By Beds SU
Monday, 10 February 2025
On Wednesday 29 January 2025 the second annual Course Rep Conference (RepCon) was held in the Postgraduate Centre on Luton Campus.
Course Reps, Network Champions, Student Experience Leaders (SELs) and Part-time Faculty Officers (PTFOs) attended the event from across the four Faculties.
Improving Skills and Feedback
The attendees were treated to a warm welcome from the Beds SU CEO Mark McCormack who introduced the overall theme for the day - Improving Reps skills and Feedback. The UoB Student Experience Team, alongside the Beds SU Voice team, took over and spoke about the three ways of feeding back and how students voices can make a difference to all areas of the University.
The Part-time Faculty Officers (PTFOs) then led an enjoyable human bingo session, giving Reps the chance to find out some weird and wonderful bits of information about each other before moving on to the first round of workshops.
Interactive workshops
The opening sessions covered:
• Sustainability is a massive problem, nothing I do can change it!
"Better understanding of the Sustainability concept, and discussing how any individual can contribute to a better sustainable future"
• Avoiding Burnout…
"The Avoiding Burnout workshop was insightful! I learned practical strategies to manage stress, set boundaries, and maintain balance. Recognizing early signs of burnout was especially useful. The presenter was amazing with her presentation skills."
• What the Feedback?
The workshops were well received and gave the attendees real food for thought.
The second round of workshops were:
• Lobbying for change
"Very interesting insights about our rights as students and the mechanisms are in place."
• You’re a STAR…
"I learned the STAR concept. It blew my mind. It was amazing and started applying this technique in work. It has increased my confidence."
• Empowering Student Leaders
These sessions opened attendee’s eyes to the Office for Students B conditions, how to build on skills picked up being a rep into your CV and the realities of being a Course Rep and beyond.
This led nicely into the round table sessions where the attendees were engaged in a variety of areas, including Beds SU Social Opportunities, Library study skills, the Careers Handshake platform and the Beds Careers Builder.
All delegates were then split up into their Faculties and given the chance to discuss issues relevant to their Faculty with the support of some of the School and Faculty staff.
Closing address and pizza!
Co- President Chidera Umeh delivered the closing address in which he summed up the key learnings from the day, after which all were invited to join the Mingle and Munch event in the Metro with free pizza.
The day proved to be hugely successful and you can find out more about becoming a Course Rep on this link. And don't forget, keep an eye out for the next instalment of RepCon in November 2025!