Dr Jennifer Fraser, Director of Student Partnerships visits 21C SCPs

Written by Hassan Raza

In December, the 21C SAPS had the chance to spend a day with Dr Jennifer Fraser, Director of Student Partnerships, Centre for Teaching Innovation at the University of Westminister. Not only did we hear about the work Jennifer's been leading at Westminister (a very interesting program to engage students as researchers, for instance: developing a 'scent' that represents a character in a novel - we were all riveted by that!!!), we had the chance to test our work and ideas with her. She was our critical friend for the day! Jennifer commended our partnership work in the Curriculum MakerSpace sessions, the thinking behind our forthcoming book chapter on Partnership Mindset, and the development of our unit #WeAreTheUniversity. She also shared with us the Partnership Principles that Westminister have co-developed with their staff and students. More to come on that!

Jennifer was particularly encouraging of our research plans and she helped to give voice and shape to them. She gave us clues about who and what to read, that we should definitely keep writing research, and perhaps explore the concept of engagement. She was even keen for a collaboration/exchange between us and the student partners at Westminister.

An idea that stood out most for me was about how power flows and operates in the University. How do we shift the balance of power so that the vertical hierarchy takes seriously the work happening among those in collective horizontal?

This was one of the many ideas we discussed during our meeting. I was left scratching my head by the end as I didn’t know where we would begin. However, I am confident that 21C SAPs will discuss, publish and share many engaging ideas in 2019. In 21C SAP Rose Lewis’s words, “engagement is impact”.