From the ‘micro’ to the ‘mega’

Student–staff partnership, which sees students and staff working as collaborators on a range of pedagogical activities, is one example of an approach understood to contribute to student engagement in higher education. In this chapter, we detail three innovative approaches to fostering student–staff partnership supported by the Teaching and Learning Institute at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada): an institutional ‘Student Partners Program’, an annual event for partnership practitioners from around the world, and an international, open access, peer-reviewed journal that models partnership in editorial practices and publishes partnership scholarship. We consider the extent to which these initiatives successfully weave partnership into institutional teaching and learning cultures, and draw on what has been called the ‘4M Framework’ (Friberg, 2016 ) to map and assess the ways in which they play out within and amongst various institutional levels. Ultimately, we argue and illustrate that the 4M model can be a helpful tool for those interested in developing and refining initiatives to embed student–staff partnership in higher education contexts.