Developing a whole institution approach towards an inclusive student welcome, induction and transitions experience in partnership with Kent Union

Melissa Mulhall MAUA | Assistant Director, Student Engagement and Experience | University of Kent

Collaborating for Success – now that is an approach that really resonates with me, both personally and professionally. I found that taking a partnership and collaborative approach in the right contexts can ultimately lead to better, stronger and increasingly creative and successful outcomes. It’s the richness of the insights, perspectives, ideas, and the ability to learn from, build and develop upon these in terms of the work that I think can be truly impactful and transformative.

As the common adage goes “two heads are better than one” or in the wise words of Richard Branson “collaboration is the key to success”.  This was certainly the case for the University’s approach to enhancing welcome week and induction for the 2019-2020 academic year.  We wanted to take a University-wide, student-centred approach to strengthening our welcome, induction and transitions activities to enhance the student experience at the key junctions of in the student journey.  

This was a student-initiated review, established to bring about enhancements to our practice, student provision and greater student engagement. It has, and will continue to be delivered collaboratively as a University community with staff, Kent Union and students to explore ‘what works’ best in terms of making our students’ experience at Kent special.  One of the key collaborative outputs that led to the resulting “Hello Kent” campaign is fundamentally student-voice driven, initiated and championed by student representatives and interns; and has sought to address one of the key challenges put to us by the students – helping them navigate all our many student information sources.

Sharing our insights from the review and the Hello Kent campaign therefore seemed practically perfect in every way for this year’s AUA conference and we cannot wait to explore this approach and hear from others about ‘what works’ at their institutions.

312: Developing a whole institution approach towards an inclusive student welcome, induction and transitions experience in partnership with Kent Union is a working session at the AUA Annual Conference and Exhibition 2020. In these mini blogs, our session speakers talk about the journey that lead to this point. Read the full Conference programme here.