We have put everything you need to help support you in electing Academic Reps and other roles.
Resources on Elections
The Academic Reps are democratically elected by the student body in Semester 1 and Semester 2. The dates of the elections can be found on this page.
In the QA48 (point 4.3) it states academic staff is responsible for:
"Promoting the election process to the whole student cohort, in order to encourage a diverse range of nominations from all sections of the student body."
We provide promotional material and informative resources for you to do this. You can find our presentation with all these here:
Guidance on Elections
Sometimes departments struggle with getting students to nominate themselves to run to be Academic Reps. This can be due to a number of different reasons.
Make sure that you have tried some of the suggestions above, it's key to make sure that you are explaining the value of the Academic Reps to the department and their cohort in those comms so check you have expressed this enough!
The SU can also offer support. Sometimes we find a bit of a push from an Officer can make all the difference in getting students to come forward. If you'd like to organise an officer to talk to your students contact us with dates and times that would be useful for you and we will see what we can do!
Any positions that remain unfilled after the initial elections will be filled through the co-option process. This is where ask that any interested students fill in our form (made available after the elections) stating the role they would like to fill. This is then approved by one of the SU Officers. he Officers act as Returning Officers for elections and have the final say on decisions; we cannot guarantee the co-option will be approved.
An Elections Contact is the main contact within a department (or on a programme) who works with the Students' Union to organise and run the annual Academic Representatives Elections.