Your supervisor

Your department will allocate you a personal supervisor who is there to offer you support and advice throughout your programme.

You will meet your supervisor once a term to discuss your academic progress and check that all is well with you and your studies. This is an important point of academic contact for all students. Your supervisor will encourage you to develop your academic and personal skills and can also act as a referee for any applications you might make in the future. They can advise what to do if things go wrong and refer you to the right people in the University for help with more personal matters.

Supervisors have three principle functions:

• to provide advice on and support for your academic progress;

• to support your personal development and acquisition of academic and employability skills;

• to provide general pastoral guidance, assisting you to identify appropriate specialist support should you require it.

More information on the role of the supervisor is available on the website. Please refer to the Practice learning and Assessment supervision for practice modules sections for information on supervision in practice.

Meeting with your supervisor

It is primarily your responsibility to book and attend appointments with your supervisor, and it is better to arrange these in advance either by telephone or email. Where possible, it is beneficial to arrange personal supervision appointments prior to your Tripartite review meetings. If you are unable to attend a supervisory meeting you must contact your supervisor to re-arrange the meeting.

If you require an appointment with your supervisor in addition to the scheduled termly one, you will need to make an appointment via email or telephone to organise this. You and your supervisor will then arrange a convenient time for you both to meet.

Records of your meeting will be stored on E:vision and accessible by you and your supervisor.  On occasion these may be accessed by other staff if necessary, for example for continuity purposes if you change supervisor.

Procedure for changing your supervisor

Ideally, you should have a supervisor for Year 1 and another allocated for Year 2 of the programme. However, if your supervisor is away for an extended period, you will be allocated a different supervisor.

Occasionally, the supportive relationship that we hope will develop fails to do so. You are encouraged to discuss any difficulties with your supervisor to try to resolve these. However, if you find that you cannot communicate well with your supervisor, for whatever reason, then talk to your programme leader, the Chair of the Departmental Education Committee or if you prefer, contact one of the other support services. Undergraduate students can change supervisors without giving a reason.