You will be allocated an academic member of staff who will be your personal academic tutor (PAT), for the duration of your studies. Please see the Blackboard course for details of who your person tutor is. You can expect them to contact you for an initial meeting within the first month of the course. They will aim to meet with you twice every year and you are welcome to contact your PAT should you begin to feel that an additional 1:1 meeting would be beneficial and useful.
You should contact your module lead for all academic related matters and your personal tutor for anything such as taking a leave of absence or discussing a personal difficulty. You can find a list of all module leads and PATs on the ACP paediatric ophthalmology organisation: https://vle.shef.ac.uk/ultra/organizations/_106327_1/cl/outline
If there are any difficulties experienced in personal tutoring arrangements please contact the course lead c.codina@shef.ac.uk for advice.
Information is available from the Assessment Preparation section of the Health Sciences School Student Handbook
The University of Sheffield has a clear policy on taking a leave of absence (LoA) and you can find more information on these webpages https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/new-students/immigration/during-study/change-status/absence including a LoA self-help tool, which you can use to explore whether a LoA might be the right option for you.
We strongly advise speaking to your PAT or programme lead as a first port of call, should you be contemplating taking a leave from your studies with a period of absence from your course (LoA).
The University places great value on the opinions of its students and there are various opportunities for you to get involved, both to have your say and also to represent the views of other students.
Each cohort of MMedSci students should elect a student representative who will make representation on behalf of the group to the programme leader and will sit on the postgraduate taught (PGT) staff-student committee. This committee is made up of student representatives from PG courses within the Medical School and a number of academic staff.
You do not have to attend in person, but will receive details of meetings (including minutes) by email and may make representation via email through that channel.
Getting involved means you will be able to take part in discussions and decision making about a range of issues e.g.
student feedback on teaching
changes to programmes
departmental/school services (e.g. hand-in arrangements, office opening times, study facilities, availability of personal tutors)
communication with students
At the MMedSci residential/virtual learning weekends you will have a student meeting where you discuss any student matters that you would like to feed back to the Division. It is usually the student representative who chairs this meeting and feeds back to the programme lead Charlotte Codina.
Nomination of a student representative
During the course of your first residential/virtual learning weekend you will elect a student representative who will serve a one-year term. You can then elect a representative for your second year at your second residential and election of a representative for your third year will be sought by email. There is no problem with student representatives serving more than one term.
If you find that you wish to defer, apply for leave of absence, or notify your withdrawal, you need to complete the appropriate Change of Status form downloadable from https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.309041!/file/LOA_Form.pdf
This form should be completed and sent to Sheena Coales (orthoptics@sheffield.ac.uk), who will arrange for academic authorisations and the leave of absence of change of status to be applied to your student record through the student administration service. You will receive a notification from the student administration service once your change of status has been processed and any leave of absence applied to your record.
Information available from the University Services section of the Health Sciences School Student Handbook
Further information about the University Services is available from the Health Sciences School Student Handbook