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AccessHE BAME Students Forum (3rd meeting of the 2017/18 Academic Year)

Posted: Wednesday 30th May 2018

On 20th March 2018, the Student Success Project attended the third AccessHE BAME forum of 2017/18 at Birkbeck, University of London. This meeting gave an overview of an initiative the University of East London, an AccessHE partner institution was undertaking to help black male students into professional graduate – level employment. For more information on the UEL Noon programme, please visit: www.uel.ac.uk. The programme provided students exposure to the business world providing networking opportunities, immersion visits, mentoring activities and enhanced learning opportunities. The meeting also discussed about resources available to support students to reflect on the diversity and inclusivity of their courses. This was very interesting, as the Student Success Project have proactively used students to audit and review the curriculum to understand how diverse it is, through this we were able to realise the lack of diversity in certain departmental reading lists and as a result we are now considering how to add to existing literature of a diverse nature. We have also seen great engagement with the liberated library campaign with students keen to engage in discussions and suggest books that are away from white Eurocentric views. Continuous support in this area has been good to increase awareness and sense of belonging.

For further reading on what the other Higher Education institutions are, doing on diversity and inclusivity of their courses please click the links below:

Your step-by-step guide to liberating your curriculum (LSE Students’ Union)

#LiberateMyDegree: Starting the conversations on your campus (NUS)

Decolonising the curriculum: what’s all the fuss about? (SOAS Blog)

Race Equality Toolkit (Universities Scotland)

Inclusive Curriculum Framework (Kingston University London)

Race for Equality: A report on the experiences of Black students in further and higher education (NUS)