Academic Reps should be the first call whenever you have feedback on your academic experience. This incredible team are elected by their community to represent their cohort and it is their role to actively listen to your feedback and concerns and work with your course teams and The SU to make change in your best interests. And they are pretty good at it too!

The Academic Representation system is a simple hierarchy system that allows your feedback to be fed up to our most influential represent ivies, our officers.  All academic representative will have a key meeting where they will work with staff on the feedback they have received.

Academic Representatives

Academic Representatives are elected by their peers to represent them, there will be at least 2 Academic Reps for each year group of a course. 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. 

  • Find out if students in their department have any concerns or issues relating to their course or student experience at Bath
  • Relay these issues to the University’s academic departments, senior management, and Students’ Union and make suggestions for change;
  • Relay the outcome of any meetings with the University or Students Union back to the students they represent.
  • Signpost students to other Students' Union areas when an issue falls outside of their role (academic appeals, bullying and harassment, complaints, etc).

Additional Academic Rep Roles

Department Representatives

Departmental Reps are elected by Academic Reps in their department to gather the wider views of the student population through liaising with Academic Reps. They attend Department Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee meetings (DLTQCs) where items such as unit changes, new programmes and academic policies are discussed, attend briefings and debriefing sessions organised by the Students' Union, in order to close the feedback loop and other opportunities.

There is usually one undergraduate and one postgraduate taught departmental representative, and they are elected at the first SSLC of Semester 1. 

Staff-Student Liaison Committee Chairs

Staff-Student Liaison Committee (SSLC) Chairs are elected at the first meeting of the SSLC and work with the academic co-chair if there is one, to chair the meeting. They make sure that students and staff can both have their say.

Chairs are supported by the Students' Union in their roles.

Faculty Representatives

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 veiws at a Faculty Level, they will achieve this through hosting Faculty Forums which brings together all Academic Reps from their Faculty/School to discuss the big issues that are affecting students. As the Reps are members of a number of Faculty/School level committees they will attend these meetings and represent the student voice and share the feedback they have collected. 

Faculty Reps also make up The SU’s Academic Exec. As a member of the Academic Exec, they will work closely with your Officers and the SU’s Voice team to tackle university wide issues and the SU’s Top Ten.  By discussing these issues in Academic Exec meetings and collecting feedback from Academic Reps to help support Officers progress on these issues.

Senate Representative

Who is this you ask? They aren’t in the diagram! Sorry we know, this is because this person doesn’t necessarily sit within the structure however they are still super important.

Senate Representatives are elected by students to represent students at this committee.  Senate Representatives are also members of  the student Academic Executive Committee and liaise with the Faculty Representatives and the Students’ Union Officers on academic issues as appropriate. 

What is Senate? 

Senate is responsible for directing and regulating the academic work of the University as is seen as the highest level committee discussing these issues within the University of Bath and meets five times during the academic year.  Senate is chaired by the Vice Chancellor and its membership is made up of the Pro Vice Chancellors, Deans of Faculty/School of Management, with a number of elected academic staff members.  There are also four student representatives who are part of the membership, SU President, SU Education Officer, SU Postgraduate Officer and one elected student.