such as digital issues, wellbeing and student experience)
• Attend termly Student Staff Forum (SSF) meetings with staff and other Reps to discuss any issues and improvements that can be made
• Feedback changes that have been made and communicate updates with other students on your course.
• Are a friendly link between the students they represent and the Department to make sure that students knows what is going on, where they can go for help and that every student is included in their learning community.
• Have regular contact with Student Experience Officers (SEOs) and other staff to discuss issues and make improvements.

How much time will it take and what are the benefits? 

Being a Rep does not take up a lot of time, there are usually one or two meetings per term which are an hour long and the rest is done over chat on Microsoft Teams.  

Being a Rep is an exciting way to be directly involved in the big decisions related to your course, it will give you valuable experience and help you gain skills that your future employers will value. You will receive a certificate and a note on your degree transcript noting your involvement and staff will be happy to give you a reference if you do a good job. 

Sound good?

Apply to become a Rep 

Want to get in contact with the Rep for your programme? Find your Rep now.

Every term, we’ll send you quick surveys to see how we’re doing. We recognise that we ask for your feedback a lot but it’s because we genuinely care about your student experience. 

Surveys will include:

• Student Evaluation of Teaching and Learning
• Mid-Module Evaluation Questionnaires
• NSS (National Student Survey, for final year UG students)
• UKES (UK Engagement Survey, for non-final year UG students)
• PTES (Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, for PGT students)
• PRES (Postgraduate Research Experience Survey, for PGR students)

Please make sure you fill in these surveys when we send them out to you, we’ll usually give you a freebie to say thank you!

The Guild is your Students’ Union, and they are here to make sure your voice is heard! Decisions are made by Officers, committees, academic representatives and YOU. From shaping how the Guild is run to campaigning on a national higher education policies, they will help you make the change you want to see.

Through the Guild you can make your voice heard by:

• Joining a Committee
• Submitting an idea
• Becoming a Rep
• Standing for a place at NUS (National Union of Students) Conference
• Standing for a place on the Guild Officer Team

Find out more via the Guild website.

Sometimes, things don’t go the way we plan and it’s important that you are able to feed this information back to us so that we can improve for next time. You can feed back through your Student Reps and your Student Experience Officers and we will be happy to investigate and help where we can. 

If you have taken the above steps and feel you need to take formal action, you can do so by getting in touch.  

We encourage any student who has experienced bullying or harassment to speak to their Wellbeing Officers who can support you through the experience and signpost you to Report It (hate crime), ‘You Report, We Support’ (sexual harassment and violence) or Guild Advice (all kinds of harrassment).