Junior Dean

Salary: Please see honorarium section below

Contract: From 1 October to 30 th August

Department: Welfare

Reports to: Welfare Lead

Location: alliol College: covering Broad Street, Jowett Walk, Master’s Field and the Graduate Centre. Residing at Master’s Field.

Balliol College is one of the oldest in the University of Oxford and has around 800 students, 70 Fellows, 120 staff and 8,000 alumni. The resident community is composed of over 500 students, spread across three sites, with Lodges at Broad Street and Holywell Manor. This includes a postgraduate community of 225 students based around Holywell Manor and the Master’s Field, in addition to 300 undergraduates living in accommodation on Broad Street and Jowett Walk/Master’s Field.

The College is looking to appoint a Junior Dean, who will work as part of the existing Junior Dean Team under the guidance of the Welfare Lead, Dean, and other College Officers and staff, as part of Balliol’s Welfare and Decanal Teams. The core responsibilities of the Junior Deans are the same, covering both the undergraduate community and the Graduate Centre, to ensure the safety and welfare of the student community in such a way that every student can thrive to their full potential.

At Balliol, Junior Deans are College employees, who pursue their own academic careers and social lives. They are all junior academics, being either research students or in junior post-doctoral research positions in the wider University. It is a requirement of employment or continued employment that Junior Deans make good academic progress in their research roles.

The safety and welfare of individual students and the community is at the heart of these roles. The overarching function of all Junior Deans at Balliol is to support the welfare and decanal systems of the college, to foster a good atmosphere in our student communities, and to provide friendly direction and signposting support to individual students where needed. Junior Deans are therefore important members of the Welfare and Decanal teams and are expected to work as a team together and in supporting College Officers and staff.

The Junior Deans report to the Welfare Lead, and in their welfare role, they offer support to students and the community in several different ways.

To this end, the Junior Dean will undergo required training and inductions in October at the start of their contract and so should expect to be in Oxford and able to attend daytime training on multiple days that month. All the Balliol Junior Deans will be given the same training in how to help students with problems to access relevant help from professional sources.

Their prior experience and this training will make them well-versed in how to signpost students with problems to the right help, at the right time, and this will often mean referring them to a more senior member of the College’s Welfare Team, or other sources of assistance within the College, the University, the NHS and elsewhere.

Junior Deans also take instruction directly from the Dean in relation to disciplinary and related matters and act to enforce College rules about student behavior. For the most part, this enforcement involves light-touch actions such as closing down student events at night or requiring students to cease causing disturbance. They may also be asked to collect or supply information for the Dean and are expected to be able to do so reliably.

Other, occasional, tasks relating to students may also arise.

Their work necessarily will also bring them into close contact with a range of College Officers including the Domestic Bursar, the Domestic Manager, the College Nurse, the College Counsellor, and other members of staff including the Front-of-House Team, the Assistant Dean (Graduate Centre) and the staff of the College Office. The Junior Deans are expected to make themselves known to all these individuals at an early stage of their employment.

In all these roles, discretion and respect for confidentiality are essential. Junior Deans must also be able to separate their Welfare and Decanal roles from their personal and social lives in the College and maintain appropriate professional…