Fellowship case study: Amanda Lassu
Amanda Lassu is one of our 2025 LITE Fellows, who has just completed her 12 month project titled Understanding the student experience in the action planning processes. In this case study, she shares her experience of her Fellowship project. Amanda is an IT Operations Manager, but was a Quality Manager at the time of her Fellowship. She's worked at the University since April 2020.
Route into Fellowship
Initially, I assumed that LITE Fellowship was for academics, but then I got excited when I realised that actually, professional services staff could do it too. I’ve always been really interested in research, so I thought it was a good way to create space in my role to reflect and do some interesting work which would help my team strategically.
I found the application process straightforward. My Head of Service was really supportive: I spoke to her before putting the application in and outlined how I thought my Fellowship project could include our work, helping us to look at the annual school review process from end-to-end, talking to students to understand the impact that it has on them.
The topic I picked was a clear issue which needed an answer, and the LITE Fellowship gave me the resources to consider that answer.
Doing the Fellowship
My Fellowship looked at annual school reviews. We were interested to understand the experience student representatives have when engaging with the process. I think that coming from professional services meant that the students saw me as one step removed from teaching, and that helped them to be more honest without worrying about how academics would respond to their feedback. This project gave them a different mechanism to feed back and allowed us to see themes and trends emerge.
Students are busy, and I found that a lot of the students involved in my project also had extracurricular roles, as well as being school reps. Trying to get students from all eight faculties into one room at the same time was a timetabling nightmare. The first time I tried scheduling a session, I just set a date and emailed it out, and only about 10% of the students could make it! So I used a scheduling tool to pick the most popular date, and that worked much better. It was a good lesson learned.
I really enjoyed doing my project and I was very motivated to finish it. I knew it could make a real difference. I had just moved to a new role in a new department, so I was quite busy. I wouldn’t have been able to stick with the Fellowship if I hadn’t been so passionate about the topic, or if I hadn’t had the level of support I did from the LITE team.
I was lucky to have a lot of buy-in from stakeholders for my Fellowship – including academics from the schools and faculties. They could all clearly see the benefit of the project and they were all equally motivated to make it work. If you’re thinking about applying for a LITE Fellowship, I’d recommend having conversations as early as possible with the people your project might affect and get them on side.
Reflections
Being given the time to explore an important strategic area was great, and the association with LITE has helped to raise the profile of the work that QA do in the action planning process. It was nice to spotlight a team which is doing an important function at the University.
I know that my Fellowship research has shaped the annual school review process moving forward, and that’s a great feeling. I got good feedback personally on my outputs, but the project has also changed things permanently and made things better for students. I’ve been able to use research skills I learnt doing the Fellowship in my role, like conducting focus groups and designing anonymous surveys.
Doing my LITE Fellowship has given me the confidence to engage with academic staff as an equal and not be intimidated – I know I’m capable. I feel much more empowered to speak up now, and it’s made me consider – not right now! – but going back to studying to do a PhD. I’d never considered myself to be a ‘researcher’ before, but now I know I’ve got it in me.
I’d recommend LITE Fellowship to anyone. Just be brave and give it a go.
Are you interested in doing a LITE Fellowship? Want to know more? Visit our Fellowships page.