On Tuesday 7 February, Vice Chancellor Ian White held a VC Breakfast to celebrate the importance of Peer Leaders and Peer Assisted Learning, alongside SU Education Officer Amber.
VC Breakfasts are held several times a term across the academic year and are always a lovely opportunity to reward and recognise students for their hard work and dedication. For the latest breakfast, the VC invited Peer Mentors, PAL and Language PAL members and Doctoral Peer Mentors in recognition of their hard work in Semester One.
PEER MENTORS
Peer Mentors are usually second year students and are recruited and trained to offer guidance and support to peers at the beginning of their university journey. Every first-year student is assigned a mentor from their course of Faculty so they have a friendly face on campus to help them settle in! There are over 700 Peer Mentors – SU Education Officer Amber explained, “it was very hard to choose who to invite to the VC Breakfast. The selection criteria was based on making sure we had a representative from each faculty, and then asked our colleagues in each department to nominate someone from their area as they would have seen first hand some of the great work the Peer Mentors have been doing”.
LEAD PEER MENTORS
Lead Peer Mentors Anjileen Devgun, Jess Lighterness, Abbie Morgan and Isobel Rutter were chosen to attend in recognition of all their hard work since the start of the semester across their departments.
PEER ASSISTED LEARNING
Members of PAL (Peer Assisted Learning) were also invited. PAL runs in a number of different departments where trained PAL leaders to help facilitate study for students in lower years. This exists alongside Language PAL which allows language learners to come together and help students practice their language listening and speaking skills, while also learning about other cultures.
Senior PAL Leader Teba Al-Obaidi was chosen to attend the VC Breakfast as they worked so hard to obtain the role by helping facilitate weekly academic sessions for 20+ first year students.
Pal Leaders Daniella Dawkins (Chem Eng), Charlotte Nevrkla- Wood (Psch 1) and Jack Tweddle (Physics) were in attendance due to their commitment not just as a PAL leader but for their contribution across other roles in The SU as well. Jack, for example, has been a Freshers Week Captain, Peer Mentor, Academic Rep and Chair of PhySoc.
Senior PAL Leader Vincent Wang and PAL Leaders Elena Payo, Leah Wiles and Elden Ting were there to represent Language PAL. It’s been great to see so many different languages on offer this year lead by such passionate students.
DOCTORAL PEER MENTORS
It was great to give Doctoral Peer Mentor Sanjae King the opportunity to meet with the VC. Sanjae is also a student ambassador and academic rep. Doctoral Peer Mentors have existing knowledge and experience of starting doctoral studies here at Bath and are trained to help students set up their studies and be a point of contact and Sanjae is a perfect example of a student doing a particularly great job.
Education Officer Amber commented that, “academic communities and learning is something so close to my heart, so being able to see all those who contribute to it was an absolute dream!”. She added that, “they’re all doing such amazing work and I can’t big them up enough”.
The next VC Breakfast will be held on February 21.