Developing a BME Student Advocate Programme

In 2017-18 the University of Hertfordshire designed and implemented a BME Student Advocate programme to support an institutional objective to reduce the attainment gap. Working in partnership with Hertfordshire Students Union, ten advocates were appointed to work with each of the academic schools. The BME student advocates carried our different activities depending on the needs of their academic school. Activities included; holding focus groups with BME students; representation of BME students at school meetings; the challenge of assumptions of staff members; critique of curricula and the promotion of race equality. Benefits for staff members included; having an advocate to discuss inclusive practice ideas with; receiving feedback about BME student experiences; being challenged on assumptions; forming student-staff partnerships. The work of the advocates was highly valued by staff within the university and recognising the impact of their work, the university has fully funded the programme for the next academic year

How did the work impact me? Reflections of the researchers and facilitators of BME success projects

Programme leaders and members of programme teams attended inclusive teaching workshops focused on race equality. After the workshops, programme leaders were interviewed to discuss how they were going to implement inclusive practice enhancements. The core team who facilitated the workshops and conducted the interviews reflected on their experiences of leading change associated with reducing the BME attainment gap. Considering a critical incident which theyd experienced during the workshop or during the interviews, they each wrote personal narratives to explore emotions which the incident had stimulated as well as consideration of how theyd responded at the time and what they could have done differently. The four narratives were considered to identify key themes. Two common themes identified were the stimulation of negative emotions (e.g. anger) and the inability to challenge comments and stereotyping assumptions at the time of the incident. Considering the results in light of literature associated with staff development, the use of personal narrative and leading diversity related change, in addition to autoethnographical thoughts associated with the authors own experiences of race, racism and privilege, five recommendations for colleagues involved in race-related staff development were identified