Staff Student Consultative Committees (SSCC): Arrangements for 2019-20

The UCL 2034 and Education Strategy commits UCL to enabling staff and students to work together in partnership to place students at the heart of our decision making. To aid this, a number of changes have been made to SSCC operations in recent years, led by a partnership between UCL and the Students’ Union (SU), the 2020 Vision for Student Academic Representation.

Key changes introduced were:

1. Student Academic Representative role – this replaced the old StARs acronym and further clarified the role.
2. Lead Department Representative role - a new role to co-chair the SSCC and attend Departmental Teaching Committee (DTC) meetings and to agree the SSCC agenda with the academic co-chair.
3. Clarification of other levels of student representatives - including Course Representatives for individual programmes of study and Research Student Representatives for PGR students.
4. Faculty Representatives (formerly Faculty StAR) – a defined role to attend the Faculty Teaching Committee (FTC) and to lead the faculty representative forum, a space for Lead Department Representatives and Faculty Representatives to come together with key Faculty staff.
5. A single appointment period – to take place in October each year, with the aspiration that all representative places are contested and elected to improve accountability. 
6. Frequency of SSCC meetings – an expectation that SSCCs meet at least three times a year and typically once each term, although PG SSCCs and others may choose to meet outside of term-time.
7. The expectation that departments have one SSCC – although separate SSCCs split by Taught/Research or PG/UG students may be established where the membership would otherwise be too large. Meetings with representatives at a programme level, though encouraged, do not constitute SSCC meetings, except in the case of inter-departmental programmes (see the Academic Manual Chapter 9, Section 6.9).

The full policy can be seen in the Academic Manual, Chapter 9 (Section 6: Student Academic Representation).

SSCC Chairs and Secretaries are asked to review these regulations to ensure that departmental practice is aligned to them and to note the following points:

• SSCC minutes should be produced within two weeks of meetings and forwarded in their draft form to sscc@ucl.ac.uk. They should be approved by the SSCC Co-Chairs, but do not need not be confirmed by the next meeting. 
• SSCC minutes are used for a number of purposes, including tracking student issues across UCL which are reported to key committees such as Academic Committee. SSCC minutes should be submitted by 17 January 2020 for Term 1 meetings, by 1 May 2020 for Term 2 meetings and 19 June 2020 for Term 3 meetings.  
• Any outstanding SSCC minutes from 2018-19 should be submitted to: sscc@ucl.ac.uk as soon as possible.
• SSCC minutes should be distributed within the department to ensure student awareness of the hard work that student academic representatives and staff undertake together to enhance their academic experience. It is advisable to post the minutes online using either Moodle or the Departmental website. They should also be reported to the DTC, to ensure further consideration of relevant matters.
• The Students’ Union manages Student Academic Representation in partnership with UCL and it is intended that training and support are provided to all students acting in a representative role. All students appointed as representatives should have been named and returned to the Union by the close of the appointment period in October.

SSCC Chairs will soon receive a printed guide to SSCCs with suggestions for how to structure the meeting and make it effective. We recommend meeting with student co-chairs (once appointed) ahead of the first SSCC to plan the agenda. A new agenda and minutes template is now available on the Academic Manual webpage. The Annual Student Experience Review (ASER) is a standing item on the agenda, prompting regular review of progress against agreed education priorities.  Helpful guidance for staff is also available on the Student Academic Representation: Resources for Staff SU webpage. Please get in touch via sscc@ucl.ac.uk if you need any further support with running your SSCC.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and for all of your work on the SSCCs.

Ashley Slanina-Davies, Education Officer, Students’ Union UCL
Derfel Owen, Director of Academic Services, Student and Registry Services

Contact details for further information: sscc@ucl.ac.uk