Your application for Fellowship must be endorsed by Supporting Statements from two referees.
The Supporting Statements endorse your claim and are 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 2 for them to award 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 the Supporting Statements 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 FHEA (Descriptor 2 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 – Fellowship – ANU vAug24.pdf and the Supporting Statement Template – Fellowship – ANU vAug24.docx.
The Supporting Statement must be written in the template provided.
In the Supporting Statements, your referees will need to confirm that you have represented your practice accurately and fairly. Therefore, your referees need to be provided with the (near-)final draft of your application to enable them to provide an effective reference.
What referees need to include
In their Supporting Statements the two referees will confirm that, in their professional opinion, you demonstrate the requirements of Descriptor 2 and should be awarded 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 Statements your two referees provide, 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 referees to check that they are happy to endorse the changes you have made before you submit.
When you have received your Supporting Statements, save them so that you can add them to your finished application when you are ready to submit.
You may be asked to provide alternative Supporting Statements if the reviewers of your application judge that the statements does not fully verify and endorse the evidence in your application.