Want to represent the academic interests of students at the University of Bath? You can work with us and the University to help improve the academic experience.
You can find out more about becoming a Rep by reading below.
Why should I become a Rep?
There are loads of brilliant reasons why you should become an Academic Rep. By becoming an Academic Rep you will...
- Be the voice of all students on your Course
- Make real decisions that make an impact on students' lives
- Gain transferable skills including negotiation, meeting etiquette, presentation, communication, teamwork, and more!
This is without mentioning the reward and recognition efforts we make to thank Academic Reps for the work they do. Find out more here.
How do I become a Rep?
We hold elections for Rep roles to ensure students are able to decide democratically who represents them. You must nominate yourself and include a short statement to your peers outlining why you would like the role. These elections happen twice a year, focusing on electing different roles at different times:
| Time of Year |
Rep Roles in Election |
| Autumn |
First Year Undergraduate, Postgraduate Taught, Senate Rep |
| Spring |
All other Undergraduate, Doctoral |
If you would like to see when the next election is, you can find the election timetable here.
What Rep roles are available?
The Academic Representation system is a simple hierarchy system that allows your feedback to be fed up to our most influential representatives, our officers. All academic representatives will have a key meeting where they will work with staff on the feedback they have received.
Please read below to decide which one you would like to nominate yourself for.
Academic Representatives are elected by their peers to represent them. These Reps ensure that student concerns, views, and opinions are heard and acted upon by the University and the Students' Union. By consulting students about their teaching and learning experience and taking these views to the University, Academic Reps help contribute to the continuous improvement of their academic experiences.
Faculty Representatives are elected by students in their faculty/school. Each Faculty/School will have two undergraduate, one postgraduate taught, and one doctoral representative.
It is the Faculty Reps' responsibility to represent students' views at a Faculty Level. As the Reps are members of a number of Faculty/School level committees they will attend these meetings to represent the student voice and share the feedback they have collected.
Faculty Reps also make up the Exec Committees: Academic Exec, PGT Exec, and Doctoral Exec. As a member, they will work closely with your Officers and the SU’s Voice team to tackle university-wide issues and the SU’s Top Ten.
You may notice that Senate Rep is not in the hierarchy diagram. The Senate Representative is elected by students to represent their voices on the Senate committee. Senate is responsible for directing and regulating the academic work of the University and is seen as the highest-level committee at Bath. To find out more about Senate, please click here.
This representative is also the chair of the SU's Academic Exec and liaises with the Undergraduate Faculty Representatives as well as the Education Officers on academic issues as appropriate.
An SU Officer is a student elected to work full-time (and paid) to represent the student voice in Bath. Each Officer has a specific area that they work on to make Bath the best it can be. Those that work closest with Reps are the SU Education Officer and the SU Postgraduate Officer. The role is a great opportunity to represent students at a University-wide level to ensure that Bath students' educational experience is high-quality and fair.
I still have questions. Who can answer them?
If the above FAQs have not been able to answer your questions, here are some key contacts to get in touch with...