Student Fellows Program

The Advance HE Student Fellows Program supports students to understand, articulate and evidence their contributions to teaching, learning and the student experience.

The program is for students with experience in supporting learning and teaching in higher education.

Why become a Student Fellow?

The Student Fellows Program develops your employability and earns you a professional credential.

The program will support you to:

• use self-reflection to recognise your capability development through your experiences, and to identify your key strengths
• communicate those strengths and capabilities effectively, with clear examples; and 
• articulate how they’ll be of benefit to a future role or position.

By the end of the program, you will be able to confidently respond to selection criteria and professional standards—skills that directly support high-quality employability outcomes.

You’ll also gain an internationally transferable credential that recognises your contribution to teaching and learning at UQ.

What is Advance HE and Student Fellowship?

The program is accredited by Advance HE, an organisation that seeks to recognise the professionalism and expertise of staff in learning and teaching in higher education institutions. These fellowships are awarded based on evidence of personal professional practice provided against a series of Professional Standards (i.e. the criteria for fellowship).

Student Fellowship is a unique credential that offers UQ students a chance to have the impact of their participation in teaching and learning, or student support activities (including Student-Staff partnership projects) professionally recognised.

Program aims

The Advance HE Student Fellows Program will develop your ability to recognise and evaluate the impact of your work within the UQ learning community. Through this program, you will learn how to use your experiences to communicate your potential in professional, academic and employability contexts.

By teaching you to respond to a standards-based criterion framework (the Professional Standards Framework), the Student Fellows Program is designed to help you:

Showcase your contribution

Learn how to identify, reflect on, and communicate the value you bring to teaching and learning and understand how your experiences contribute to improving learning and the wider student experience.

Boost your employability

Translate your experiences into professional language that demonstrates your strengths, capabilities and impact, skills that are highly valued in recruitment and selection. You will develop the skills to articulate your experiences and your potential in interviews, applications and other recruitment situations. In this program, you will learn to communicate with confidence.

Earn a respected credential

Throughout, you’ll receive step-by-step guidance to prepare and submit a strong, evidence based application for Student Fellowship. Successful completion will result in an internationally recognised credential that is a mark of both your commitment to education and to your professional growth.

Eligibility

The program is designed to recognise the work of current students who have contributed to curriculum design, evaluation and development, and student learning support activities at UQ.

To be eligible to participate, you need to have participated in a teaching and learning-focused Student-Staff Partnership Project or have engaged with Student Lead Observation for Course Improvement projects.

The kinds of projects you might have worked on would include student-led evaluation projects, where you’ve worked with UQ staff to understand teaching practices from a student perspective by:

• identifying areas in teaching practice or curriculum for enhancement and improvement
• evaluating the efficacy of teaching interventions and innovations
• gathering student perspectives about potential changes needed and/or intended innovations; and
• building a body of evidence of teaching impact and students’ learning that is broader and more nuanced that of traditional student evaluation.

If you have experience in supporting learning and teaching in higher education outside of these programs, and would like to participate, contact the team for advice. Email professional.learning@uq.edu.au

2026 program outline

Online information session

29 May, 2:30-3:30pm

If you're curious about the program, come to our information session, where you'll learn:

• what the program involves
• what support is available
• how becoming a Student Fellow can enhance your employability.

Register by email to professional.learning@uq.edu.au