Our Trustee Board and Members' Steering Group (composed of appointees from each of our partner sector agencies in Scotland) provide sparqs' direction and governance. In addition we have two Advisory Groups, one each for the college and university sectors. All our boards and committees have student members.
sparqs receives core funding from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
Details of our groups is below.
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Trustee Board
- Sir Andrew Cubie, Independent (Chair)
- Sai Shraddha Suresh Viswanathan, NUS nominated student trustee
- Dr Dee Bird
- Campbell Powrie
- Emilia Todorova
- Beate Treml
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Members' Steering Group
- Sir Andrew Cubie, Independent (Chair)
- NUS Scotland
- College Development Network
- Colleges Scotland
- Universities Scotland
- QAA Scotland
- sparqs Tertiary Advisory Group Chairs
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sparqs Tertiary Advisory Group (STAG)
As of August 2025, our Advisory Group is now known as the sparqs Tertiary Advisory Group (STAG). In the preceding few years, our College Advisory Group (CAG) and University Advisory Group (UAG) had been meeting jointly as a Joint Advisory Group (JAG) and we have now made this joint advisory group permanent, rebranding with a new tertiary title! The group includes members from relevant sector agencies, plus a wide range of invited student officers, institution staff and students' association staff, based on their expertise and experiences. The Chairs of both groups sit on our Members' Steering Group as noted above.
The advisory group takes place via a mix of meetings in person and online, around four times a year. STAG acts as a “critical friend” to sparqs, providing advice and guidance on the direction of sparqs’ work and the content of its resources, and discussing the outline of new projects. Being a part of the group enables members to gain new insights into sparqs’ work and the national picture of student engagement, and is a valuable tertiary networking space for staff and students.
Usually once a year we invite members of our NEON and SESN networks to come together in person to meet jointly with the advisory group, which proved invaluable during the move towards the tertiary quality arrangements and in terms of sparqs’ own strategic planning.
From time to time we invite new members onto the advisory group to fill gaps in expertise that we identify, and we annually recruit student members from among newly elected officers. We have a STAG members’ guide for those who have joined or who have received an invitation to join.