As your Union, one of our most important jobs is representing your academic interests and making sure you can influence the way UCL works. The best way for us to do this is by working with Academic Reps in every UCL Department.
Each month, we’re featuring your reps and the work they’re doing to make UCL better. If you have an idea about how to make your course, your department or UCL work better, you can contact your own Academic Rep using our Find Your Rep page.
November's Rep of the Month is Eleanor Booth, Course Rep in Education, Practice and Society at the Institute of Education. She has been a brilliant distance learner rep, working hard to improve services for other distance learners and successfully managed to move her dissertation topic deadline which had affected students during the strike.
You can see some more of Eleanor's highlights below:
"I held four different virtual coffee mornings (at many times of the day) with students across the cluster (and world!), and received and responded to many emails. I launched a Facebook and Skype group for distance students - as many complained of a lack of opportunity for networking.
I acted on the concern that distance, disabled and part-time students couldn't get their students cards (and thus not access the library, SCONUL etc). I talked with the SU about this and now in communication with senior department officials about how to tackle this. I will be continuing this next month.
It has been really fulfilling trying to improve the situation for distance students and I have received a lot of positive feedback - which has been great. It has been especially great to work on issues which have been raised, and seemingly ignored, for many years. I hope my work will encourage others to work as reps from a distance or part-time. Thank you and looking forward to another busy, and hopefully successful and change inducing, month."