The School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science are proud to announce a new role to their management structure, with the appointment of Mahesha Samaratunga as Director of Wellbeing.
Mahesha Samaratunga
The role of Director of Wellbeing is a new role, and has been created to help implement a student wellbeing strategy with EECS, focusing on raising awareness of wellbeing and mental health, especially with supporting activities for students, but not limited to just students. The aim will be to develop a culture within the school that places student welfare at the heart of its operations, with support from many staff working in the school supporting our students.
Mahesha Samaratunga, Director of Wellbeing said: “I am very privileged to be a member of the team at EECS school, which is one of the first schools within QMUL to formally implement a role of this nature to improve student wellbeing.
Professor Uhlig, our Head of School, places a lot of emphasis on wellbeing and on creating a truly student wellbeing/support-focused culture within EECS. The role of Wellbeing Director was created by him to ensure that this vision is implemented on a day-to-day basis and that it benefits everyone. While student wellbeing is not something new to EECS, this new focus will provide much-needed support, recognition, and direction to our teaching staff, support staff, teaching services who all work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that student wellbeing is maintained within EECS.
Student wellbeing is an area very close to my heart. As a young student a few decades ago, I was fortunate to be the recipient of care and wellbeing support from my university, enabling me to navigate through some challenging times in my university life. This experience has made me an ardent believer that by supporting our students in their wellbeing, we empower them to become emotionally resilient and thereby successfully navigate through their university and personal lives, enabling them to achieve their best in studies.
There is undoubtedly more which can be done to raise awareness and support on the topic of student wellbeing and for it to be better integrated within the culture at EECS. It is my sincere hope that I can use this new role to not only support our students but to have an open dialogue around the subject of wellbeing and mental health.
No student should ever feel awkward or afraid to ask for help, and I believe this new focus will empower us to better identify student needs and encourage them to access the different help and support processes we hope to have within EECS and those available centrally at Queen Mary University of London.”