It's been all change in the sparqs staff team this summer, as we wished farewell to Gloria Laurini and Justin Walker, and recruited two new Development Consultants, Amy Monks and Shona Agnew. Gloria left the team in July, to return to university to study to become a secondary school modern languages teacher. Justin left in early August, to take up an exciting new post as Schools/Colleges Programme Co-ordinator at UHI Perth.
Gloria joined sparqs in September 2021, originally on secondment from Fife College Students' Association, where she was a great advocate of sparqs, and later becoming a permanent staff member. She brought with her a hugely valuable amount of experience and expertise from the students’ association and completed her MA in Student Engagement in Higher Education at the University of Winchester shortly after joining sparqs. Many of you across the sector will know Gloria from her co-ordination of the Student Engagement Staff Network (SESN), the National Education Officers' Network (NEON) and the staff Buddy Scheme over the last few years. Her work areas focused on supporting all Scottish institutions and students’ associations to keep up-to-date with the quality arrangements for the sector during the move to the tertiary system, including leading on the Tertiary Enhancement Topic project. She was also a member of the Scottish Government Student Mental Health and Wellbeing working group on behalf of sparqs.
Justin joined sparqs in August 2019, with a strong teaching and quality background, having worked in several countries as a Teacher/Head Teacher as well as Head of Quality in an adult and community education college in London. One of Justin’s main work areas was around Course Rep Training, including the development and dissemination of our introductory training materials and leading on the training and preparation of our team of Associate Trainers each year. Linked to that, he also analysed the anonymous data we receive from course reps within our ‘Monitoring the Diversity of Course Reps’ project. Other work areas included exploring rep structures for apprentices and work-based learners; co-ordinating sparqs’ support for the work of SQA and liaising with sector partners in relation to Learning for and through Sustainability. We’re glad Justin is staying within the sector and look forward to continued working with him in his new role at UHI Perth.
We’ll miss Gloria and Justin, both on a personal and professional level, and wish both of them all the best in their new endeavours. While we wished a fond farewell to both of them, the blow was somewhat softened by the appointment of two new Development Consultants, Amy Monks and Shona Agnew.
Amy joins us from Dundee and Angus College Students’ Association, where she has been keenly involved with sparqs, first as a student officer and later as a staff member and key contact as the CRT Organiser for the college. As an officer, Amy was a member of NEON and as a staff member she moved over to our staff network, SESN. Last year, Amy acted as a tutor at our annual That’s Quality! residential training, and this year, her first day as a sparqs Development Consultant was fittingly at that same event on 11th/12th August! Amy brings with her a wealth of experience from both her officer and staff roles at the college and we’re delighted to welcome her to the team!
Shona joins us from Edinburgh Tenants Federation where she was a Development Officer, supporting tenants’ associations and residents with housing issues, developing community activities and improving services with the council. Shona also has a wealth of experience in youth work, working with young people disengaged with education, developing and delivering training, workshops and programmes of activities to help young people achieve positive destinations. Shona started on 25th August, which was also the beginning of our annual 4-day training event to equip our own ATs and Institutional ATs to deliver Course Rep Training in the coming year, which was a bit in at the deep end, but a great experience in one of our key work areas and a good chance to meet our student trainers and other sector colleagues.
We know you will all join us in welcoming Amy and Shona to the team as and when you meet them over the coming weeks and months.
Has your sparqs Development Consultant changed?
As a result of the recent staff changes, our allocation of institutions across the sparqs Development Consultants has been reviewed. View the updated contact list to check your own! If your contact has indeed changed, your new Development Consultant will be in contact in due course to introduce themself to your key contact(s), but please don’t hesitate to get in touch with them in the meantime if you have any queries.
