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Leeds Loves STEM Resources page

This page is dedicated to providing information about the Leeds Loves Ambassador role to current ambassadors. Please make yourself familiar with the information below before working on any Leeds Loves STEM school visit.

Leeds Loves and Educational Engagement information

Leeds Loves...

Congratulations on becoming a Leeds Loves STEM Ambassador.

‘Leeds Loves’ is a project which aims to inspire secondary school students through informative and engaging presentations delivered by current undergraduate students from the University of Leeds.

The project has grown considerably since its inception by a former University of Leeds German and History student in 2012 and now consists of over 80 ambassadors from a range of subject areas including STEM, social sciences, languages and arts.

We hope that you find your time as an ambassador a rewarding one and hope that it will equip you with new skills and experiences for your future career.

You are now part of a successful group of students who work together to promote the University and Higher Education (HE) to its key stakeholders, who are primarily prospective students but also their parents and supporters, school teachers and sponsors of the University.

Leeds Loves Ambassadors play an essential and important role in the recruitment process at the University of Leeds. Much of the work carried out by the Educational Engagement Office relies on the involvement of ambassadors.

Educational Engagement

The Educational Engagement Office is located at 18 Blenheim Terrace, next to Tesco on Woodhouse Lane.

Educational Engagement is part of the Student Education Service (SES) and covers the areas of Education Outreach, Scholarships, Talent Spotting (including Reach for Excellence and Thomas Transition Project), Contextual Admissions (including Access to Leeds and Realising Opportunities) and the Arts, Social Science, STEM and Health Sciences clusters. During your contract you will mainly be working for the STEM Outreach team, however there may be opportunities to work across different areas of Educational Engagement.

Who do we work with?

The Educational Engagement Office works across the UK with two types of audience - recruitment and hard to reach groups. Recruitment schools/colleges are those that either currently send a large number of students to the University or whose students achieve highly in their examinations so have the potential to attend here.

Hard to reach groups include those from ‘widening participation’ backgrounds. Widening participation is a term which describes an attempt to increase not only the numbers of young people entering higher education, but also the proportion from under-represented groups who do not view higher education learning as an option, or who may be discouraged by social, cultural, economic or institutional barriers Whilst not intended to be an exhaustive list, widening participation groups are recognised as:

People whose parents have not attended University
People from low income households
People who are in or have left Public Care
People from under performing schools
People from geographical areas of low progression to HE
People with caring responsibilities

 

 

  

 

Leeds Loves STEM Handbook

The Leeds Loves Ambassador Handbook provides information about your role in Educational Engagement. It includes a code of conduct, information on our payment and expenses policies and a handy checklist for your schools visits.

Please ensure you read and are familiar with the handbook before every school visit.

Safeguarding processes

It is important that prior to both on-campus events and school visits, you are aware of your safeguarding responsibilities.

Please download and become familiar with the University of Leeds Safeguarding Policy before working on events for the STEM Outreach Team. Please also familiarise yourself with this Guide to Child Protection and Safeguarding.

Please find here a Reporting Form, which includes the procedure for reporting allegations, which is to be filled in following any safeguarding disclosure/concern as well as any incident or accident.

In the event of an incident of any kind during an on-campus event:

  1. Inform the Activity Lead
  2. OR in the unlikely event that you’re making a report about the Activity Lead, then inform the Designated Safeguarding Officer.

In the event of an incident of any kind during a school visit:

  1. Inform your line manager in the STEM team by emailing STEM@leeds.ac.uk
  2. AND inform the school that you are visiting.

Leeds Loves Risk Assessment

The Leeds Loves Risk Assessment can be found here. Please take time to familiarise yourself with this Risk Assessment before you go out to do a talk.

Equality and Diversity

As a worker of the University of Leeds, you are now responsible for promoting our Equality and Diversity Policy, which can be downloaded here.

Recording Your Hours

After attending a school visit, please fill in the Leeds Loves Timesheet Input Form to inform us of your hours and we will process your payment.  Or if you prefer you can fill in this Microsoft Word form and email it to  the STEM team (STEM@leeds.ac.uk).

Please send in hours promptly, as the sooner you get your timesheet in the sooner you will get paid.

Please be aware that you are only expected to send in a timesheet for any work that you undertake off-campus. Your timesheet should include travel, preparation and delivery time (for school visits or work on an event).

On campus events: For on-campus visit days which are staffed by a member of the STEM Educational Engagement team, you do not need to fill in a timesheet. The lead staff member will provide a sign-in sheet, so please make sure you sign in and out.

Sample Leeds Loves STEM Talk. Leeds Loves training slides. Campus tour training guide

Please find a sample/template Leeds Loves STEM talk here. Please use this template as the basis for your presentation. You may modify this template but please still use the University logo and Leeds Loves STEM branding from the sample presentation.

Please also refer to the training slides as they may prove a useful reference.

The campus tour guide used during your training can be found here

 

Ambassador Feedback

In order for us to continue improving the Leeds Loves project for our ambassadors and schools, we require feedback about the talks. After each talk please spend a few minutes completing the Leeds Loves STEM Ambassador feedback form.  This is your chance to let us know how you feel the talk went, what worked and what could be improved.