Tutors

Invest in your relationship with your tutor by being open about who you are and who you want to become. The better your tutor knows you, what you are good at, what you enjoy, and what you want to achieve, the better their guidance. Keep your tutor informed about your experiences and prepare for your tutor meetings. Engage actively in discussion with your tutor, and respond honestly to your tutor’s inquiries and suggestions that your tutor may make. Your tutor’s guidance is only as good as the information you provide.

Yes, if at all possible!  Continuity allows for you and your tutor to keep working on your relationship from semester to semester. It also allows you both to invest in learning about you and your strengths and interests, and to help you reflect on your progress over the years. This is why UCU values  continuity in tutorial care and tries to maintain it when possible.  Sometimes, though, individual circumstances do make transfer to a new tutor necessary; in such cases, the Senior Tutor team makes any necessary changes, taking into account individual circumstances whenever possible.

You are expected to meet with your tutor at least three times per year. Structural mandatory mid-term meetings are scheduled each semester in the weeks after mid-term break. These allow for reflection on your academic progress so far, your plans and how the courses on offer in following semester(s) will best contribute to your curriculum. You and your tutor can use additional development reflection meetings to reflect on your development so far and your future ambitions. To prepare for these meetings, see here.

You and your tutor may also want to meet on other occasions, and you can visit your tutor during office hours or request an appointment at other times throughout the semester. Since your tutor is your main advisor for your individual curriculum, you are expected to consult with your tutor when you apply for exchange, for minors, for off-campus courses, or exceptions to programme requirements.

Find your tutor's current availability and contact information on their UU profile page (see links here). Be sure to keep your tutor’s availability in mind when making plans that would benefit from your tutor’s input.

During the semester, tutors hold office hours weekly in proportion to the number of students in their tutorial care. Tutors are available by appointment at other times during the work week, but there is no such thing as a full-time tutor. Since tutors are scholars, they combine tutorial work with other academic and professional activities at UCU or elsewhere. Tutors hold more limited office hours during the summer term, and may not be available during mid-term breaks and winter and summer vacation.

While disciplinary advisors focus on promoting their specific disciplines, your tutor focuses on you, and your personal path through the UCU programme. At UCU, the offerings per discipline have been mapped out by the UCU Board of Studies and the UCU fellows responsible for courses in that discipline (see Academics for more information), so you need limited advice about specific disciplinary courses at UCU; what you need is help in defining and consolidating your goals, and in identifying the options and opportunities, in the curriculum and beyond it, that are in line with those. Your tutor’s guidance takes your individual goals and situation into account, helping you fill your curriculum in ways that support and complement your specific disciplinary interests.

No! You and your tutor discuss your course choices for upcoming semesters during your midterm meeting, identifying alternative courses in case you cannot take one of your preferred courses. On the basis of what comes out of that discussion, you pre-enrol yourself for courses in Osiris. Your final enrolment is made on the basis priority categories (see course enrolment and placement). When you cannot take a preferred course in a particular semester  - for example, if there are schedule conflicts with another course, if you do not qualify for it, or if priority considerations and class size limits prevent your getting a place --  your tutor guides you in revising your curriculum plan so that you can still meet your personal goals and UCU graduation requirements on time. After consulting your tutor, you make subsequent course change requests yourself, to be submitted through Osiris before the semester starts, or via an online waiting list after the semester begins.

Ideally, you and your tutor will build a relationship that allows you to discuss any concerns you may have, especially if these could potentially impact your academic progress. If, however, something arises that you would prefer to discuss with someone else, you can also turn to the members of the Senior Tutor team, including the head tutor and two senior tutors (see also below on this page), or the counselors at the UCU Connect Centre.