Your application for Associate Fellowship must be endorsed by one Supporting Statement from a referee.
The Supporting Statement endorses your claim and is used by the reviewers to confirm that your application presents a fair and accurate reflection of your higher education practice. It is not used by reviewers to fill any gaps in the evidence you provide towards the Descriptor. The reviewers will need to see sufficient evidence of effective practice in your Reflective Narrative to meet Descriptor 1 for them to award Associate Fellowship.
Who can be a referee?
Your referee should work, or have recently worked, closely with you and have first-hand knowledge of your practice so that they are in a position to comment on and endorse your application. Your EFS mentor cannot act as your referee. Please note that a Supporting Statement should reflect a professional relationship, so it should not be, for example, from a family member or based on a personal friendship.
Referees need to have current or recent experience (within the last three years) of working in higher education. Your referee does not need to hold Advance HE Fellowship, but they need to familiarise themselves with the criteria for AFHEA (Descriptor 1 of PSF 2023). They can do this by reading the Guidance for Referees, linked below.
What to provide your referee
Provide your referee with the Guidance for Referees – Associate Fellowship – ANU vAug24.pdf and the Supporting Statement Template – Associate Fellowship – ANU vAug24.docx.
The Supporting Statement must be written in the template provided.
In the Supporting Statement, your referee will need to confirm that you have represented your practice accurately and fairly. Therefore, your referee needs to be provided with the (near-)final draft of your application to enable them to provide an effective reference.
What referees need to includeÂ
In their Supporting Statement the referee will confirm that, in their professional opinion, you demonstrate the requirements of Descriptor 1 and should be awarded Associate Fellowship.
They are asked to save their Supporting Statement as a PDF file and send it to you so that you can merge it into one PDF document with your final application.
We reserve the right to contact your referee for clarification so please ensure that the Supporting Statement includes verifiable contact details (e.g. name, job title, email address, institution).
Receiving your Supporting Statement
It is important that you read the Supporting Statement your referee provides, as they may refer to aspects of your practice that could strengthen your application. If this is the case then you could revise parts of your application and ask your referee to check that they are happy to endorse the changes you have made before you submit.
When you have received your Supporting Statement, save it so that you can add it to your finished application when you are ready to submit.
You may be asked to provide an alternative Supporting Statement if the reviewers of your application judge that the statement does not fully verify and endorse the evidence in your application.