Employability Enhancement through Student advocacy

Abstract Many UK universities employ their enrolled students on a part-time basis as student ambassadors and in teaching support roles, for example as student proctors (Hampton and Potter 2009). However it is common elsewhere, for example in the United States of America, for universities and colleges to employ students in a much wider range of support roles (Hubbard and Klute, 2009). The many advantages of this strategy, to both the institution and to students, became apparent when a similar policy was implemented by a UK university from 2008. This paper focuses on feedback from some computing students based in the Student Experience Enhancement Unit (SEE-u) in Coventry University’s Faculty of Engineering and Computing after being appointed as Student Advocates. Feedback collected recently from student advocates has been used as evidence in this paper to show that the employment and development of students as part time staff to undertake a wide range of tasks, can be an effective way to increase their graduate employment prospects and to improve their value to potential future employers.