Recently at Newcastle University we held our first ever ‘speed networking’ session for members of Council (our governing board), students’ union officers and students’ union staff.
The inspiration for it came from reading a blog post by Ben Vulliamy (Chief Executive, University of York Students’ Union) published by AHUA last year. In it, Ben offers some ideas for higher impact ways of involving students in university governance, one being staging events like speed networking, also known as ‘speed dating’ where the student perspective is given prominence. ‘Why not give that a go here?’, I thought.
I knew that the outcomes from our last external review of governance and Council’s latest effectiveness questionnaire suggested that channels for interaction with the student voice were limited beyond relying on the two student leaders who sit on Council, NSS data or other information that university managers may choose to share.
The recent report on university governance published by the Council for the Defence of British Universities emboldens us to do more to involve students in governance, by suggesting that students should be seen not merely as ‘relevant stakeholders’, but as ‘core actors’. So setting up an event for governors at Newcastle where the student voice would take centre stage felt very timely indeed.
