When and where is it?

The details of the dates and how to join can be found on the Fellowship Connections for Professional Roles sign-up form.

Who is it for?

This series of online events, named “Fellowship Connections for Professional Roles,” is intended for those who are working towards an Advance HE fellowship but don’t occupy a traditional teaching role within their organisation.

What is it?

The aim is to build a community of peers who are all traversing a non-traditional path through developing their fellowship case studies.

The sessions

There are three different event types running this year:

Fellowship Coffee Morning

Rachel Bancroft (Head of the LTSU) previously co-founded an online Fellowship Coffee Morning for those in professional roles across the sector and this is continuing into 2025, with hosts from three different institutions (Megan De Ste Croix at De Monfort University, and Nina Cupric from University of Staffordshire). It provides a place for people all in the same fellowship “boat” to share successes, frustrations, and moral support. It’s a fairly unstructured conversation, and each session has a prompt to help get discussions started.

Co-writing – new

This is an opportunity for those who enjoy having others around when working, and allows a feeling of co-presence, through an online meeting, while developing fellowship case studies. No one will be required to share their work, though some might find it helpful.

Speed Fellowship

Inspired by the Speed SoTL events organised by NTU’s Senior Practice Developer Laura Stinson, Speed Fellowship offers an opportunity to have short, structured conversations with others undertaking fellowship – hear how others are approaching their fellowship in lots of small bursts, and refine how to explain practice to others that can help with developing wording for fellowship case studies.

What is it not ?

None of these sessions are aiming to be a substitute for institutional guidance, but to provide friendly peer support, so won’t address questions about the application process or requirements.

I found that talking with others on the same fellowship journey helped me to navigate a writing process that sometimes felt ‘swamp-like’ to me – despite receiving lots of excellent institutional support. Making connections with others helped me to recognise that fellowship is – and is supposed to be – challenging, and I wasn’t alone in finding it hard at times! Since completing my Senior Fellowship, I’ve been looking for ways to help others benefit from that same type of companionship.

Rachel Bancroft, co-founder of Fellowship Connections for Professional Roles group

Image credit: this image was generated using Copilot as part of creating artwork for the Fellowship event series (it pre-existed this blog post).