[Academic] PDA role and useful materials

[physics-director-student-support]

Dear all,

Thank you for acting as a Personal Development Advisor for you student family.

The main role of the PDA is to be a first point of contact for students in the department outside of direct teaching events. Hence you should be meeting the whole group at the start of each term, but also in addition make them aware that you can meet individually if there are personal or private issues they want to raise or get help with.

You should have received a link for logging PDA student meetings:
https://forms.office.com/e/0nUbR1C95n
This contains most of the important information and suggested signposts for students that should be raised when you meet your students. This link is also available as a QR code:
[cid:bd70491b-9cc2-42d7-9ea7-f8af4b78237a]


The PDA role is mostly to signpost where to go for help if there is a problem, and it is not your job to fix everything for the student.

Academic matters

  *   They should talk to the relevant teaching staff, if possible, as they are usually best placed to help.

  *   If it's regarding a complaint, this can be raised (in escalating order) via : you as the PDA; the relevant Student-Staff committee rep for the class; The year coordinator for that student; physics-director-student-support at strath.ac.uk (i.e. me); gabrielle.weir at strath.ac.uk the Department Manager; By following the University complaints process as described at https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/documents/complaintsprocedure/Strath_CHPPart5_-_Guide_for_students.pdf

Disability and wellbeing

  *   The department's support should be contacted via physics-ddc at strath.ac.uk
  *   The University's pages give information and link for the central support https://www.strath.ac.uk/professionalservices/disabilityandwellbeing/

Students should be reminded to contact these routes as early as possible​ if they require support for a disability, as it takes time for assessment and adjustments to be put in place.

Emergency support

There is information at
https://www.strath.ac.uk/professionalservices/disabilityandwellbeing/mentalhealthwellbeingsupport/emergencywellbeingcontact/guidanceforstaff/
giving contacts for support and guidance for distressed students. There is a PDF summary at
https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/ps/sees/disabilityservice/Helping_Students_in_Distress_A_Guide_for_Staff.pdf
which also includes links to various resources.

University Security staff are trained in first aid and mental health first aid, so call 2222 in an emergency.

In addition, there are departmental first aiders on all floors, and at least 3 mental health first aiders in the building (see signage near the lifts).


Much of this information is also available to students at the Physics Personal Development page:
https://classes.myplace.strath.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=25509

Regards

Ben

--
Dr Ben Hourahine
Director of Student Support
Department of Physics
University of Strathclyde
Tel.: +44 141 548 2325
physics-director-student-support at strath.ac.uk
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