Why am I only invited to one department's meetings?
As your programme is primarily overseen by one of the two departments you take classes from (ie your ‘home’ department), you are only expected to attend your home department’s meetings and raise feedback regarding your second department (‘host department’) there. Your home department’s Director of Learning and Teaching (DLT) is expected to report your feedback to the host department and let you know what has happened with this.
Some Joint Honours Reps in the past have found it useful to be present in both the home and host department’s meetings. If you believe it would be more appropriate to attend both meetings, you are able to do so.
While you can request to be invited to the Host department’s meetings, they are not obligated to formally invite you. However, more often than not they are likely to be happy to have you in their meetings.
Why do I only have the support module for the home department but not the host department?
As aforementioned, your programme is primarily overseen by the home department and it is expected that the home department support module contains all of the essential information for all the students they are responsible for. If you feel like your support module does not cover all the materials you believe should be essential, either contact the relevant home department admin to either amend this or liaise with the host department to give you access to their support module.
My cohort is not getting communications from the other department we take classes from. Why is that?
Due to GDPR reasons, your cohort’s emails are only held within your home department. However, you can be proactive and press on the host department for you to be included in their communications.
How do I effectively manage representing a Joint Honours cohort?
There is no right or wrong answer to how you should manage this but being able to manage your time effectively to attend to your Rep responsibilities such as going to two sets of meetings and collecting feedback for a broader range of activities.
You can and should work with Reps across both Departments as this can be helpful to both ends. Collaborating with one another means you have access to a wider range of opinions and ideas as to how you can support your cohorts.
If you ever need support managing the workload, you are always welcome to message the Union for support.
