As part of Welcome Week 2018, we speak to a variety of staff about their involvement.

Name – Chris Luck

Job title – Head of Welcome and Student Internationalisation Manager

Department – International Student Office

1. Tell us about your role?

I suppose I’m the one managing the show! It’s been my job to facilitate the design, development, and delivery of a collaborative, effective, and student-focussed Welcome Week. Almost every academic and professional service department has been part of this journey and I hope colleagues would agree that it’s been a great example of how effectively and efficiently we can work together. We’re also managing Welcome communications – reducing duplication and contradiction in line with student feedback. I’m also ‘process owner’ for the arrivals process – a big challenge this year as we move 7,000 campus residents in over Welcome Weekend. I highly recommend that you steer clear of campus on 22nd and 23rd September if you don’t have to be here!

2. This year sees an entirely new approach and programme for Welcome. Can you tell us how it will all work?

This year is our inaugural Welcome Week and it’s been designed with 7 objectives in mind, helping students to: settle into life at Warwick; make friends; understand what is expected of them as students on a degree programme; understand the breadth of Warwick’s offer (both opportunities and support); find their way around; adapt to life in a new country and new environment; and to be prepared for day one of term. We have over 1,000 events taking place in a structured programme which ensures parity of opportunity and the flexibility to build a Week that suits students’ wants and needs. Our student webpages show off just some of the headline events taking place alongside academic department and residential activities.

3. What benefits will this new approach bring to students?

The key benefits are time and parity. For several years students have highlighted that starting at Warwick can be overwhelming, with arrival immediately followed by term time commitments. The introduction of Welcome Week provides time and space to settle in, to find your way around, to meet people, to learn about course structure and options; essentially equipping you for the start of term in Week One.

The parity aspect is again a response to student feedback. In previous years students have had different experiences and commitments depending on their course and department. Whilst this makes a lot of sense – in that you wouldn’t expect a physicist and an historian to have the same induction – the result has been that some students have had packed schedules (meaning they can’t, for example, attend Sports Fair), and others have been twiddling their thumbs. These different students then live together, communicate, and become disgruntled by the different approaches.

This year our Welcome Week structure ensures that students are ‘free’ and ‘busy’ with course commitments at similar times – ensuring that there are no barriers to participating in the wide-ranging student experience offer at Warwick.

4. What are you most looking forward to about Welcome Week?

I’m half excited and half terrified by how much time is left to make it all happen! I’m mindful that a successful Welcome Week will be achieved through students meeting each other, making friends, settling in, and learning about what their department and the University has to offer – not in attendance figures at every one of our 1,000 events.