Student Welcome & Induction 2021 Update

I’m sure you have been as pleased as we are to see students returning to campus, bringing the Wilkins Building and a host of other spaces back to life by taking part in a host of activities organised by UCL. As we’re in the final stages of the start of term, we wanted to take the opportunity to update you on the Student Welcome and Induction (SWI) progress this year.  

The SWI team were formed in April 2021 to help co-ordinate all welcome, induction and enrolment activities, making sure that students joining UCL receive a positive, engaging and consistent experience that provides strong foundations for them to make friends, settle into their studies and make the most of their time at UCL. It’s been a fantastic collaborative effort from several teams across UCL including Student Support & Wellbeing, the Student’s Union, Estates and ISD; this has been a new way of working for UCL and we just wanted to thank everyone involved for your support and engagement over the last few months.

Since the 20 September 2021, over 24,000 students have come to campus to collect their ID cards and Biometric Residency Permits (BRPs). To ensure that quarantining students could pick up their ID or BRP cards easily we planned an extended collection service to the 15 October. From Monday 18 October ID card collection returned to normal service in the Andrew Huxley Building and BRP collection to the Recruitment and Admissions Hub in the Chadwick Building. 

Our student Welcome Ambassadors supported us in running the on-campus activities, delivering campus tours and providing a friendly first point of call for all students’ queries. We’re sure you spotted a couple of a blue t-shirt ambassadors yourselves at some point! 

The Students’ Union organised 523 events and activities over three weeks with 29,000 tickets booked for events throughout this period. Here are some interesting welcome numbers from the SU, but to find out more, check out the following page:

• 73 live performances across 6 days of activity in the Main Quad 
• 8,700 students attended our two-day Welcome Fair 
• More than 7,400 students joined a club or society during Welcome, up from 2,319 in 2019 
• 90% of Welcome events were alcohol-free

Representatives from Professional Services teams have also been on hand to help students with everything from registering with their GP, to admissions or funding queries. The Welcome and Wellbeing Hubs in the main quad have been open throughout for students to get information, advice, and support and to play with some puppies. Mindful of the fact that students have a lot to do, and many are not quite able to get on to campus yet, we have been offering several online events aimed at different student groups such as postgraduate research students, and a series of online events which introduced students to support services such as Careers, Student Abroad and the Library. To help students with queries as they arise in their first few weeks, we ran weekly virtual information sessions.  

If you’d like to know more about this year’s Student Welcome & Induction, visit our SharePoint site where we have provided monthly updates and a range of resources for staff. 

Department Feedback  

Although our focus this year was to coordinate the central services for Student Welcome and Induction, we hoped that this approach would also benefit and support departments with their Welcome and Induction activities. Now that we are approaching the end of the Welcome period, we would love to know your thoughts on how we did.

We would be extremely grateful if you could take the time to fill out this form with constructive feedback, which will enable us to support you all more effectively in the future! Please share with anyone in your team involved with welcome and induction activity. 

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