Hello everybody. Welcome to this week's broadcast.
I'm delighted to welcome Tikka Masala and Ed Jones, who are two of our junior deans here at Worcester.
So both. Welcome to the cast. Thank you for having us.
Pleasure.
You're here by popular request because everyone was really keen to find out more about what the welfare team and the Dean team in particular do.
By way of introduction, can I thank you and the Dean team and anybody else who's involved in welfare for what you do?
T.K., you've been Junior Dean for four years.
I think that's true. I think it's a very fortunate instance because I did my dphil and continued as a postdoc,
which allowed me to cover this long period of time, which is unusual, I must have to admit.
You've just completed your dphil, as I understand it. For which.
Congratulations. What's your dphil in? Thank you.
It's and chemical biology. Where I look at drug interactions between different targets for infectious diseases.
And namely, it was tuberculosis and COVID 19.
Well, well done. And I know you're busy continuing your research and now looking for permanent positions.
And you're at St Anthony's currently.
I think you were in Oxford before you joined the intensities.
What were you doing? Yes. So I started out in in history, I did my B.A. in history, mostly looking at genocides, things.
So I wrote my thesis in lockdown. And that was not a particularly pleasant experience, as I'm sure you can imagine.
So I took a year away and now I'm pivoting more towards my emphasis in global and area studies.
I think my main regions are East Asia, Japan and the Arctic.
Great. Good luck with the Mphil you both find time to be junior deans in addition to doing your work.
How does that work? I think it was quite, quite nicely actually, because more than you might expect,
because it's supposed to at least evenings and weekends that we're on duty as junior deans.
This means there isn't too much interaction, if any, with the things I have during my day, lectures and seminars and like library time and so forth.
I'm actually I find it's quite nice to kind of break up the day a little.
Sometimes it kind of gets me out of my kind of academic sort of headspace and back into the real world.
Then to add on to what I'd said, I think for me it was about finding the right balance.
I would otherwise get stuck in the lab, you know, experimenting and trying new things all the time.
But if I have a wife that was there that organised my route on its own, I have to be somewhere, so I need to get out.
Yeah. You know, you wouldn't just do another round of experiment because you're curious, you know, you would let it hold a day.
So I think I've found a good balance for my Ph.D. by actually being employed as a junior dean as well.
Great. Apart from being able to look after myself better now because of all the trainings I received as a junior dean, you know,
along with helping students and the wider community at Worcester, I've also been able to support myself, which I'm I think I'm thankful for that.
Great, great. And why did you both want to be Junior Deans, other than the reason that you've just given teacher?
I mean, are you driven to help support students and can unconcerned about helping their welfare?
I think that's true. That's largely true, actually, because when I joined Worcester, I was a second year student,
but in my first year of Dphil, I was supporting the students that I was supervising in the lab.
And a lot of the time issues came because they had mental health problems, but they would not be so forthcoming to share.
And while I was providing that support, I thought if I could officially do this,
I would be supporting a broader community of people, as well as probably getting more training, which I didn't have at that time.
So that was a large part of my motivation and anything to add.
So for me, I think it's a case of, well,
I was involved in the welfare team at Lincoln when I was doing my undergrad there and I was JCR Hippy for a little while actually.
So I came to understand how important college welfare provision is for students and the role that colleges play in providing that.
I enjoyed being being a junior dean here because I think it gives me the opportunity to make a positive kind of contribution to the community.
I think it's a wonderful opportunity to interact with students and in a way that usually I really wouldn't as a as an NFL student.
And even if I can't help a student immediately, as is quite often the case,
you know, a lot of the job is signposting people to other bits of the university,
other avenues of support that they didn't necessarily know existed,
suggesting they send emails to people that they didn't know they could get
help from or pointing people towards and have support in the form of jorgie.
Head of Welfare. To be, even if it's a relatively small contribution like that.
It's nice to know that you're able to be useful and to be helpful.
I'm sure you're being modest.
It's a big contribution and I know that everybody in the Worcester community appreciates what you do and talks highly of the Dean team.
Tell us about how many people are in the Dean team and the different roles it's just talked about.
Georgie, should we start with Georgie? What? What does George do?
Yeah, I think I first have start by saying he's one of the loveliest members to have in the team.
She's the welfare officer. So I think apart from setting out the protocols about how to handle a certain situations,
students can come to her directly to talk about things they want.
It could be anything, or it could range from severe cases to sometimes just missing home.
Being homesick. Yeah, moving to Oxford is a big thing, especially for first year students.
So it could be cases like that. And then next to Josie, we have Paul, who's our lovely dean.
And then his role is to just guide the whole team.
And we've got our assistant dean never was previously a junior dean as well, and she's the line manager for Junior Deans.
Just, you know, I'll go to person if something comes up in the shift and we're not sure.
You know the rest of the team is composed of junior deans is Gaby sees a psychologist.
James has joined the team the same time as I did last October.
Is he an economist? I always forget. He is. He is? Yes. So we're relatively new.
And then there's Holly who's been in the team for a little while longer.
Holly's is the CS, the synthetic chemists in the same lab that I work for.
Okay. Allergist Yeah, and we've got Jo, who's our college nurse.
She's also part of the coding team, and we refer to her for health related mental health and physical health, all kind of issues.
So that I think that makes the core members to be nine.
I work closely with chaplain and other wider welfare community at Forster.
And how does it work between yourselves? You take it interns with shifts.
You meet on a regular basis. I'm sure people would like to hear how the Dean team organises itself.
So from a students perspective, the easiest way to approach it is at any time any student can go to the lodge of the lodge and if it's out-of-hours.
So we work seven in the evening till seven in the morning during term time as well as over weekends.
The lodge will direct that student towards whichever junior team is on duty.
So it could be any of the five junior deans or it could be never.
I was the assistant dean, so that's kind of how the system works.
From a student facing perspective. We also meet every what day is it today, Tuesday,
and use that time to discuss college welfare provision, what we've done, what we could be doing better.
If anyone has any comments or suggestions for the team.
That's when we'll kind of discuss them and see see if there's any, any way that we can act on them.
Do add on to that a little bit. Yeah, that's from from the students perspective.
But for I think if we just speak about how do we organise that internally as a team, I think that's when I talk about,
you know, acquiring these other skills apart from just doing a dphil is that we also organise our rota weekly.
So someone in the team takes a shift for taking the minutes of the meeting among the junior deans and Gabby is doing it this time.
I make the rota. Yeah. So Ed's making the rota weekly, so we have a week in advance.
And then I think just to add on to the students perspective, everybody's on shift all the time.
If you think about Josie and Paul and Never, but Junior Deans are obviously on Rota for the evening shift, so it works quite well during the daytime.
It's Josie who was taking a huge load during the evenings.
It's the junior deans and I think our team is nice in that sense that let's say you've had a
busy week and then you feel too knackered to take on another day because it's a big thing.
You don't know what's coming in your way. So we have good communication where we're like, Okay, I've had a busy week.
Is it okay if I just, you know, take next week off? Okay.
So, so there's a degree of flexibility. Yeah, there is. And it sounds like you're a very cohesive team sharing the load together.
How many calls do you typically get in the evenings and during the night?
We would say it varies in the training terms sometimes, which is the exam period.
It could get awfully busy. Like we've had moments where we had to invite Josie to later meetings because she had a full pack day for weeks so we
couldn't get out to a meeting in terms of junior deans during the exam times or when whenever there's like events scheduled,
we get a lot of call outs. So we've had a quiet days where like sometimes for two weeks the phone would ring, all right.
And then there's a period where like there's call every night.
So we're wondering what's happening for the purposes of the course.
I'm really keen that we tell people what kind of things you cover and to encourage people to turn to you if they need help.
But the sorts of things. You mentioned people settling in, you know, when they first arrive.
So listeners to the broadcast they typically you know what.
You're keen to support them with.
I would I would like to say I'm available for anything whenever I send an email to my building sometimes to just introduce myself, I say they're like,
If you feel lonely, if you miss the friend, if you just want to have a tea,
or if you just like a chat and you don't know, maybe your situation is very precarious.
You don't know what to do with it, who to go to. If you just don't have the right tools, then just come to me and then maybe I could signpost you.
Or if you know what your issues and you are getting help from somewhere.
But at the time being you just like some external opinion.
I'll come and sit with you, talk you through. These are the some of the less complex issues, let's say as a junior dean and as a Dean team,
when you're supporting a community which has like 400 students on site, you can imagine why the cases would not be identical amongst each other.
Right? So there are sometimes very severe cases where we obviously refer to our internal protocols.
It could be health related, it could be mental health related. We've been called out.
We're properly trained. Rest assured on that. We do have this compulsory 30 hours training right at the beginning.
Okay.
I was going to talk to you about training and support, but then on top of that, we get mental health first aid training, physical first aid training.
So all of these come together to support this, let's say more complex issues with the students in a way that they feel supported and not preyed on.
Yes. So I think we we try our level best to give that to the students.
And if someone's lonely in the middle of the night, can't sleep feeling stressed, can they really phone you up?
I'd say that's a lot of what we do. Yeah, right. It's relatively rare that students will cope with, in my experience with just one thing.
You know, very often students experience quite a few different things.
At the same time, I think it's because physical and mental health are so closely related.
A lot of our work is understanding that and unpacking that and then being able
to signpost and let students know where additional support is available.
Of course, if it's 3 a.m., often the choice is between, okay, we should go to hospital maybe.
Or we could talk for a little bit longer. And then in the morning I can suggest that you go to very often it will be
Georgie or it could be could be someone else with in college or out of college.
So that's that that's important.
I think it's also important to say that students should go to the lodge, usually as their first port of call if, if, if there's any kind of sort of.
Yeah, I was just going to give some examples, I think, just to just for people to maybe picture it better.
I think one of the cases that I had was just someone phoning me because they're not ready to sit for an exam because of their existing circumstance.
And it was 2 hours before the exam. So we are in touch with the academy administrators.
We have this network. So I was able to put her in touch and then address her situation for that to sit for another day.
So this is one of the examples and at the time it was someone had missed going home for their birthday
and they were feeling quite lonely because they couldn't celebrate their birthday with their family.
It was their first birthday away, so I went over.
Sadly, Tesco was closed because it was past midnight, otherwise I would have take a slice of cake for them.
In the past, during lockdowns, when people had health issues, I've done food drops as well.
Okay. So I mean, I think it's interesting, you know, and then you get to interact with the students sometimes,
maybe more through the role, even though we live in the college. Yeah.
And so not all call outs are serious and that sometimes it's just, you know, getting to know the student.
Yes. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you do a great job in terms of reassuring that signposting.
But, you know, there are cases where you need to to respond.
So tell us about it. Tell us about the training you got because you mentioned.
Yes. How you get trained. So the first thing the very first thing that I was sent on by the college was sexual violence sort of support training,
which is I think it's incredibly important that we have that.
So that's the first thing. Then there was a, I believe, one or two day first aid course.
So we were all four stages filled with that qualification up to date and then mental health first aid.
As I say, that physical and mental health so closely linked and especially in a community like this,
I think it's really important that we have those tools to be able to support and signpost.
And the big one really is the week long Junior Dean training,
which is offered by it's the same people who do the peer support training that students might be familiar with that in that training,
a lot of it is going through situations, going through real life scenarios of things that junior deans across the university have had to deal with.
It's about knowing the limits of our job. It's about knowing how to help people responsibly, knowing when to.
Offer advice. Also understanding that the role is incredibly different across the university.
So at Worcester we have one way being a junior dean.
Other colleges, because of many circumstances, maybe they're great colleges, maybe they're smaller communities than we are.
They all have their own different sort of interpretations of the job.
So it's wonderful to have that kind of network of other junior deans across the
university and to be able to understand and get a different perspective on what works,
what doesn't work. So it's a really flexible course. And yeah, I think it was it was really, really useful.
And is there anything unique about the Worcester approach? This is one way in which Worcester is quite different, is it's a massive site.
I did my undergrad at Lincoln, which is just tiny.
So Worcester Junior Deans are among the only in the university to do rounds every evening.
So we walk around, we make sure that everything is okay and we kind of support the porters and and the lodge team in doing that.
So that's one way in which our job at Worcester is is relatively unique.
And who supports you? Thank you.
I think not many people access that quite often. Sometimes one incident is I have the I myself go to Josie and say I need some support.
Is that to handle this case? Or I could go to Joe. I'll call his nurse.
Apart from that, we also have visits with Tim Oke, who trained us with the at least for me,
he was, yes, training the junior dean throw away, famous training that was talking about.
We have full supervision. Tom Yeah. So it's nice place to go and meet other dunedin's from different colleges.
And sometimes if you've dealt with a case that you thought was the circumstances were quite unique,
you can open it to the floor and see how they would have handled it versus how you do it.
It's a group session. It is, yeah. I think Junior Dean sign up and then Tim is like supervising and asking everyone what they
think of it and guiding and probably sharing his own expertise on how you would have dealt it.
Is there any other way we could have gone about it? So it's basically just to check that we're doing okay.
And yeah, you know, it's a long term sometimes. Yeah, and we're a learning organisational way and it's really important to be alive to,
you know, how you can approach things differently and share that expertise and insights.
So it sounds very sensible, goes without saying in kind of that kind of scenario where it's supervision data is anonymous.
Yeah. So we're not talking about students using their names or any identifiable details.
Actually, let's talk about confidentiality. There's some things I wanted to touch upon.
How can students feel comfortable there when they turn to you?
They can trust you, you know? How does that work?
Tell us just to reassure people most of the time when they come to us,
everything is confidential and the confidentiality is only extended within the member of the team in a need to know basis.
So everyone can remain confident that whenever they come to us we understand and actually want it to be confidential for their own sake.
Otherwise the safe space doesn't happen, right?
Yeah, I know from talking to students in my drop in that they're always incredibly positive about our team.
So, you know, thank you for all of that.
What are your particular highlights and anything you'd particularly like to mention as a highlight as a Dean team?
I think it's put us in a wonderful place of being staff whilst being a student.
So I think I've quite enjoyed the dimension of being a staff and supporting the student as
well as being a student myself and the unique community and the lovely gardens in Worcester.
I think that has been one of the biggest highlight and the friendship I've been able to forge with Simon over time has been great.
And Simon Bagnall had to go, Yeah, yeah. And for you, any particular highlights you'd like to mention?
It's early days for you. So many days. But what I would say is working with this with the Dean team,
I felt so welcomed and it's been a really wonderful opportunity to meet interesting people from around you, like around the university.
We're pretty diverse group in terms of the stuff we study and you know, to meet this kind of cross-section of the university.
And also I think it's wonderful to be able to work with students, even if even if I can offer only limited advice, you know,
and even if they don't want my advice, they just want someone to talk at for 45 minutes to be able to be there and see them a little bit later on.
You know, of course I won't say anything, but I'll see them at lunch with their friends and that they're doing better and they're having a better day.
I don't that that really makes it. That's a good feeling. Really special.
And final question for me, one piece of advice from each of you to everyone listening,
I think I think it's applies to kind of as much as us as it does students.
It's making time for social time. We're social creatures.
I think it's really easy to neglect the time we spend with friends in favour of oh, well, spend an hour or more in the life.
I won't go to that thing. That time is super, super important and really important for mental health, too.
I'm really pleased to hear you say that because it might drop in. Quite a few people come in and say, Should I go and do some sport?
Or I really get stressed when I'm not in the library and I'm busy telling them exactly what you just shared,
which is that it's equally important to go and, you know, no couple around or, you know, play Frisbee, you know, all of that stuff or just to chill.
So yeah, I advice I take umbrage with the idea that you have to be doing something all the time.
So even your kind of downtime has to be around an activity.
Yes. And I think just hanging out, just chilling. That's fine.
Yeah. At least I said that as my final edition.
Chilling and secret from for you. Well, I value its advice quite a lot.
The thing I'd like to add on to that is if you feel like you could use a sport, do not hesitate, do nothing.
You know, maybe someone else needs more support or my shoe is not as big as everyone else's.
So maybe if I give it a couple of days, it will go away.
I will say, please make that call. Please reach out your friends, your community.
Everyone will appreciate that you made that call that you wrote that email.
So I think during hard times when you're unsure if you should reach out, the best thing is to reach out.
Right. So I would just suggest people to be more open about how they feel and, you know, make it a norm to talk about how you feel.
Not in a ranting way, but just about. I'm not doing okay.
Can I talk to you? Just check in if they have the time for us.
I think it's important to be respectful if the other person you're going to offload onto has the time.
And once you respect that and address that, then please just reach out to people.
Do not suffer in silence. So it's okay to reach out.
Yeah. And just to ensure that everyone understands how to reach out, you can turn up to the porters launch.
Yeah. And you just mentioned emails and I was mentioning phone calls.
You can phone them, the porters launch the lodge and then who should they email if they want to email.
So we have the communal email of the team for emergency issues.
Obviously the emails are not monitored as often as would be, but if it's just about something, you know,
that could wait a couple of hours and it's not an urgent issue, then you can email us if it lets you open up.
We use teams as well, whichever communication channel is preferred.
Like some people like to talk in person, some prefer phone or video, so we try to make as many options available as possible.
So Lodge is the main recommended one, but we're also available through teams and emails and any thing you choose, we will be there.
It's great that people have the opportunity to turn to somebody.
I think for our role as Jody and I think it's very essential to highlight the close relationship
we have with the Lodge supporters as well because they are the first port of call.
So if they were not supporting us, I think some of the days could have been more difficult for me.
So I think definitely thanking them on behalf of the entirety of the team, if I can,
and then the core team obviously because I think it wouldn't run as smoothly if the internal members were not that st outside of that,
also the students, I think without the students there would not be a vibrant community and the need for it.
And I think the whole of SCA that we're privileged to be part of.
So, you know, speaking to a lot of different professors and fellows and getting to know about their work,
sometimes meeting their guests, some interesting ones, I think I'm quite thankful for that as well.
And obviously the catering team, because one of our privileges as the team is dining, right?
So I think all of the delicious meals and I've had the fortune of bringing my friends over were incredibly jealous and envious of my rights.
So I think definitely the catering team who have been always so nice and welcoming when I first started, I think right,
once you walk through the Worcester Lodge to the entirety of the college, you'd find so many happy, welcoming faces in the grounds.
I didn't know. I'm pretty sure they didn't know me as well. So just smile and greeted by the same two gardeners, too.
Yeah, I know that. That's where I'm going. Yeah, I think as soon as you come, then nobody knows you.
But, you know, that's just warm, green or smile. Sometimes that's enough to make someone else's day.
So please be generous smile often and thank you everybody who have supported us to this roles.
And if we have not mentioned you today, we definitely appreciate you.
Take care. Thanks. That's great. And as I said earlier on, and thank you for everything that you guys do and the Dean team does.
And as provost, I'm really proud of everything that the Dream Team does.
And the welfare support here is, you know, really strong and effective.
So thank you for being on the podcast this week.
Next week, I'm going to be interviewing Chris Reid, who is visiting Tara Professor in the history of American Art,
and I'm very much looking forward to interviewing. But have a very good week.
Thank you for listening. And as ever, do make an appointment to pop in to see me and my drop in.
Make contact with Sue Gettys at Walk Don't Ask Don't UK.
I said it correctly and I look forward to seeing you then if not bumping into you around college.
Have a good week. Thank you.