Supporting underrepresented students in Higher Education: Student Success Series (online)

Focusing on supporting and/or working with underrepresented students in Higher Education (HE), the Student Success Staff Speaker series will run between October to March on a bi-monthly basis. This will feature Higher Education practitioners to help raise awareness of issues that students face within HE as well as helping to build an understanding of how to best support these students in our day to day work. 

For any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Student Success team at smss.studentsuccess@ucl.ac.uk.

Wednesday 9 October (2-3.15pm)

Join us for our event on the 9 October 2024 at 2-3.15pm, where we will be joined by:

Dr. Gurnam Singh, Associate Honorary Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, is a highly respected activist researcher, writer, educator and broadcast journalist who is dedicated to exposing and challenging systems of power, privilege, and violence that perpetuate human suffering and inequality. 

Gurnam Singh's contributions to pedagogy and higher education have earned him numerous accolades throughout his career. In 2009, he was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship from the UK Higher Education Academy, a prestigious annual prize given to the top 50 academics in all UK universities. And in 2018 Dr Singh was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA). He has published numerous research reports, conference papers, blogs, and newspaper articles on a wide range of issues related to social justice and anti-racism in health, social care, and education.

Title: Race Equity, Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Possibilities

Summary:  The widening of participation in higher education has led to the development of new, creative, and inclusive pedagogies. However, this expansion has also revealed deep-rooted inequities affecting both faculty and students from non-traditional backgrounds. These inequities have prompted the implementation of institutional and sector-wide strategies to address issues such as disparities in degree awarding, the underrepresentation of global majority faculty—particularly in senior positions—and the ongoing efforts to decolonize the curriculum.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and Bard, has introduced new dimensions to these discussions, raising questions about how these technologies may influence the pursuit of race equity in higher education. By reflecting on the historical relationship between science, technology and the development of racist ideologies and practices, we will explore both the potential opportunities and the significant risks that AI presents in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.

You can sign up here.

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