Supporting our Community: the Dean of Students’ Office

Professor Louise Gracia is the Dean of Students at Warwick and a Professor, teaching taxation in Warwick Business School. In her role as Dean of Students, she works closely with colleagues across the University to provide academic pastoral support for Warwick students both collectively and individually. Here, she reflects on some of the successes of the Dean of Students’ office over the past year and updates us on her plans for the year ahead.

What were the main achievements for the Dean of Students’ Office in 2017, and what was the biggest challenge?

Setting up and establishing the new Dean of Students’ Office was the first task. We are now a small team of five - myself, the three Faculty Senior Tutors and our Office PA. An important early priority has been to establish our presence and build connections across all academic departments and support services, including the Students’ Union’s Advice and Welfare Centre. This helps us offer the best support and advice we can to both staff and students who contact us for assistance.

We also led on the review of personal tutoring throughout 2017, which has been the biggest challenge. It is a University-wide strategic project and we spent a lot of time consulting with staff and students across the University to make sure that we understood all the challenges and opportunities presented by personal tutoring. It is a comprehensive report – about 75 pages in length - making 18 recommendations for improvements and developments to personal tutoring. The report was completed at the end of 2017, and during the current Spring Term will be considered by the various Faculty Committees. We are hoping to receive final approval for the recommendations before the Easter vacation. We will then turn our attention to all the work that needs to be done to make those recommendations happen! We are on a mission to ensure that every student has access to good quality academic advice and support at Warwick – whether accessed from an individual Personal Tutor, a departmental Senior Tutor or more directly from the Dean of Students’ Office.

How has your work with personal tutors developed over the past year? How will this develop in the year ahead?

Developing a sense of community across Personal Tutors is something we have been focusing on. We have been cultivating stronger working relationships with all our Senior Tutors – who take the lead on personal tutoring within individual departments. Some of the ways we have been doing this are by holding regular Senior Tutor networking events, to discuss key tutoring topics and share best practice, and introducing a bimonthly Senior Tutor Newsletter to share tutoring information and disseminate developments.

The creation of three new Faculty Senior Tutor (FST) roles - taken up by Dave Britnell (for Social Sciences), Helen Toner (for Science and Medicine) and Fiona Anderson-Gough (for Arts) - has been another game changer in terms of how we are developing our work with Personal Tutors. Developing their knowledge and expertise of the issues that affect students and staff within particular Faculties enables them to offer better support and advice.

Thinking about 2018, we will build on our developing relationships with Personal Tutors across departments and look to raise the importance and recognition of this critical strand of academic work. One of the ideas we have here is the introduction of annual awards for personal tutoring – which would showcase best practice, raise the profile of tutoring work and highlight the institutional value placed on it.

What are your plans for the Faculty Senior Tutor roles over the forthcoming year?

Throughout 2018, the Faculty Senior Tutors will continue to support students and staff with complex casework - this is an important part of our work. They will also be continuing to develop relationships with departments and connecting academic staff with the wider support and development networks at Warwick. Building Personal Tutors’ awareness of what is available to assist students means they are able to better signpost and refer students to particular services. This year the Faculty Senior Tutors will also be working closely with the newly appointed Faculty Wellbeing Advisors to help them integrate student support into departments.

Personal tutor training is another area they will be working on - developing and delivering training programmes for Personal and Senior Tutors within departments. Last year I provided Personal Tutor training to 96 new members of staff. With their assistance, we hope to significantly increase the number of Personal Tutors we are able to train. They will also be looking to develop their own expertise and will be undertaking further training to enhance their expertise in areas such as mental health, disability, sexual consent and student disciplinary matters. Improving the quality of the support we provide to students and staff is a priority for us.

What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead?

I am looking forward to getting started on the development work that will come out of the personal tutoring review. I am passionate that this body of work really makes a tangible difference to personal tutoring provision here at Warwick – so cannot wait to get going on that!

It is a privilege to be able to support students, often at times of particular difficulty, and being committed to developing our ability to do this is very important to me.

Developing my personal tutoring network outside of Warwick is another aspect I am looking forward to in 2018. I will be attending the UK Advising and Tutoring Annual Conference in Derby in March 2018, sharing ideas and developing tutoring practice with other colleagues working in this area across the UK higher education sector. I have also accepted an invitation to work with Kings’ College London during 2018, as their External Advisor within their ongoing review of personal tutoring. This is a great opportunity to be able to gain insight and contribute to the development of tutoring more broadly.

Visit the Dean of Students’ Office webpages for more information on their work.

The Dean of Students’ Office produces a regular Senior Tutors’ Briefing – if you would like to be added to the distribution list, please contact Patricia Burke at P dot Burke at warwick dot ac dot uk