What will you say?
Questions and answers from the SMG staff forum
‘The role we all play in supporting students’ - Dec 2009
The following summary narrative is taken from the questions and answers session which took place on 16 December 2009. Representatives from SMG were Trevor Sheldon and Jane Grenville. Supporting the Q and A panel were Sue Johnston (DFM Campus Services) and Kate Dodd (Academic Registry).
Also included are answers to the questions submitted in advance of the event via the SMG staff forums email address and the anonymous questions link.
Questions asked by the audience
Q.1 There are predicted cuts in funding coming from the Government, what impact do you think this will have on the support we offer to students?
The University has for some time now has been taking steps to control our finances. We have been asking departments to find ways of making savings and of bringing in more income. This trend will continue.
However, because we have been doing this as we’ve been going along, the impact of government cuts has been less of a shock and we haven’t needed to take as drastic a set of measures as some other Universities now facing the same tougher climate.
The cuts will have an inevitable impact on the student support we can offer and staff and students will feel the strain, but we will work hard to minimise the impact. We will continue to improve services whilst trying to maximise efficiencies so that the cuts aren’t felt at the front line.
We will also continue to make investment in maintenance and expansion of the campus for example new buildings and improvements to learning spaces.
What we want to make clear is that decisions or solutions we come to around the changes, savings and investments we make are properly thought through. We are not making knee jerk reactions to the announcement of cuts and the potential effects on our core academic activity is carefully considered. We do not jump to conclusions; our options are always well considered.
Q2. Has the national debacle over the student loans had an impact at York?
This has had an impact on a handful of students. It’s not hit our students as hard as in other areas. This is perhaps because our students start a little later and many had received their money before starting.
For those who were affected we have helped them, where possible, through the hardship fund.
Q.3 The new campus development which will give a better experience to students in the form of increased space and better timetabling. I’ve heard that we will have to cut back plans for this. Is this true?
No it’s not true. We have always envisaged the Heslington East development as taking place through a series of phases; the pace being determined by availability of funds and our needs. Plans for Phase One of campus East have not changed. The funding / borrowing for the expansion to Heslington East were in place before the credit crunch hit and the cut backs in Government funding. The academic buildings planned are still on schedule and to their original spec.
These new buildings will help departments (Computer Science, TFTV, Law and
Management) to have better space and teaching facilities which in turn will free up more space on Heslington West.
What about the lack of catering facilities and the problems with transport?
We’ve had many discussions about catering facilities on Heslington East. There are plans for cafes in the Hub and in the Law and Management building. However, we have also decided we do need more catering and social spaces and so have plans to spend around £1.6 million to create an expandable catering and social area due to be available from around January 2011 which will also serve the occupants of the next phase.
We have also provided a subsidised bus route through the East Campus. The number four and six buses run through Heslington East to Heslington West. We are also looking at the timetabling to try and clump teaching sessions together by location. Where students do need to move between the two sites, we are hoping to build in a one hour break to allow for this. When we have the new timetables we will be able to do some modelling which will help us understand if and where there may be any potential problems.
Will further / future phases be delayed?
In addition to the extended catering and social space, there are still plans to develop a new Langworth College which will face the new Goodricke College on Heslington east. We are looking for this to be ready 2012/2013.
Q4. If or when the Government lifts the fees cap, what will we do with any additional money, how will we help support students with this?
We are not in a position to take a formal view on student fees until the review the Government is undertaking has come out with some recommendations for discussion. Anything more than that would just be unhelpful speculation.
What we do know is that the University needs more funding to maintain our current
offering and to do the things we want to do in the future. We have a campus to improve and maintain, excellent teaching and learning and a reputation in research to protect. We have expectations of improved services and infrastructure – this all comes at an increasing cost and we need additional levels of funding to keep where we are let alone finance expansion and improvement. However, we do want that increased funding to be generated in ways which does not discourage less well off students from studying at York.
If students and parents ask what else they will get for the extra money they will have to pay, what is our answer to this?
Firstly, any fees increase (if that is the outcome of the review) will not affect students currently applying for university and so it does not apply. Second, even if fees do increase, the total funding to universities may not increase as it may be balanced by a fall in the HEFCE funding.
How will we spend any additional money that we may possibly get? On doing the things that we have always done, on the staff and infrastructure necessary to deliver excellent teaching, and continuing with our programme of capital investment to maintain and improve the student experience.
Q.5 The Government has outlined the value of post graduates, what value do you place on them at York?
We see the great value brought to us by PG students; they are our future researchers, future lecturers and future leaders. They bring a great deal to the University.
We want to create space and facilities for all post graduates to have, something they don’t all have equal access to right now. We hope in a short time to be in a position to be able to guarantee every PhD student access to an appropriate desk space for their work. One of the issues with post graduates is the intensive nature of their time here followed by them leaving – in many Universities this means they don’t have a voice. Here at York I believe they do.
There are discussions around whether we should establish one or more graduate schools. (See also answers to the pre-submitted questions – these follow at the end of this document.)
Q.6 Compared to other Universities we have a rather fragmented student support service based across the campus, are there any plans to create a one stop centre for support? (asked by the audience and submitted as a pre-question)
We may try to co-locate some of our student support services, but this could prove to be tricky. We don’t really want to create a single point of entry, we like the fact that there are different ways in. If students are uncomfortable with one way in, they have other points of entry to choose from.
The improvements we are trying to make is in the connectivity and co-ordination within the system. Physically we are thinking about a plan to bring support areas together, perhaps in an ‘arcade’ now that we have a space opportunity with Heslington East.
Q.7 Who does the future watching for student support. The balance of students will change e.g. increased international students, who looks and thinks about what our future student support structure should look like?
There are a number of different bodies looking at this, for example the planning committee, SMG, marketing steering group, academic strategy group and operations group. Perhaps we need to be a bit more strategic and co-ordinated in doing this.
We want to increase the number of international students and the number of post graduate students, but we also want to look at the ways of learning, for example people working and studying, or distance learning.
That said, we are not looking to have campuses overseas, this doesn’t fit with our culture and brings significant risks to quality. We also want to increase distance learning but not massively. We want to retain our high quality campus experience with an emphasis on research.
Q.8 Looking at the offering we give to student in CELT, some students haven’t had the experience other students on campus have. What can we do about this?
Yes, we agree. Students haven’t had access to the same resources e.g computer IDs and the spaces to learn in, in the same way as our other students.
There is a lot of competition for space, especially during the holidays with competing demands, for example, from conferences. However, the decision has been made to release some of this space to help with the problem.
We will be modelling the needs of CELT into the timetabling system over the summer periods. This may have knock-on effects for other areas, but things will get easier when future spaces become available on Heslington East.
Questions asked in advance by staff
The university plan highlights sets out four aims: excellence, sustainability, internationalisation and inclusivity. In this context how does the SMG envisage demonstrating support for PG students in the next five years?
Following on from this.
Would the SMG consider creating a 'Graduate School' to help package and promote what York does to support the student experience?
(See also answer to similar question asked at the forum)
I think we can demonstrate support for Post Graduates (PG) if we consider their journey. Firstly we have developed an Online Post Grad application System (OPAS) which makes it easier for students to apply and track their applications.
We are in the middle of a review of PG admissions in order to improve the speed and quality of the process. Similarly PG students will be offered accommodation on-line using the system that has worked so well for UGs this year. The results from the PG Taught Experience Survey shows that our PGT students report a better academic experience than the average in the sector in all aspects of teaching and learning.
This identified areas where we need to improve however, and the departments concerned are working hard to achieve this. We are improving the library resources and space over the next couple of years and we have increased access to learning and study spaces for PG students in the arts and humanities with the opening of the Berrick Saul Building.
We have also increased provision of training for PGR students through the GTU and a Code of Practice adopted by the university for research degrees is improving the quality and consistency of supervision.
How do we get the balance right between being supportive and being overly protective?
This is an important issue. We want to support our students academically and from a welfare point of view but at the same time we want to help them develop into independent learners and confident citizens. If we give too much support we encourage dependence, but if we are not there for our students we risk missing those who need just a bit more or who would be in serious difficulties without support.
We try to solve this by use of the supervisory system and the welfare role of the Colleges. This allows us to vary the sort of support depending on the types of issues that arise, rather than one size fits all. It allows more of a risk-based approach, something that is also
supported by the Open Door Team, a first point of contact service for students emotional, psychological or mental health difficulties. I don’t know if we have the balance right
however, and I think in some students would benefits from more self-directed inquiry-based study, and in others perhaps there needs to be a bit more hands on support from those students who find this very challenging.
How important do you think the role of the Support Technician / Technologist is in the "Student experience" (undergraduate, Postgraduate and MSc) here at York; and if you believe it is crucial, how are staff levels to deliver this important knowledge and safety requirement being assessed and addressed?
Support technicians play an important role in the science departments, for example, preparing experiments and other lab –based learning experiences for our students and supporting student learning in other ways. The role is important and departments are responsible themselves for getting the balance right so that there is an appropriate and efficient mix of technical support and academic staff and the all with the right skills set. It would not be appropriate for me to say as DVC what the right mix is; this is something I would hope departments (hopefully in discussion with each other) will manage well.
