For January's Rep of the Month, we have Lillith Tolley! Lillith is the Course Rep for MSc Digital Forensic Investigation and the Subject Rep for Forensics and Archaeology!
This year your Reps have been amazing and have practically been writing these articles for me! So in Lillith's words here's what happened!
Issue: While both Lvl 7 full-time and part-time cohorts had an introduction to the study skills, academic writing skills and library services in Welcome Week, the full-time level 7 Forensic students received multiple additional lectures on them and additional resources provided during Semester 1 because it was part of the dissertation module, which part-time students don’t do until their second year. This left the part-time students with a fraction of the information and the understanding of what lecturers expect for their first-year modules.
Affected Students: All level 7 Forensics part-time students, particularly those who have come from other institutions or have taken a break from studies which is a demographic disproportionately made up of young parents
Outcome: After raising this issue with 2 forensics heads of courses, no one had previously noticed. The lecturers agreed to the idea of additional sessions being planned for the first half of semester 2 for modules part-time students have, to catch up and support them during semester 2. The heads of the courses also agreed to make sure that it is accounted for when planning modules for the next academic year so both full-time and part-time students are treated equally and have access to the same resources. The head of the department had also been unaware of the discrepancy and agreed that the changes between myself and the heads of courses made sense.
Thank you for all your hard work Lillith!
This past month has been pretty awesome in terms of Rep wins so let's get into those as well!
Your Reps are currently working on Cadman accessibility issues and even though I can't yet go into more detail there are some very exciting things going on there so watch this space!
During one of our Rep Council meetings, your Subject Reps and network representatives raised a concern with the SiSO displaying both legal and preferred names. This concern was raised with the university and thanks to your rep and officer teams this concern has now been resolved! The name system now allows a student to put either their first name or preferred name and any existing accounts with preferred names will be amended to show only the preferred name! This is a huge win and we would like to thank all the Reps that contributed and the university for acting so swiftly once this concern was raised! You can read more about the SiSO win here!
All your Reps continue to work hard to make your time at Staffs even better and if you want to get involved in the action there is still time to be a Course Rep - you can register yourself here and if you're already a Course Rep and are ready to take on the next challenge why not check out our Leadership Race page for more details on the 2025 Leadership Race!