How would you describe your key responsibilities as a School Rep, and what does a typical week look like in this role?
Communicating to staff and students is one of the main responsibilities in this role. It’s important to make sure that students’ voices are heard and represented within the school and university, and it’s equally important to make sure students understand and know about decisions made by the school in response.
Establishing a community is another key responsibility as a School Rep, especially on the back of a disrupted year last year where students didn’t get the opportunity to meet people on their course. In Economics, I have worked closely with the Course Reps and the Economics Society to run different events to build a community.
Listening to students is a final key responsibility. To ensure you are representing students’ voices it’s important to ensure you are reaching out and listening to students’ opinions and point of views.
A typical week as a School Rep involves checking in with the year specific Course Reps, attending any meetings (these can range from Education Assemblies with the LUU Education Officer Exec to meetings with Programme Directors in your school), collaborating with other School Reps (myself and the other LUBS School Reps worked with the Community Intern to establish a student-led newsletter), and communicating with students.
What skills have you gained and developed as a School Rep?
As highlighted above communication, listening, and organisation are three key skills I have developed whilst in this School Rep role.
How do you think being a School Rep is helping you get ready for your future?
I think it’s really helped me prepare for a graduate role. You gain lots of transferable skills from this role, which provides great examples for interviews to demonstrate skills such as communication.
In addition, as a School Rep you are required to attend lots of different meetings with staff and students from across the university (most of which you have never met before) and share students’ opinions in these meetings. It can be daunting at first raising your (virtual) hand and speaking, but after time it gets easier, so I feel I’ll be a lot less nervous going into meetings in my graduate role.
What’s your biggest win or proudest moment as a School Rep?
My proudest moment as School Rep was organising an event during Refreshers Week. This event was a speed dating style event but with the aim for people to meet new friends on the same course. Those who attended were given 4 minutes to talk to the person opposite and then would move down to the next person. It was a great way for people to meet others from across Economics. It was extremely well attended, and everyone was extremely grateful that this event had been organised. It was great to see that the things you do as School Rep can have a positive impact.
