Student Support Manager

Job id: 084447. Salary: £43,205 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance.

Posted: 13 February 2024. Closing date: 18 February 2024.

Business unit: Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. Department: Faculty Education Services.

Contact details:Chrissi Robinson. [email protected]

Location: Guy's Campus. Category: Professional & Support Services.

This role forms part of the Student Support Team within Faculty Education Services in the Faculty of Life, Sciences and Medicine. The team supports students and academics across all taught programmes within the faculty.

The role will be expected to travel regularly to the University of Portsmouth specifically to support the MBBS Branch Campus provision.

The role holder will develop strong working relationships with teams across Faculty Education Services, University services and key academic colleagues at both KCL and UoP.  They are expected to have a good understanding of the student lifecycle and maintain up to date knowledge of programme and university regulations and protocols.  They will need to be able to use this knowledge to provide accurate and timely guidance to colleagues and students as required, escalating where there is risk, ensuring that early intervention is both appropriate and optimal.

You will be people driven, highly organised, motivated, and capable of working independently with minimal supervision, as well as being part of a team. You will be experienced at building strong working relationships and skilled at managing sensitive conversations and challenging situations.  You will have experience of dealing with students who may be navigating complex difficulties, and of signposting to support services as appropriate to ensure students receive the best possible support. 

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract.

This is a full-time  post.

• To support the Head of Student Support in leading on the provision of student support for students on taught programmes within the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine.  Ensuring that services and processes are enabled by efficient reliable systems and effectively meet the needs of students, academic colleagues, and other stakeholders.
• To ensure that faculty student support aligns with university regulations and frameworks and that student support requirements for professional programmes are established in conjunction with the relevant professional statutory regulatory body (PSRB) guidance. (such as the GMC or the GPhC).
• To have responsibility for a defined group of students, including MBBS Branch Based UoP students providing them with pastoral support to help them succeed in their studies. This includes holding regular, bookable meeting times throughout the year to allow students to book one-to-one appointments to discuss their experience and raise any issues.
• To line manage a Student Support Officer and provide guidance and supervision for the Senior Student Support Officers, ensuring the delivery of a professional and service centric provision, ensuring the Student Support Team is consistently welcoming, responsive and proactive in supporting students and academics.
• To support with the coordination and approval of annual leave and the management of staff absences; ensuring that appropriate levels of staff cover remain at all times in order to maintain service levels and to be flexible with resources, reprioritising workload where necessary. 
• To support the Head of Student Support in effectively managing the student support mailbox; ensuring colleagues are responding to all student support enquiries daily and escalating complex, urgent or sensitive contact as appropriate.
• To work collaboratively with colleagues throughout Faculty Education Services to deliver a highly coordinated and prompt approach to issues that may impact the student experience.
• To be a representative of the Student Support Team at Faculty and university meetings, leading by example to ensure colleagues within the team participate and engage with events, such as reception cover, welcome, enrolment, examinations and graduation.
• To be fully conversant with university, programme and statutory body regulations in order to provide informed advice and guidance to staff and students. Supporting academic colleagues with specific enquiry and seeking university or external advice where necessary. Proactively identifying and escalating areas of risk to student experience or institutional reputation as appropriate.  Ensuring familiarity with UoP support systems and procedures and supporting students to navigate and duality because of Branch Campus arrangements.
• To build a positive network with both KCL and UoP university services, working closely with them ensuring students benefit from a well-coordinated and timely approach to determining additional support. Contributing to development of policy, procedures, and service standards to enable FoLSM students to benefit from the resources available, disseminating resources and opportunities to academic colleagues to signpost to expert, timely, consistent advice, before and/or when issues arise.
• To support the Head of Student Support in the production of an annual operational plan, coordinating resources across all of the varying priorities, setting and communicating deadlines that support both students and academics and that enable the team to deliver a professional service.
• To support with the management of the personal tutor system, coordinating annual allocation of new students to personal tutors and all associated record keeping. To follow up on students who experience challenges in meeting with their personal tutor and resolve issues in liaison with Senior Personal Tutors where necessary. 
• To ensure students & stakeholders for the PSRB programmes are aware of the Raising Concerns process and oversee the coordination of cases to ensure they are handled, recorded, and resolved in an appropriate and timely manner in line with other formal procedures.
• To have oversight of student casework, ensuring records are maintained and actions are completed in a timely manner, coordinating to ensure local versus central student support provision at both KCL and UoP is joined up and meeting the student need.
• To oversee the production of student support information; ensuring handbooks, policy and process documentation are updated and that accurate and comprehensive information is available in good time to students & other stakeholders and is accessible via KEATS.  To ensure appropriate information is shared in Programme Updates.
• To support the Head of Student Support in identifying and implementing operational service and process reviews; enabling the team to be comfortable with a culture of continuous improvement and supporting colleagues to be empowered to deliver enhancements.  Supporting with university initiatives, actively participating in university meetings/working groups as required
• To support the Head of Student Support with implementing agreed policy and procedural changes; ensuring amendments to documentation are timely and that changes are widely circulated and understood.
• To independently and proactively resolve operational issues, having foresight to see where problems may arise and adopting a solutions-based approach to ensure that the impact on the student experience or school reputation is minimal. Escalating risks where necessary.
• To be accountable for the data quality of the student record, ensuring record keeping is accurately maintained and is of a highly organised standard, able to withstand audit scrutiny and support accurate statutory returns at short notice.  This high standard extends across all record keeping whether on spreadsheets, email, SITS student record or other system. 
• To deputise for the Head of Student Support where appropriate.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Essential criteria

Desirable criteria