Co-lead of Student Wellbeing Community of Practice 2019-2022

I have taken my commitment to improving the student experience University-wide as Co-Lead of the UNSW Community of Practice (CoP) on Student Wellbeing with Dr Gavin Mount (UNSW Canberra). The CoP has instigated a research project, which I am also co-leading, to assess, audit and report on the current policy and practices of student wellbeing across UNSW campuses. In 2019 we surveyed staff to assess practices/procedures used across UNSW to address and support student wellbeing. Our intended follow-up 2020 survey to determine students’ perceptions of UNSW curricular and extracurricular support for their wellbeing, had to be reframed due to COVID-19. Instead we explored the specific wellbeing concerns of UNSW students from different Faculties and campuses in this new fully-online learning environment. Our findings were disseminated to the UNSW community to share this understanding of the distinct effects COVID-19 has had, and is having, on student and staff wellbeing. We are now writing the data up for publication, and in 2022 Dr Gavin Mount and I successfully ran a workshop on How to build a Student Wellbeing CoP at the ISSOTL conference. In 2022 we stepped down from the leadership role to allow junior colleagues to take on this challenge, while we concentrated on continuing research activities in this space to complement the work of the CoP.

Student wellbeing CoP end of year report 2021