Where to meet students in Engineering Building A & B

"The student centred design of Engineering Buildings A & B allows for students to meet academic colleagues in a variety of ways that suits their own individual needs. This detailed approach to design in the new home of engineering and materials science ensures that students are able to get the support they need when they need it."

Dr Gianpaolo Vignali

With the relocation of colleagues into the new home for Engineering and Materials beginning in May, it’s been encouraging to see members of our academic community beginning to embrace these new facilities as part of their day-to-day teaching activities.

In tandem with the recently published Ways of Working materials, colleagues are reminded of the range of spaces available throughout these new buildings for meeting students, whether these are timetabled activities or ad-hoc meetings.

Meet and teach rooms

There are a total of 85 meet and teach rooms throughout the Ground to Third floors of Engineering Building A, ranging from 10 to 80 person capacity. These spaces are suitable for a range of activities from small group tutorials to academic advisory sessions and confidential meetings with students.

Any timetabled teaching session will have a meet and teach room automatically booked by the Faculty Timetabling Team. Any ad-hoc teaching or meetings with students can be booked into a meet and teach room through Resource Booker, with any unoccupied rooms free to be used, though colleagues are advised to check these via the online booking system before use to avoid clashes.

Each meet and teach room is equipped with at least two wall-mounted display screens for Solstice / HDMI screen casting and a whiteboard. Digital AV user guides for the Meet and Teach rooms are available on our Engineering Buildings A & B User Guide via StaffNet.

Informal study spaces / cafes

Whilst timetabled sessions will often need to be taken in enclosed areas, ad-hoc meetings with students which don’t require AV support and aren’t confidential or sensitive in nature may be taken in the range of informal study spaces found across the Ground to Second Floors of Engineering Building A.

Both Collaborate Restaurant on the Ground Floor and Café Connect on the Second Floor of Engineering Building A provide large seating areas which may be appropriate for these types of ad-hoc meetings.

You can find the location of these outlets through our digital map.

Four-person meeting rooms in workspace ((UG and PGT students undertaking research projects only)

Engineering Buildings A & B have been designed so that student-focused activities are delivered throughout the Ground to Third floors of the buildings, with workspace access solely for staff plus PGRs and PDRAs. As an exception to this rule, undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking research projects can have supervision meetings in the four-person meeting rooms in workspace.

As students will not typically have swipe-card access to enter the workspace, academic colleagues should communicate with students in advance of these sessions to make arrangements to let them into the space.

Student hub

The Student Hub should not be used as a meeting space with students, due to the potentially sensitive nature of conversations and meeting types which take place in this space.

As a central and recognisable location however, colleagues may wish to arrange to meet students here before moving onto another location, e.g. meet and teach rooms or informal study areas. 

For further information on the range of spaces throughout Engineering Building A & B and guidance around usage of these spaces, please visit our Ways of Working StaffNet page.