Using Student Feedback to Make a Better APU: Staff Development Session Held
APU is currently promoting reforms to its staff organization as part of its Top Global University Project initiatives, and this year the university started convening regular topic-based staff development (SD) sessions for all permanent and designated contract staff. On October 18, around 70 staff members joined in the fourth such SD session entitled “Using Student Feedback to Make a Better APU.”
Vice President IMAMURA began the session with an address in which he stated, “APU does not have a student council, so I would like us to rethink how we approach students, how we can listen to and incorporate their opinions into policy.”
Next, Vice President YOKOYAMA introduced some responses from actual student surveys to highlight APU’s current achievements and issues while stressing the need to strengthen relations between APU and its students and alumni.
The session ended with group work. Given that nearly half of APU’s faculty and staff hail from overseas, the staff were split into small groups to discuss the following two topics, after which each group presented the ideas it discussed: (1) the ideal style of student support on a multicultural campus and what can be done to draw closer to that ideal and (2) the kinds of systems that need to be created to collect feedback from students on a multicultural campus.
In this SD session, the staff raised many concrete ideas for how to use student feedback to make a better university, and these will be refined and incorporated into an action plan going forward.
