The SEED Student Support Hub is located in the Humanities Bridgeford Street building, on the ground floor. We are number 35 on the Campus map. The Hub is open Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm.

The Hub offers support and advice on a wide variety of issues. The Student Support and Wellbeing (SSW) team are always present in the Hub and wellbeing meetings can be arranged for students that need to discuss confidential matters. In addition, the Hub hosts events around wellbeing and encouraging social interaction for students which can be found on our calendar of events.

• Student voice

Academic Advising provides support to students during their period of study at Manchester in three areas:

• Academic - providing academic guidance on where and how to improve;
• Wellbeing and pastoral care- acting as a point of contact for students experiencing personal difficulties, and signposting students with particular needs to support services;
• Employability - helping students think about their future career and writing references.

Further information is available in the academic advising toolkit along with training and advice when taking on this role.

The IAG Team will contact Programme Directors as soon as possible to request that each new student is allocated an Academic Advisor. This advisor will usually remain the same for the duration of the student’s course. Any changes should be notified to the IAG team at seed.hub@manchester.ac.uk so that Campus Solutions can be updated.

Academic Advisors are key to the student experience and supporting students in their studies, information that students view is available at student support on MyManchester.

The Information, Advice and Guidance Team work closely with the Graduation team with regard to the arrangements for graduation ceremonies. Graduations take place in July and December with a full schedule of ceremonies available in advance.

• Graduation information

The Information, Advice and Guidance Team lead on the delivery of Welcome Week, working closely with academics and PS colleagues in TLSE. The team develop robust plans, Welcome Week timetables, update programme handbooks and send out communication to new and progressing students.

• Further information is available on the University website.

• Student experience surveys

The Information, Advice and Guidance Team work extremely closely with the Students’ Union on the recruitment of Student Reps, also known as Academic Reps. The recruitment of Student Reps is led by the Students’ Union and takes place in Spring (April/May) for the new academic year, and in autumn (September) for those in the first year of their programmes and those doing one-year courses (e.g., Masters).

Any student who wants to be a rep can sign up via an SU form sent to all students by the IAG team. Programme leads can support this recruitment by informing students of the rep role and sharing the sign-up link. This means that programme leads do not need to create their own sign-up form or ask students to email them, but can share the SU’s sign-up link instead.

Further information is available on the student union reps page.

Study skills

Alex Baratta, one of our SEED MIE academics, runs study sessions specifically aimed at SEED students. These are online sessions delivered via Zoom and cover a range of academic topics including referencing, research and dissertations. These sessions run throughout the year and these sessions are advertised in batches as they are organised, please see details below for latest details of our upcoming sessions and how to sign up.

• Resources

There is a wide variety of study skills support across the University and some useful links with further information are shown below:

• Student Support
• My Learning Essentials (The University of Manchester Library)

There is an Employability and Professional Learning (E&PL) Committee within SEED that brings together academics from each of the discipline areas; GDI, Planning, MIE and Geography. Colleagues from the Careers Service and the School’s Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) Team also attend. Meetings are usually held once per Semester and one of the key recent successes of this group has been piloting an employability scheme in GDI.

The scheme has completed its second year now and there are plans to expand the scheme across SEED. Shirley Jenner, the outgoing Associate Dean for Employability and Professional Learning, has produced a blog based on the work done during the 23/24 academic year.

• Student voices: championing career success in GDI

There are significant resources available on how and where to direct students in all areas of employability. Links centrally to the Careers Service, guidance on providing references and how to support students’ employability are available on the link below.

• Employability on StaffNet

Further information on how to help students to enhance their future employability by encouraging experience and advising them about, or signposting them to, areas which may assist their employability can be found on the link below.

• Employability on Teaching and Learning Delivery