Get involved in Peer Support

What’s it all about?

Peer Support aims to encourage students to work together and support each other within their learning community, with the primary objectives of improving the student experience and empowering students to become leaders within their learning community.

Every first-year undergraduate student is assigned to a PASS or Peer Mentoring group, run by higher-year student volunteers from the same course of study. All our student volunteers undergo a recruitment and training process before they begin their roles and regularly participate in skills-enhancing debriefs and workshops throughout the academic year.

Each subject area will have either a Peer Mentoring or a PASS scheme to support all 8000 first-year undergraduate students. Therefore, you will have the opportunity to become either a Peer Mentor or a PASS Leader depending on your scheme. If you'd like to help to run a scheme or develop it further, and gain more leadership skills, a Student Coordinator role could be for you!

What will I do?

For all Peer Mentoring and PASS Schemes, excluding Medicine Peer Mentoring, we conduct comprehensive training sessions for Peer Mentors, PASS Leaders, and Student Coordinators, following the central Peer Support Team's training framework. Training typically commences in early March and concludes in mid-June, with final sessions scheduled in September for students on placements or studying abroad.

Once you have signed up to be a Peer Mentor/PASS Leader/Student Coordinator, you will promptly gain access to a dedicated Blackboard community for your respective role. Here, you can engage with an online training module tailored to your responsibilities. After successfully completing the online training, you will receive a link to register for the in-person training session specific to your role.

After you have met your students as a group for the first time and introduced yourself and your role, you will meet up with them and communicate with them at least once a week or fortnightly to see how they are getting on settling in at the University and to see how they are finding their subject of study. You will also organise extracurricular events, such as socials, workshops etc. throughout the year.

What will I get out of it?

By becoming a Peer Mentor, PASS Leader or Student Coordinator, you will experience many benefits through the skills you acquire, the connections you make, and the person you become.

From speaking to Mentors, Leaders and Coordinators within Peer Support, below is a list of some of the benefits that they have gained from their role: 

• You will gain a lot of soft skills that employers look for through planning, organising, managing your time, and liaising with students and staff. You can also get involved in event management, advertising, and promoting your scheme if you are active in your scheme.
• Peer Mentor, PASS Leader, or Student Coordinator will also be on your Higher Education Achievement Report, which will help you stand out to employers once you graduate.
• You will have a chance to help develop your scheme alongside other students and staff. You will also play a vital part in relaying the first-year experience back to the staff members. This will be very rewarding and insightful.
• You will also have access to exclusive opportunities that are ongoing throughout the year, which include paid work, volunteering, and other projects that you can get involved with within the University and the SU or within Manchester more generally.
• Ultimately, you have the opportunity to meet other students with similar interests and help you to form a community within your subject area.

How do I get involved?

If you are interested in getting involved in Peer Support and you know an existing Peer Mentor, PASS Leader or Student Coordinator, then you can ask them directly.

Alternatively, visit the Peer Support website at manchester.ac.uk/peersupport to find out more, or email us at peersupport@manchester.ac.uk so that we can put you in touch with your subject’s Peer Support scheme!

Find out more

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"I believe that PASS is a great way of bridging the gap between students of different years, allowing younger students to learn from older students’ experiences and older students to gain valuable skills such as leadership, communication and organisation by mentoring their peers. A driving factor behind my involvement with peer support is that PASS gives students the opportunity to actively influence their environment and see their ideas develop and come into being. For instance, during my second year at university, I felt like peer support resources for second year students would be helpful. So, last year, as a coordinator, I pioneered a mentoring project for second year students and together with my fellow coordinators we even got an ‘Outstanding Contribution Award’ for our efforts!”