2019 Students as Partners Roundtable

The National SAP Roundtable is always a must-go-to event on our calendar each year. The Roundtable brings together students and staff already working in partnership, with those wanting to work differently, in partnership.

This year, UNSW hosted a stimulating program showcasing innovative SAP practices from across Australasia. Typically, the day is full of conversation, puzzling, celebration and listening closely to what other universities are doing, how they are working small or local or at-scale in some cases, and how SAP as an umbrella term, is having more and more utility as an institution-wide framework for integrating student engagement, student partnership and student representation. Taking these terms together and separately is a wonderful provocation for our partnership work at Western.

What's especially interesting is noticing how different the conversation about partnership is between student representatives, and partnership initiatives located in the education space.

To my mind, it feels a difference in the entitlement to speak, to be heard, and to have student participation acted on. I think this is a difference that needs more sustained theoretical work in part because 'the University' or 'staff' and 'student' are no longer straightforward categories. In partnership initiatives, one bleeds into the other with increasing intention and regularity. Interestingly, the boundaries seem more porous.

I always appreciate the opportunity to test the merits and limits of the partnership initiatives that we are crafting here at Western as part of the 21C project. I am grateful for the feedback from the SAP community, the enthusiasm and interest in our work, and the pressure to deliver it is always writ-large. We are now well underway!

Check out the video from the day (featuring some of our WSU student partners).