About Us
The Equity-First, Students as Partners team is proudly managed by the Office of the Dean of Students.
What we do
Students as Partners (SaP) at Deakin is a student engagement approach that recognises the expertise of our students in enhancing the student experience. By collaborating with students, staff can reposition their work from ‘creating for’ students to ‘creating with’ students. SaP projects conceptualise student expertise through their lived experiences as students and seek to harness those lived experiences, as well as students’ ideas, perspectives, and opinions in order to improve pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, services, or resources.
Deakin’s Equity-First Students as Partners Microgrant program is funded by the Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP) via the Office of the Dean of Students.
Guiding Principles
Reciprocal learning between staff and students
Recognition of students’ expertise in
Shared responsibility across staff and students
Supporting respect and transparency
Respositioning students from users to empowered co-creators
Respect, reciprocity, and responsibility are at the core of meaningful partnership.
Respect is an open and receptive attitude of valuing others in the partnership. Reciprocity is a way of interacting that is equitable in exchange. Both respect and reciprocity inform the kind of shared responsibility that characterize genuine partnerships between students and staff. (Cook-Sather, 2013)
Our Strategy
Equity-First Priority
All of our initiatives are assessed and evaluated to improve teaching and learning outcomes for Deakin’s equity students. We also prioritise the participation and/or recruitment of equity-cohort students to our programs.
Fair reward and recognition
We deeply respect the valuable time and contributions students make to our programs by offering fair and equitable remuneration, reward and recognition scheme. This is especially important for equity-students who may experience barriers to participation.
Engaging diverse participants
We’re committed to engaging a diverse cohort of students in our programs, recognising that it is often the equity-voice that is missing from leadership and partnership positions. Even if they are completely new to SaP, we offer a range of initiative for any staff member to partner with students.
Multiple entry points
The level of commitment and style of partnership varies across all of our initiatives. This is by design to enable multiple entry points for both students and staff to fit with their work capacity, goals for partnership, and as a pathway towards more involved partnership models.
Raising institutional capacity
Our ongoing mission is to make Students as Partners a business-as-usual practice at Deakin University. Integrating SaP in both academic and professional spaces is a process of raising capacity and appetite to engage with students, showing that it is a highly effective and impactful practice of delivering and improving teaching and learning.
Meet our team
Professor Lisa Hanna
Dean of Students
Professor Lisa Hanna has been a teaching and research academic in the Faculty of Health at Deakin for over 10 years, has taught widely at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and is passionate about facilitating and promoting excellence in all aspects of the student experience. As Dean of Students, Lisa is committed to working in partnership with students across the Deakin community. She will help to resolve student issues, use student feedback to improve policy and practice and promote academic integrity at Deakin.
Dr Cassandra Iannucci
Academic Lead, Equity-First Students as Partners; Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Arts and Education (School of Education)
Cassandra’s main teaching and research interested include (physical education) teacher education assessment and student voice, agency and democratic practices across the education sector. More recently, she is drawn to exploring what learning is privileged and valued in physical education with a particular emphasis on increasing capacity for social and emotional learning
Dr Cassandra Iannucci joined the School of Education in October 2018 and teaching predominantly on the Bachelor of Health and Physical Education teacher education program. Cassandra joins the Students as Partners team in 2023 to build Deakin’s capacity for student partnership.
Sam Geddes
Senior Project Officer, Equity-First Students as Partners
Sam Geddes is a Senior Project Officer who works closely with the Dean of Students and the wider professional and academic network to coordinate and support all Equity-First, Students as Partners projects at Deakin University. Her work means building relationships with staff and students to deliver meaningful and productive student-staff partnership. Sam is also studying a Bachelor Health and Physical Education (Secondary) at Deakin.