Could you make a difference as an Academic Rep?

Ever thought changes could be made for the better in your faculty, department or course? Become an Academic Rep and you could help improve the student experience at UCL and gain leadership experience whilst you're at it.

Nominate yourself to be an Academic Rep.

What is an Academic Rep?

An Academic Rep is a student elected by their peers to speak on their behalf and represent their academic interests. They work with our Education Officer, Sarah Jilani and UCL staff to take feedback at course, department, and faculty level and make practical changes to your teaching and learning experience. Academic Reps then keep their cohorts in the loop about potential changes and progress on issues.

There are a few different roles which work at different levels:

• Course Reps represent their cohort at course level, on taught undergraduate or postgraduate programmes. 
   
• Research Reps do the same for postgraduate research students. 
   
• Lead Department Reps represent their cohort at department level and usually attend Departmental Teaching Committee meetings. They support Course Reps, Research Reps and co-chair Student Partnership Committees.  
   
• Faculty Reps are elected centrally and represent all students in their faculty. They support Lead Department Reps and feed into faculty-level decisions and Education Zone here at the Students’ Union. 

Together, they form the structure that turns individual student feedback into something we can take to UCL to support the case for change.

What's it like to be an Academic Rep?

Whilst Academic Reps are leadership roles here at Students' Union UCL, you're not on your own and there is lots of support to help you succeed. There's a dedicated Union team to help you: [email protected], support within your faculty, lots of training and a network of other Academic Reps as well.

Day to day, you'll gather feedback from your peers through conversations or quick polls and begin to work out where problems, opportunities, or challenges exist. You'll take that feedback to staff and get the conversation started on how students can be better supported and their experience can be improved.

Learn more about being an Academic Rep.

Armani, a third-year Cancer Biomedicine student, has been an Academic Rep for the past two years. As a Course Rep in her first year then as a Faculty Rep, she values how Academic Reps can build community. The experience has helped her feel her voice matters. Her positive experience as a Course Rep, being able to impact lecture locations and communications to students from staff encouraged her to run for Faculty Rep. As Faculty Rep, she’s focused on running social events for students across the faculty and worked with staff to improve inductions for incoming first years. 

Nicolas Di Salvo, MSc Construction Economics and Management and Faculty Rep for the Bartlett in 2025/26, ran against 16 students for the chance to make a difference. After collecting feeding back from other students, he realised many students were having to spend heavily to produce work – they had amazing facilities but were constrained financially in their ability to use them. He took this feedback to Education Zone, where other Faculty Reps recognised the same problem was happening in their faculties: Slade students buying their materials and medical students paying for test samples. Recognising this as a UCL-wide issue, the Education zone was able to work on developing support through hardship funds.  

“What I enjoyed most was seeing trust grow... UCL is a large institution, but representation made it feel smaller in the best possible way: more human, more connected and more responsive.” 

Bader Alotaibi, MSc Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment. 

Becoming an Academic Rep gives you the opportunity to develop leadership skills, build community, support your peers and be an agent for positive change.

Nominations for all our rep roles are open until 12 October, so what are you waiting for?