Junior Deans

**Junior Deans **(Decanal and Welfare Teams)**

**Salary**:Please see honorarium section below
**Contract**: One academic year from 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024
**Department**: Welfare
**Reports to**:Head of Welfare
**Location**:Balliol College, Broad Street, Jowett Walk, Masters Field, Holywell Manor

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,

**THE ROLES**

The safety and welfare of individual students and the community as a whole 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.

While all the roles share a set of core responsibilities, there may be some particular differences arising from the various locations of the roles based at the Broad Street, Jowett Walk, and Master’s Field sites.

Those who are appointed as Junior Deans support the Junior and Middle Common Room Committees, act as sounding boards for their ideas and plans, and will sometimes be required to be present at student events in their official capacity.
The holders of these posts have a dual role, in that they are still students of the College - with academic careers and social lives - but are also employees of the College, working with other employees, and may become privy to confidential information. As such they need to be individuals with discretion, and capable of separating their two capacities as appropriate.

The Junior Deans are important members of the Welfare team, offering support to students and the community in several different ways. This supportive part of the role can vary greatly. They will be well-versed in how to signpost students with problems to the right help, at the right time, and this will often mean by referring them to a more senior member of the College’s Welfare Team. In line with the training they will receive from the University, they will be able to sign-post students to all the relevant professional sources of assistance within the College, the University, the NHS and elsewhere.

The Junior Deans report to the Head of Welfare, and they also take instruction directly from the Dean. 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 Lodge, the Front-of-House Team, and the College Office. 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, and they will work together as a team to support the relevant college officers.

Taking on a Junior Dean role is entirely compatible with pursuing graduate and/or post-doctoral research, but will involve attending some specific day-time meetings and night-time events, occasionally at short notice. The Junior Deans have a range of specific tasks, which are described in the section below. All Junior Deans will undergo required training and inductions in September at the start of their year, and so should expect to be in Oxford and able to attend daytime training on multiple days that month. All Junior Deans will be required to plan any absences from Oxford ahead of time with the relevant college officers, and they may be needed to help cover each other’s duties in emergencies.

**MAIN DUTIES**

A Junior Dean role is an official job to assist the College in maintaining the welfare and well-being of Balliol’s students, ensuring the desirable levels of health and safety standards, and where necessary exercising the lowest level of decanal authority. The following duties and responsibilities listed below constitute the detailed structure of the job and the expectations the College has of all its Junior Deans.

**All Junior Deans have responsibilities in four main areas**:

- **Emergency and ‘out-of-hours’ response when "on duty"**: In conjunction with the Lodge porters, the Junior Deans may be called on to act to deal with emergencies. This may include being the first point of contact to call an ambulance or taxi to take a student to the Accident and Emergency ward at the JR Hospital, or it may include aiding porters to deal with illness, injury, disturbance, fire or other emergencies. In a serious incident resulting in hospital admission of a Balliol student who is or could be gravely ill/injured, the Junior Dean on duty will follow agreed protocols and ensure that the appropriate College Officer is informed at the appropriate time. This may in some cases involve a Junior Dean accompanying a Balliol student to hospital although they should not normally stay with the student once at the hospit