1a: Cooperation between Student Ombudsperson and Student Representatives: what model?

Jorge A.Ribeiro Pereira (Portugal), Anna-Katharina Rothwangl (Austria)

The cooperation between Student Ombudspersons (SO) and Student Unions/Student Representatives (SU) could be important for academic community wellbeing and to help SO (re)think their activity.

During the last 4 months of 2022, the authors promote the advantages and challenges of this cooperation in different forums. The discussion upon this topic was fruitful and some broader/empiric perspective was conceived.

Moreover, ENOHE promote a webinar on this topic and nowadays this is becoming a relevant topic in the action of both SO and SU.

The authors aim to share their experience and contributions they collected on this matter to help Ombudspersons in Higher Education (re)shape ways of increasing the SU inputs in Higher Education Institutions/System.

Presenter(s):

Jorge A.Ribeiro Pereira: Student Ombudsperson

Anna-Katharina Rothwangl: Provisional Austrian Student Ombudswoman

1b: Balance power structure at meetings with management by inviting student politicians

BoGad Køhlert (Denmark)

As Ombuds, you have probably attended multiple meetings over the years with managers from your institution, where some of your findings and recommendations were frowned upon at best or discarded without a word at worst. I suggest that you start inviting student politicians to such meetings. Somehow it seems to add more balance to the power structure of such meetings and seems to make decision makers listen more carefully.

During my presentation, I will sum up my experiences of having gone througha fixed meeting structure around my annual reports 2021 and 2022 with student politicians as mandatory meeting attendees. This meeting structure was endorsed by top management at my institution in 2020.

Presenter(s):

BoGad Køhlert: Student Ambassador