Other FAQs

Other FAQs
1. When will staff receive information of their students?

This will be provided as soon as possible, likely by early to mid September.

You can print and view your own list of students from SRS live records using this Guide to help you. 

Where there are reallocations identified with Heads of Schools due to staff leaving, sabbatical leave or absence through illness, reallocations will be done throughout the academic year and individual tutors and students notified of changes.

2. Who will allocate my students?

This is done centrally through the Infohub in consultation with Senior Personal Tutors . You can contact them on personaltutor@abdn.ac.uk .

3. Whose responsibility is it to make initial contact with Level 1 students regarding the first tutorial?

The Personal Tutor will contact the student in the first instance, although the name of the tutor will already have been supplied to the new student by Infohub and shown on their Student Hub.

The initial meeting will be set up by the tutor, though the format will differ between schools; some meetings will be in groups and some as individual appointments.  If there is a group meeting, it should be made clear to tutees that if they would like to meet tutors on a one to one basis this can be arranged.

Staff who cannot attend centrally scheduled times in Induction week, as specified by their school, are expected to set up meetings with students as soon as possible after term starts and before the end of the second week.

4. Will I be responsible for those students allocated to me who are on an industrial placement or spending a period abroad?

You will remain Personal Tutor for these students and as such you can offer to remain in email contact with the students concerned (at the relevant meeting times on the schedule, it would seem logical to “check in” with these students). Hopefully, if students know there is someone at their “home” institution who could signpost help here, they may be reassured.

On their return to University they will meet with you as per the rest of your tutees.

5. I have been asked to provide an academic reference - where can I find help in preparing this?

There is guidance prepared by the Careers Service and it can be found here.

6. I have been asked by a student if they can request a Gaelic-speaking tutor.

The University Gaelic Plan is developing a policy for students to request a Gaelic-speaking personal tutor.

If a Gaelic-speaking student wishes to have a Gaelic-speaking personal tutor, that request should be sent to personaltutor@abdn.ac.uk for consideration. Priority will be given firstly to students in Gaelic Studies or Gaelic Initial Teacher Training programmes.

7. What support is available for students with specific curriculum queries?

Unless your School has chosen a different path, Personal Tutors are not expected to advise students in depth on curriculum matters. Personal Tutors are, however, expected to engage in initial discussion with students about their studies, as part of being an initial approachable pastoral contact.  Your Senior Personal Tutors will have prepared a guidance note for your School which provides appropriate basic information  about degrees and issues in your School and the appropriate colleagues  (in the School and in Registry) to whom students should be referred for further guidance on curriculum matters. The documents can be found in the training webpages. Students will also have the benefit of MyCurriculum (see for example its Help page).

8. Training & IT Tools

Please click on the link below to be redirected to our training and guidance resources.

9. I need to excuse a student from Jury Duty as it will clash with coursework/exams- what should I write?

You can use this text to excuse your student, filling in the relevant details for the individual. You should print it onto headed paper.

10. What should I do if student asks me to accompany them to an appeal or a hearing?

You may do this if you would like and you may also want to suggest to the student that AUSA can also provide valuable support. Note that you are not there to speak for the student.  

You might find it useful to ask the student if they would like to share papers before hand so that you are informed. If any issues come to mind about issues which might be explored, you could raise these with the student.  It would also be useful to be familiar with eg the C7 website material and the relevant University process.  

If things get difficult in a hearing it is often useful to ask for a break.

At the end of the hearing, it may be useful to check that the student ok, understands what going on and if they have questions to ask.

 

11. I am really worried about wars and conflicts throughout the world and how they may be affecting students

The key thing is to be aware that there are many wars and conflicts, some of which not all of us will be aware. Students may also be affected by a situation which might not seem immediately aparent from e.g. their nationality or address. Do be sensitive to this, allow students to speak if they would like to do this, and be aware that student.support@abdn.ac.uk can always offer specialist support and also guidance about financial support.

You may also want to share the link below to the Counselling self-help guides which touch on anxiety, worry and major events.