Shaping Advising in the UK: Balancing Precision and Compassion - Adventures in Advising

Dr. Sarah Bosch, chief operating officer at the United Kingdom Advising and Tutoring (UKAT) association, discusses her unique path from competitive athletics to a doctorate in biomechanics and a distinguished career in academic advising. She reflects on her leadership in enhancing advising practices at Sheffield Hallam University and her contributions to UKAT in areas such as institutional accreditation and professional development. Sarah underscores the critical role of personal tutoring and shares insights from her research on postgraduate advising, highlighting the effectiveness of the embedded advising model. Sarah emphasizes the importance of community, collaboration, and inclusive support structures and the role that UKAT is playing to shape the conversations around student success. 

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Transcript

Matt Markin: [00:00:00] And welcome back to the Adventures in Advising podcast. This is Matt Markin. And with me as always is Ryan Scheckel. Ryan, what's up? Hey Matt. How's it going? It is going. Are you ready for today's interview? 

Ryan Scheckel: Yeah. It's such a nice change of pace from our orientation schedule to. Stop and talk with colleagues from all over, and I'm looking forward to talking with our guests today.

Matt Markin: Yeah, and we are recording this in the beginning of June for anyone that is listening to this. So yeah, it's orientation season, I think, for a lot of us. Good luck to everybody and let's welcome our guest. On today's episode. We get to. Interviewed Dr. Sarah Bosch, the Chief Operating Officer at UKAT, the United Kingdom Advising and Tutoring Association.

Matt Markin: Before joining the UKAT staff team in March of 2025, [00:01:00] Sarah held several voluntary roles in UKAT, including being a member of the board of trustees. Sarah has worked as a graduate teaching assistant while studying for her PhD biomechanical investigations of Bend Running Technique and Athletic Sprint events at the University of Bath.

Matt Markin: Graduated in 2012. While staying at the university, Sarah worked for a year as a teaching fellow before taking up a post at Sheffield, Hallam University as a lecturer. Then later as a senior lecturer teaching biomechanics with the Academy of Sport, working across various sport and exercise science and sport and exercise technology degree programs.

Matt Markin: She assumed several roles, including module and course leadership. From 2021 to 2025, Sarah worked within one of Sheffield Hallam University's central directorates student experience, teaching and learning. There. She worked closely with the head of academic advising to support the enhancement of academic advising practice across the institution.

Matt Markin: Sarah, welcome. 

Sarah Bosch: Thank you much. [00:02:00] Hi both. 

Matt Markin: Yeah. So great for you to be here with us today, and we're gonna throw the first question to you. We've heard from your bio more of a formal bio, but we're hoping that you can share with us in your own words, telling us about your journey and path.

Matt Markin: What's been your origin story in higher education? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, so I did my undergraduate degree in sport and exercise science and then went on to have a role in a biomechanics lab as a technical engineer. So I got interested in the research side of biomechanics. Then took that plunge to do my PhD in sprinting.

Sarah Bosch: So I'd been a sprinter myself and the perfect PhD came up for me at bath. So I went off to, to do my PhD. And as part of that, it was a graduate teaching assistant position, so I had to spend 25% of my time teaching. 75% of my time researching my PhD. So I thought I'd gone into it to do the research side, but actually because I had to do the teaching side, I learned what the teaching was all [00:03:00] about and became really interested in that.

Sarah Bosch: Having thought I was gonna pursue a research career, actually I've gone in quite a different direction and gone more to the sort of student experience side of it starting off. By helping out with personal tutoring sessions for my PhD supervisor, I realized that as as a GTA, I was in kind, a unique position, like a bridge between being, a student and not quite a proper member of staff.

Sarah Bosch: So I was quite able to connect with students and understand some of the issues they were facing, even though I was at a different stage of my. Kinda academic career. So I had the opportunity to stay at Bath and carry on with that for a while and then realized, actually no, I did really love the teaching side of it and pursued a teaching career or lecturing career at Hallam.

Sarah Bosch: I did the kind of usual rite of passage where you take leadership roles within the department. And I think for me, quite a big change in my. Career focus. There were a few things that happened all at the same time. So I undertook a leadership training course. So it was for [00:04:00] leaders or future leaders from in, in academia, female leaders.

Sarah Bosch: And they basically made you get a mentor. And that mentor was really formative for me and made me think a lot about what was it that made me happy at work, what did I want to do? What, why? Why was I getting up in the mornings and at the same time, COVID struck so we, shifted to online.

Sarah Bosch: I was course leading at the time and I found that the thing that was getting me out of bed every day and making me work long hours, like I'm sure everybody else listening to this podcast did was the student experience. And at that point, it wasn't that I didn't care about my biomechanics research anymore, but it was more that the thing that really motivated me was.

Sarah Bosch: The student experience, making sure the students were supported, getting them through. So talk, talking to my mentor about some of those experiences was really useful because she was really helping me to understand why my values were, how I could align my future career with that. And we really talked about, what were the sorts of things I [00:05:00] enjoyed doing.

Sarah Bosch: What was the position I would want to do? And one of the things that I've become really interested in. Was academic advising. I used it really fundamentally as a way of supporting the students in my course. So when an opportunity came up to work in the central department in settle student experience teaching and learning to work on academic advising full-time I jumped at it with a bit of help from my mentor convincing me that was, a useful career change.

Sarah Bosch: 'cause it was quite different to go out of. Discipline related work and teaching into a central role where there was less teaching and it was a different area. So that's how I got involved with academic advising. As part of that, I learned about UKAT and that's where I started volunteering and finding other people who were similarly motivated.

Ryan Scheckel: So sometimes this comes as a surprise to folks, but one of the sports events I participated in in high school was track and field. And I'm curious, what were your events? 

Sarah Bosch: I was a sprinter. I was a. [00:06:00] I I say I was a sprinter, I was a pretty decent 200 meter runner. And I was a fairly decent 300 meter runner.

Sarah Bosch: When I was fit and uninjured, I was under seventeens. And in those days, I dunno if it's changed actually, but at school you couldn't run 400 meters if you were a girl because you weren't strong enough. So we had to run the 300 meters instead, but then I started to move up to 400 meters and just started getting injured and coming out of the sport.

Sarah Bosch: But yeah, sprinting, 200 meters and 300 meters mainly. But I'd try my hat at a hundred meters too. 

Ryan Scheckel: Yeah, we my first year in high school, grade nine my very first meet, I missed my preliminary heat in the 200. So I got to run the two mile at lunch. Oh. And everybody on the bus was letting me hear it.

Ryan Scheckel: But so many days are spent around the track. And in that community, I know how influential it can be. You've been in your professional life, both in academic and central support roles, as we've heard. What have you learned about institutional [00:07:00] change and collaboration from.

Ryan Scheckel: Those sort of different experiences? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, I think for me, moving centrally was really important in understanding how the university worked. I think, again, this is my experience when I was in department. There are so many things to do and so many kind of individual things to focus on. It can be really easy just to stay in your own little bubble.

Sarah Bosch: And you really aware of what's going on immediately around you and perhaps not as aware of what was happening. Wider. So I started to understand who these people were that we were getting emails from, who the people were that were telling us the things that we needed to do and implement.

Sarah Bosch: And for me, the really important bit was understanding why we were being asked to do that. In department I was able to understand how the decisions were being made and why they were being made. So from a change point of view. I think I was quite lucky because when I was working centrally, I was still quite fresh out of department, so I understood, how this might land.

Sarah Bosch: I [00:08:00] understood some of the barriers that perhaps you didn't see. And equally, I could bridge that I think I've learned a lot from being in those bridging positions where you understand both sides of it and actually really putting yourself in both camps can really help you get credibility and gain momentum with change.

Sarah Bosch: So I think for me it was a really useful process and also seeing how things are done differently across the institution. So lots of. Different areas doing really good things and being able to facilitate sharing of that information. Think people doing things differently for really good reason.

Sarah Bosch: So it was, yeah, for me, really useful. 

Matt Markin: Yeah. And you were talking about bridging, and I would assume like also that bridge also continues with your role in UKAT and making that change. For those that don't know, we've had various guests on David Grey and Ann Bingham on prior podcast episodes.

Matt Markin: But for those that. Maybe this is their first time listening. Can you tell us more about what UKAT is and maybe what your specific responsibilities are? 

Sarah Bosch: UKAT is the UK [00:09:00] Advising Tutoring Association. We are a charity, we are concerned with enhancing and promoting personal tutoring in.

Sarah Bosch: UK higher education, although we actually work globally as well, and with people from across the world. So in terms of my position, I'm the Chief operating Officer. We're a small staff team, so that, is a strategic role. Although, you will see me folding leaflets for the conference and I have no, that's a good thing actually being involved in all parts of the working team.

Sarah Bosch: So some of the things that I'm focusing on personally are our institutional accreditation scheme. The workshop package. So I started actually at UKAT working in the professional development committee. So yeah, the professional development committee, looking at our learning and training offer for UKAT members.

Sarah Bosch: And so I'm continuing to do that in my COO role and helping to broaden out our suite of resources and including. Many workshop packages so that our members can benefit from the sort of tailored [00:10:00] and bespoke workshops that we can do for our member institutions. And I'm also looking at how our professional recognition scheme can be expanded to reward and recognize contribution from other people who do personal tutoring roles.

Sarah Bosch: So things like, in, in secondary education actually. We have a lot of staff who are doing personal tutoring and perhaps, that transition between secondary education and higher education and understanding how students are following through. So re recognizing and rewarding some of the work they're doing.

Sarah Bosch: So that's some of the main kind of more strategic projects I'm involved in. But it's, it as, it's quite a dynamic team that changes from day to day what I'm doing. 

Ryan Scheckel: So I know there's a lot of folks who would have a way to answer this question. And different roles and responsibilities in professional associations, but from your point of view and the roles that you've been in and the role you're in now, what do you think the role and responsibility of pro, professional or [00:11:00] associations like you, Kat, what do you think that is in shaping larger conversations about student and institutional success and how we achieve those things?

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, I think I think there's a few things that, that the institution the associations like UKAT can do. One of them is creating a community, which is, I think really important for a lot of people, particularly in the UK context. Academic advising or personal shooting is. A small part of a much wider role.

Sarah Bosch: So a lot of the time it's people in departments, academic staff doing this is a small part. We do have some kind of professional services model where an academic advisor might be their full-time role but that's probably less common. And I think what. Associations like UKAT can do is give people a place where they can talk about those things that they really care about, that are maybe not the biggest part of their role.

Sarah Bosch: And find like-minded people who can share issues with, who can share good practice with. By bringing together all of those people I think we [00:12:00] are a very credible organization that can bring together best practice, that can shape and influence practice across the sector and perhaps inform policy, but also work with other associations to benefit students.

Sarah Bosch: We really do. Exists to benefit students. That is our raise on dra. And by bringing people from across different institutions who have the same goal, even if it is just a small part of their role we're able to help facilitate that, especially when they may aren't able to work full-time.

Sarah Bosch: And it like, like I'm fortunate enough to. 

Matt Markin: Love it. And so I guess going along with that, how would you say in your opinion, how would you say UKAT is supporting maybe the professional development for those working in academic advising and tutoring? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, so this is something I'm really interested in is I think.

Sarah Bosch: A lot of people understand the importance of personal tutoring, but we can only do that if we feel competent and we've got the confidence to do that. And I think the professional development opportunities are really important in that. [00:13:00] So we at ccat we have a range of activities that people can get involved in.

Sarah Bosch: So we have things like webinars. We have our annual conference, we have resources that people can engage with. So they're all, CPD opportunities for people. But we also have our professional development curriculum, which is a range of different activities. We've got some online modules, some short courses, workshops that people can engage with.

Sarah Bosch: Some of them are asynchronous, so you know, literally a 20 minute, if you've got 20 minutes in your lunch break and wanna do a little bit of learning on, I don't know. Boundary setting or relationship building, those sorts of things. You can go on and work through things in your own pace. Although there's more formal and structured activities like the workshops that might be half day or a day for people to engage with. And I think that's really important to give people the confidence. And quite often people are very good at these things, but they need that little bit of confidence, a little bit of structure to understand, that they're doing the right things, opportunity to talk with others about ways [00:14:00] they can do it.

Sarah Bosch: So we've got lots and lots of different activities like that people can draw from. 

Ryan Scheckel: So I was thinking about your co-authored piece in the new journal that UKAT launched recently. And I know that there are again, are folks who could talk about Waypoint and that sort of stuff, but I'm curious both from your role in UKAT but as a scholar practitioner writing and publishing in the field.

Ryan Scheckel: Can you tell us a little bit about your work with Melissa and that piece and what it's like launching something like that? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah. We, when I went into the role in, in the central director in Hallam my sort of big project when I started in that role was. To look at postgraduate academic advising.

Sarah Bosch: Shepherd Hallam is a big university and we have a lot of undergraduate students. But we have a quite a big proportion of postgraduate students and I think Hallam isn't alone in quite often. There's an assumption that what works for undergraduates works. Postgraduate students and we just wanted to see what was happening across the institution.

Sarah Bosch: And look at how we [00:15:00] could make sure that we were consistently working to the framework that we had in place and evaluating how different ways that we did things. How they were working. In terms of that research, it was quite a good opportunity for me to use some of my research skills, from my PhD and being an active researcher, but in a way that kind of aligned with my values around student experience and the best way we could do academic advising.

Sarah Bosch: So we built it to be quite a robust process from the beginning and thinking about. If we made these changes to how academic advising was done, how would we evaluate how they'd worked? So it was really a three year project to, talk to, to staff about what was happening in department, what was the kind of status quo?

Sarah Bosch: Was everybody doing the same thing? Was everybody doing anything? What was working well and what wasn't working well? I was really clear that there was no way I was going in as the expert. I'm, I wasn't in there to help people exactly how to do postgraduate academic advising because there was lots of really good practice, but also lots of kind of problems and [00:16:00] barriers and perhaps differing expectations of postgraduate students.

Sarah Bosch: So there was a quite a big working party who, who audited what we were doing. And then we it would be fair to say shamelessly scoured. Good practice across Theca community and wider and the literature, and looked at what were the kind of ways we could implement consistent use of the framework but given enough autonomy to courses and then the vari ability to meet different needs of different areas of the university.

Sarah Bosch: So we had three models. One was where kind of academic advising was something that happened outside of the curriculum. They were named, had named academic advisor. They made, met them a certain number of times of year and saw how students' perceptions of that relationship and their satisfaction with that.

Sarah Bosch: How that went. We looked at what happened if you embedded it. So you ensured that students were being taught by their academic advisor in perhaps a professional module or similar. And then also had their academic advising meetings. And then we also looked at an extended [00:17:00] induction type model, so an extended advising where they're.

Sarah Bosch: Going to structured sessions, group sessions, but over kind of six or 12 weeks regular sessions. We also had a model which was student driven, so we looked at whether. If you just let the students come to you, you let 'em know you're there. You remind them you're there and what you can help with, but let 'em come to you, whether that would work.

Sarah Bosch: But that was for a very small number of courses because it wasn't really in the spirit of how we wanted to proactively do academic advising. But we had some small courses that were very. Those particular students were probably from clinical backgrounds, were already had a full-time job and were maybe using the university in a slightly different way.

Sarah Bosch: So in terms of that research we looked at which of those models came up as being the, given the best perceptions. We looked at which ones had better retention rates and how many withdrawals there were. And found that the embedded had much. Better and more positive results that students really understood better that what [00:18:00] the academic advisor was for.

Sarah Bosch: They took up the opportunities to meet with their academic advisor. They reported better relationships with their advisor and knew better what to go to their advisor for. So it. That kind of relationship building, I think, and that, exposure to their academic advisor more really seemed to have a beneficial effect.

Sarah Bosch: And that was great and we knew what we wanted to do and we were able to then advocate for that where possible across the institution. Also, I think because of our commitment to UKAT and the wider sort of sector, we wanted to make sure that we could share that. So when Waypoint launched, we were really keen to, to get that out and I totally appreciate that.

Sarah Bosch: What works. One institution might not work for another, but it was. Good to have some empirical evidence of the things I think we probably already knew but actually have some kind of numbers and evidence to, to support that and some really good qualitative data from students as well about how they found the different models.

Ryan Scheckel: So I'm curious, prior to the launch of Waypoint. Had, had you and Melissa discussed, like, where does this [00:19:00] go? If we wanna share it larger just from the perspective of someone who might be interested in doing something similar at their institution. The conversation often is, okay, we could tell people here.

Ryan Scheckel: Maybe we present at a conference like Yeah. I'm curious how you saw your options prior to, since you began this effort, before Waypoint started. What was it like being there thinking, where do we go with this once we have our results? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah. I think the intention was always that we should be able to externally publish.

Sarah Bosch: That was the intention from the beginning. So we went into it with very much a kind of. Research evaluation hat on, so what do we want to change? How will we know that's a real change? How will we measure that? And we all, pretty much every bit of work that we ever did in that department was grounded in evaluation from the beginning.

Sarah Bosch: So building in evaluation at the start. So we had that ethos and we had that kind of culture. We knew we needed to be robust and we needed to have thought about what our [00:20:00] theory of change was really from if we do this, what the outcomes might be. So we went through the sort of ethics procedures.

Sarah Bosch: We made sure that everything was ethical, that we had approval, that we could publish. Had we identified our target journal? Probably not, no. I am, I'm not sure that was necessarily the correct answer, but that is the truth of it. We knew we wanted to, we hadn't identified our our target journal.

Sarah Bosch: We have got other journals that we thought about, publishing in pedagogy line teaching journals. But as soon as we heard that Waypoint was. Being launched. We were like that. That's the one for us because we had always targeted UKAT conference as someone we could share what we were doing because we knew that it was a really good conference for sharing practice.

Sarah Bosch: And we also knew that there would be some really good critical friends, to check and challenge. And I think that's really important. Even before we'd got any results, we'd taken it and said, this is what we're doing. This is our idea. Actually that kind of community to think about, this [00:21:00] is how I'm changing practice, this is what I think I need to measure, and this is my results was actually really useful.

Sarah Bosch: We did present at conference, at the conference for a couple of years before actually publishing in the journal. 

Matt Markin: I think the overarching goal, and you've mentioned it the word share and sharing it. So you getting the information out there. What did you do? What did you learn?

Matt Markin: What can others maybe gain from it? I think other things to also share is that, with your involvement in you, Kat, not only your staff role, but your voluntary roles you had prior to that you've been very involved with within UKAT to where you also in 2023 got the outstanding contribution to UKAT award.

Matt Markin: But also you were a previous keynote speaker at one of the UKAT conferences, and I was hoping you can share a little bit about that experience about being a keynote speaker at UKAT conference and also. What your keynote speech was about. 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah. Yeah, it was a really. Looking back now, it was a really positive experience.

Sarah Bosch: I was very nervous, as you can imagine. I was really honored to have been asked [00:22:00] to to be the keynote. It's really interesting because I think that there's always a tendency to, to feel like what can I say that people don't know. You, Kat is full of amazing people. Yeah.

Sarah Bosch: Genuinely you people who are doing really good stuff. And my first feeling was what can I tell them that they don't already know? What can what can they learn from me? And, you think. There are so many people doing great things. So when I was thinking about what I was doing the theme of the conference was shining a spotlight on, on the students and personal tutoring.

Sarah Bosch: So I was thinking about something that had resonated with me from my experiences of being a personal cheater and also from some of the research that we'd done with minoritized students. And so my keynote was about thinking, who are we looking at when we're shining that spotlight and how do we really know our.

Sarah Bosch: Students. So I focused on the things that we might know from an institutional level. It's the demographics of students and some of the assumptions we might make. So it's a bit of an, a kind of exercise that perhaps anyone can do. I asked everybody to [00:23:00] close our eyes and think about their typical student, and I did it myself and I, when I think of my typical student, I go back to my undergraduate days and I see the.

Sarah Bosch: Sport and exercise science, rugby playing, guys walking down the corridor on mass, having a great time as committed to their studies as they were to rugby. Maybe not, I don't know. That kind of perception of your typical 18 to 21 year olds male doing sport and exercise science. And I think everybody can.

Sarah Bosch: Visualize a student, but then when you unpack that, what do you really know about your students? And often what we see isn't what they're really experiencing. So we went through some examples of things that students might be not telling you or some of the assumptions we might make as as lecturers based on our own experiences.

Sarah Bosch: And the example I gave was of a disabled student and. Talking about some of her issues that she might be facing. And actually for this student in this example, and it's a real person, a real [00:24:00] student who didn't mind me sharing their story, they were a Paralympic athlete. So actually there was nothing to do with their disability that was causing them a problem.

Sarah Bosch: They didn't really need a learning contract. They didn't really need, assistive technology, but what they were doing was losing big chunks of learning. 'cause they were competing at the highest level and the isolation, the time management, the lost learning involved with that. That's where a personal tutor could really help.

Sarah Bosch: But, I pose questions about what are the assumptions we make and what are the assumptions that we bring from our own life, and how can we put them beside? Because I think we do all have assumptions. We do all have our prior experiences, but the most important thing is to talk to those students about what they need.

Sarah Bosch: And not assume what they need. And I think that's where I've grown as a personal tutor is having those conversations and trying to understand what they want and talk to them and let them tell us what they need rather than saying, oh, I've got this workshop you could go to because this will be great for you.

Sarah Bosch: So that, that was, it was a good experience for [00:25:00] me. For me personally I actually really enjoyed it because. I think when you get a room full of people who care about students, you get an audience of people who really care about listening to people, talking about how we can care about students.

Sarah Bosch: So that was a great keynote for me to do because people were really receptive to it. 

Ryan Scheckel: Speaking of assumptions and the things that might surprise us or the little gaps in the way we see things, you've seen this association. From so many perspectives as a volunteer as a, a delegate as a keynote speaker and now in, in a staff role with the organization.

Ryan Scheckel: Has there been anything as Chief Operating Officer that surprised you that was a new perspective or a new thing that you were like, I had no idea that this was what was going on. I it's such a rare opportunity to talk with someone who's in this kind of role. I'm sure there were things that you learned along the way.

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, I think I'm still very much [00:26:00] learning. I still feel like it's very early days in my role and there's still loads to learn. I think one of the things that I probably expected to learn, but definitely have learned is, the variety of ways that people do things. So again, this is me needing to learn, not to bring my own assumptions in the way I've done it in my previous institutions.

Sarah Bosch: May not be how things are done. In the other institutions we are working with so the variety of ways that people do things is quite. Interesting. The level of detail I think that you have, I think whenever you change institutions, and I've been at Hallam for quite a long time just doing things, different ways of working.

Sarah Bosch: Those are some of the surprises that, you have to get round working from home, working remotely full-time, and not having a physical office to go into those are, they're all differences. In terms of the conference the sheer amount of work that goes into organizing a conference it's that kind of the swan looking gliding across the lake, but their feet are pedaling 10 to the dozen.

Sarah Bosch: It is that [00:27:00] kind of thing. The whole team worked so hard to pull off a conference. And, it is an absolute labor of love. But I actually really enjoyed that part of it. I really loved. Meeting all the delegates, getting to chat to everybody as they came to the registration desk.

Sarah Bosch: That was really nice for me. And I think, it gave me a really different experience of the conference actually. I didn't get to see as much of it as I would've liked to have done because I was too busy behind the scenes. But it was really nice and really rewarding. And seeing other people getting lots from it and sharing practice was great.

Matt Markin: The amount of work, the amount of months, even years planning a conference and then it's done in two days. So it's like kudos to you and your team with everyone. A part of you, Kat, that put on the conference, having now, this being the 10th conference, 10th anniversary, what does that mean to you?

Sarah Bosch: I think I think it's really special. I think it, it's, it really tru truly shows that it's a credible organization. That it is robust in what it does, that it's adding value to the sector. I don't [00:28:00] think you would've got to 10 years if people didn't find it useful. I don't think we'd get, have got to the position.

Sarah Bosch: That we're growing the staff team and able to provide more services to our members if it wasn't useful and if it wasn't valuable and credible. So I think that's really nice. I sometimes feel like a bit I have been involved with UKAT for probably about five years, but to be on the staff team now, I feel like a bit of an imposter to come in and take any of that credit because actually, I've come in at a really good time where we're doing some awesome stuff.

Sarah Bosch: But, there's a lot of people who were before me making that happen. But I'm really proud of. Of what we do. I think our kind of the way we approach things, the compassion and kindness that we have for our members is really impressive. It is a very nice community that genuinely is looking to help everybody.

Sarah Bosch: And I think sometimes, going to a conference can be a bit scary. Presenting a conference can be a bit scary and there can be a feeling that, you've got to defend yourself all the time. But actually it's about you guys. It's certainly about bringing people with you and helping people to [00:29:00] share their expertise because there is so much expertise in the sector.

Sarah Bosch: It's incredible. 

Ryan Scheckel: It really is about that balance of challenge and support. We have to talk about that with our students, but I can tell you. Very rarely are people going to accept a challenge if they haven't felt that you've supported them before. That's definitely been the experience that I've had in my interaction with UKAT .

Ryan Scheckel: It's members, it's staff, it's events and so on. Especially given where where I come from. I'm curious though, thinking big picture. Where do you see the future of academic advising and personal tutoring heading in the UK over the next five, 10 years? 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, I think it's always crystal ball gazing is always a tricky one, isn't it?

Sarah Bosch: I think. I would like to think, and I think this is probably true, that more institutions will really value the role of the personal tutor and the academic advisor in terms of supporting our students. I think that the way that we can support students as personal tutors or academic advisors to feel that they belong to achieve their success to know that they matter [00:30:00] to an institution, that is only going to be a good thing.

Sarah Bosch: In the UK it's no secret that there is financial difficulty on the sector and we need to make sure that, we are supporting students to stay in courses, and retaining our students. But really there's that moral imperative to do that as well, that students feel supported.

Sarah Bosch: Especially as for winding participation, bringing in students from diverse backgrounds, making sure that they have opportunities to succeed is really important. So I think that. More institutions will put more, onus on doing that. And that means that we need to support those staff doing it because, their workloads aren't getting any easier, they need to feel empowered to support their students.

Sarah Bosch: They need to feel confident in what they're doing. I think there are ways of perhaps working efficiently and looking at the ways we're working using technology to, to help us, but not withstanding the fact that it is a relational. Process. We do need to know our students. We need to be able to have human conversations with them.

Sarah Bosch: But there are ways that we can [00:31:00] streamline information that we send to students that we can think about how we're communicating with them and freeing up time to have those proper conversations. But also looking at things like, how. What are the easy wins for getting to know my students?

Sarah Bosch: So where can I pair up an academic advisor with somebody who's already teaching them is a way of kind of building those relationships for no extra resource, if you like. So I think there's gonna be a focus on, how we can do things efficiently, but making sure that we're supporting that wide range of students.

Matt Markin: We'll check back with you in five to 10 years and see if all that came true. Yeah. Is there anything, like what's one thing you might wish people understood more about personal tutoring? 

Sarah Bosch: Oh, do I have to have one? So I think, or 

Matt Markin: as many as you want 

Sarah Bosch: yeah. No, I think you get what you put in to personal tutoring.

Sarah Bosch: I think that it's, it is not without effort and it, I think. [00:32:00] Institutions and individuals need to understand that there is an effort and that there is a commitment involved in forming genuine relationships with students that allow them to be able to get the most out of it. As an individual, if I just send an email that is not going to get, a student to want to come and see me.

Sarah Bosch: So me putting in that effort to get to know them and to give myself a little bit to them, let them know a little bit about me. Within the realms of professional boundaries. But, forming genuine relationships and being curious about our students. The more we put into it, the more we get out of it.

Sarah Bosch: And for me that is one of the most rewarding. Things, I've had a LinkedIn message today from one of my former academic advisees letting me know how they did in their dissertation. Now, that was because we'd formed a relationship. I genuinely wanted to know how they'd done.

Sarah Bosch: They genuinely wanted me to know how they'd done. And that is so rewarding for me. But that's because of the investment in time for both of us and that includes the student. 

Matt Markin: So I [00:33:00] will say, like me personally we met at the UKAT conference this past one in London and at the social the night before the conference is when we got to chat and it was like an instant connection.

Matt Markin: Getting to talk to you and learn about you. We got to talk about Harry Potter and how my partner was a huge Harry Potter fan, and you gave me great advice. What my partner could do when we got to the Harry Potter warn Brothers studio and talking to the staff there. And so great tips that you gave, but it felt like we, we were instant friends and I really appreciated that.

Matt Markin: Yeah. So I guess the last question that we want to ask to wrap up is. Sarah outside of you, Kat, outside of work, what do you do for your wellness? 

Sarah Bosch: Oh, it's other than a lot of Harry Potter watching and booking a trip to the new universal epic theme park to see Seymour Harry Potter.

Sarah Bosch: So my family, my friends, and my dogs are really important to me. But this might come as a bit of a surprise to anybody [00:34:00] who knew me as a track and field athlete when I refused to go more than once around the track. I do distance running now for my wellbeing. So I'm a fairly keen runner. It's something that I took up during my PhD.

Sarah Bosch: I needed something that I could take seriously enough to get me out of the office. But was. Unrelated enough to my PhD to feel like a wellbeing activity. So I got convinced to go for a run by my friend who was a very keen ultra marathoner. And she slowly but surely encouraged me to start running.

Sarah Bosch: So that's the thing I do for my own wellbeing is run four or five times a week sort of 10 ks half marathons and. I have done the occasional marathon, but yeah, so that's one of my things. But watching and supporting my husband, he's an elite wheelchair racer and traveling.

Sarah Bosch: Some of my big things. 

Matt Markin: Sarah, this was a great conversation. Great interview. Learned a lot. Thank you so much for joining Ryan and I on the podcast today. 

Sarah Bosch: Yeah, [00:35:00] thanks.