UKAT offers conferences, webinars and other events throughout the year, both online and in various locations around the UK. These events provide professional development opportunities for personal tutors and academic advisors who are invested in helping students achieve academic success.
The UKAT Annual Conference is the major event of the year and provides an opportunity to learn in general sessions from experts in the field, gain knowledge and review best practices with colleagues in concurrent sessions, and participate in interactive workshops. The variety of learning formats also may include poster sessions, exhibitor presentations, and formal and informal networking opportunities.
Upcoming Events
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Advising Students in Clinically Related Disciplines
Monday 7 July 2025, 10:30 - Monday 7 July 2025, 12:00
OnlineMedical students face a unique set of challenges, including high cognitive load, significant mental health issues (anxiety, depression, and burnout), and spending substantial time away from the university on clinical placement. Those who advise them must be cognisant of these challenges, but providing guidance and support to these students is often more complicated than for other programmes due to multiple advisors being involved, both within and outside the university, some of whom are not familiar with the academic requirements or support mechanisms of the university.
It has been suggested that UKAT should introduce a Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on advising medical students. In our experience, many of the challenges that medical students face also affect students studying other allied health subjects (e.g. nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy), veterinary, dentistry and other subjects that involve an element of clinical practice. However, that is just our perception, so we're hosting this open discussion meeting to learn more about the challenges and issues facing students and advisors in these clinically related disciplines. The outcomes of this meeting will help us to decide whether we should be introducing a new SIG focused on advising medical students or a SIG more widely focused on supporting students from clinically related disciplines.
If you work and advise students in a clinically related discipline, we want to hear from you. Please come along to this session to share your experiences and the challenges and issues you and your students face. The session will begin with three short presentations from representatives familiar with advising medicine, veterinary, and nursing students, before turning to focused discussion groups to identify the commonalities and differences in the student needs in the different clinically related disciplines.
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One size fits all: implementing an institution-wide model for student success
Thursday 17 July 2025, 14:00 - Thursday 17 July 2025, 15:30
OnlineSamantha Holloway and Katie Webb, Cardiff University
This session explores the implementation of an institution-wide network of Hubs across our campuses where staff and students can access education and student experience services. The new Service Excellence Model has been designed to enable us to do things once, in the right place, by the right people and at the right time. Join us to discuss what this means for Personal Tutoring and the potential unintended consequences of this new strategy. The session will be interactive and will allow participants to share their own experiences of models for Personal Tutoring to identify whether they centre on struggles or success.
In the first part of the webinar, we will provide an overview of the proposed model and her perspective in terms of what this means for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Medicine. We will discuss aspects such as the potential impact on personal connections, consistency and continuity of support, role boundaries, use of digital platforms, equity, accessibility, and efficiency. We will then explore the implications from the students’ perspective in terms of perceived fragmentation of services, synergy of support, holistic engagement and the importance of shared understanding, expectations, engagement, and empowerment.
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RAISE Conference 2025
Thursday 4 September 2025 - Friday 5 September 2025
GlasgowThe RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement) Annual Conference 2025 offers the opportunity for all students, staff, and anyone interested in university and college higher education, to showcase their practice and research. We particularly welcome student-led and collaborative submissions between students and staff. The RAISE annual conference is a friendly and welcoming conference and provides a supportive environment for first-time presenters.
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Times Higher Education Student Success UK & Ireland 2025
Wednesday 12 November 2025 - Thursday 13 November 2025
ICC, EdinburghWe are delighted to be a partner of Times Higher Education’s Student Success UK&IE 2025, taking place on 12-13 November at the ICC, Edinburgh.
Designed for higher education professionals across student engagement, academic success, careers services, teaching, learning, well-being and student analytics, the event unites leading voices from universities and industry to showcase impactful examples of collaboration as well as innovative approaches to promoting success at every stage of the student journey.
You can now discover the agenda and take a look at what’s on across this two-day event, including keynotes, panel discussions, workshops and case studies across three content tracks focusing on:
- Teaching and learning
- Student support
- Retention, engagement and impact
Super early bird tickets are available until 25 July, where you can save an additional 30% on tickets with code UKAT-30: https://www.timeshighered-events.com/live-ukie-2025/page/4422227/book-tickets?promo=UKAT-30&utm_source=ukat&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ss-ukie-25&utm_content=promo
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UKAT Annual Conference 2026
Monday 13 April 2026, 08:00 - Tuesday 14 April 2026, 15:00
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UKSpotlight on Student Futures
The theme of this year’s conference, ‘Spotlight on Student Futures’, reflects our commitment to empowering students to achieve their full potential through dedicated personal tutoring and advising, broadening their horizons, fostering a sense of belonging and feelings of mattering, supporting mental health and wellbeing, and continuation and graduate outcomes.
This conference aims to bring together students, professional services, educators, personal tutors and advisors, researchers and scholars, those in senior strategic leadership positions and policymakers to explore challenges HE institutions are grappling with, share insights, exchange visions, identify action-oriented solutions.
Join us for an inspiring co-learning and thinking sessions that foster engagement and collaboration through thought-provoking:
- Keynotes: Leading higher education experts will share their knowledge and insights into the role of advising and tutoring in shaping Student Futures.
- Presentations: Experts will share in-depth insights and practical strategies based on their extensive experience, with dedicated time for audience thoughts and questions.
- Interactive Workshops: Participatory sessions will encourage participants to explore new approaches, reflect on shared experiences, and collaboratively develop actionable strategies and solutions.
- Discussion Panels: Facilitated by leading scholars, will offer authentic dialogic discussions of key challenges and opportunities in advising and tutoring with interactive Q&A.
- Immersive Interactive Simulation using CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment): Participants will immerse and respond to students’ real-life situations/lived experiences in a safe simulated learning environment.
Events in italic typeface are not provided by UKAT but are 3rd party events which may be of interest to UKAT members