Expectations

The University has a policy on the academic and pastoral support which is available to download from the Academic Services website: 

• EUSA Academic Support
• University of Edinburgh pastoral support

First point of contact

• An undergraduate student's first point of contact for academic advice is their Personal Tutor.
• An undergraduate student's first point of contact for pastoral care is their School’s Student Support Team.
• Course Teams are made up of lecturers, tutors and secretarial staff who are related to each course. If you have any concerns you should contact a member of the course team, any of them should be able to provide advice or to point you in the right direction. 

Contact

We will meet with students directly on pastoral and academic issues as they arise. We do not meet or correspond (via telephone or email) with third parties, unless we have explicit consent from the student: this includes parents, carers, and external organisations, unless serious circumstances apply, for example, mental health breakdown and the student has nominated a representative. (We can correspond with 3^rd parties if we have explicit consent from the student)

Further details on disclosing student information and the Data Protection Act (1998) can be found at: Guidance of Student Information Disclosure

Expectations of Students

Students should:

• Check their University email account regularly for communication from their Personal Tutor/ Programme Director or Student Support Team, and to respond promptly to request for information (normally within three working days)
• Ensure their details are up-to-date on MyEd, this includes updating contact details (Registry), and notifying the Student Support Team of any discrepancies in course details.
• Attend individual meetings with their Personal Tutor each semester and summarise the focus of the meeting and any agreed action in your EUCLID notes record, you must bring your feedback portfolio to each meeting.
• Attend and participate in the group meeting facilitated by their Personal Tutor and linked to their degree of study.
• Complete any tasks assigned by your Personal Tutor linked to the individual and group meetings.
• Inform their Student Support team or Programme Director in good time of any problem affecting their studies, and so enable effective support to be offered.
• Provide the Student Support Team, Personal Tutor/Programme Director with background information they need, to (for example) advise on Special Circumstances or to write an academic reference.
• Take due account of advice or information given.
• Make themselves aware of regulations and procedures relevant to their studies, and to seek advice where they are unsure what is required.

Expectations of Personal Tutors/Programme Directors

(Could you please review these responsibilities and see if they match up with the Maths PT responsibilities currently) It would be a good idea to send this list to Stuart, and then Max & Sergio.

A Personal Tutor or Programme Director should:

• Welcome new students, and to follow the academic progression of all their students.
• Guide the students in their course choices and advise them on study difficulties.
• Meet with students once a semester individually and in their degree group focused on academic skills and employability (undergraduates only).
• Refer the student where appropriate to more specialist sources of information and guidance, for example the Student Support Team.
• Provide an academic reference for a future employer or programme of study.
• Respond promptly (normally within three working days) to a request for contact. Where this is not feasible (annual leave, conference or field work attendance), the Personal Tutor/Programme Director should provide an alternative contact.
• Should the case arise (normally the Student Support Team), advise and support the student in Special Circumstances, disciplinary or appeal matters.

Expectations of the Student Support Team

The Student Support Team should:

• Provide pastoral care for undergraduate students including personal and health issues and accommodation problems.
• Provide guidance on degree regulations and requirements, degree transfers, study abroad, course work submission deadlines and extensions.
• Should the case arise, advise and support the student in Special Circumstances, disciplinary or appeal matters.
• Provide requests for reference to confirm student status. (Is this something we will do?)

MTO currently confirm student status by writing a letter, usually confirming provisional grades etc and usually sent via email as a PDF, with a School/University stamp. There is no reason why the Student Support Team couldn’t also action such requests. I can provide a template.

• Respond promptly (normally within three working days) to a request for contact where this is not feasible (annual leave), the Student Support Team should provide an alternative contact.
• Consider requests to change Personal Tutors. (Is this something we will do?) This is something that other Student Support Teams do. They will work with, usually the Senior PT to allocate students to PTs and then amend as required. However, at the moment I do this with Iain. I have briefly discussed this with Iain, so this responsibility isn’t with you yet, but could be in the not too distant future.