Monday 24-04-2023 - 11:00

 

Cost of living

This month Pedram and I have picked up the community fridge plans which we were parked last year. The purpose of the project is to assist staff and students during these difficult times by offering free food items. We’ve had to move away from fresh food due to the additional layers of regulation this brings but have managed to work around this by looking at stocking non-perishable and cupboard items. The new project will be called the ‘SU Pantry’ to try and reduce any stigma around using the resource. This month has involved reconfiguring the project as well as setting out a roadmap for a trial launch late next month at 2 campuses.

 

University Mental Health Day (UMHD)

The final planning and delivery of UMHD took place towards the beginning of the month. In total, there were four events which were hosted on the day available to both staff and students; walk’n’talk, yoga, communiTEA and a talk delivered by the university mental health team on managing your well-being in a digital age. I ran these sessions online for all our campuses and hosted them in person for our Berlin campus. Alongside the events, the library teams at our eight ULaw campuses also put out information resources and freebies. Despite the complexities due to our cross-campus nature, it was great to support the national campaign by running events and delivering resources both online and in-person across our campuses. 

 

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the teams on the ground for making these in-person materials available – it wouldn’t have been possible without your support, so your additional work is making this happen was greatly appreciated. We received great feedback from the Library teams that all the resources (just under 1,500) were used and it even brought new students into the library. 

 

Berlin campus visit

I spent the second week of this month running events and meeting students at our Berlin campus. This is a really valuable visit we make annually to ensure our GISMA students feel included as part of the University community and promote our services and support. It also allows us to network and increase awareness of our department to staff. We ran several different events across our four-day trip including; presentations, drop-in sessions, a walking tour of the city, quiz, along with running all the events in person for University Mental Health Day. We also had a tour of the campus and a lunch meeting with the campus dean. The feedback from students and staff was really useful and it was great to see students engaged in the events we ran.

 

Following the trip, we’re planning on producing a small report detailing the student feedback and uptake of events to deliver to the campus dean and the SU team. 

 

UK campus visits

Our two-week election window for our two new Co-President roles was open from the 13th – 24th March. During this period, myself and the team have been travelling to all our UK campuses encouraging students to vote, alongside promoting our awards and our general services. Over the two-week period, I’ve travelled to London Bloomsbury, London Moorgate, Leeds and Sheffield campuses. Alongside visiting the campuses on the day, it also involves a fair bit of organisation beforehand to make travel arrangements and liaise with the SI teams and tutors to ask them to help promote our visits. We’re incredibly grateful for the support these teams give us, as it does help boost our engagement when we’re at campuses. 

 

Election turnout

Whilst we are unable to announce the results of our newly elected Co-Presidents, we can announce the overall voting turnout. This year we were pleased to see an increase in our sabbatical office voter turnout from 2.7% in 2022 to 4.4% this year. This is also a 0.2% increase from our student rep elections in October 2022. Whilst still below the sector (which averages 10%) it’s great to see that our turnout is increasing and we hope to continue building on this trajectory moving forward. 

 

Postgraduate bursaries

Each year, the SU awards £15,000 to postgraduate students to assist in funding their extra-curricular activities alongside studying – something which has been especially important this year in light of the ongoing cost of living crisis. This is to match the bursaries the University’s widening participation team is able to offer undergraduate students.

 

At the start of the month, I completed the administrative work to shortlist the applicants, calculate the awards and send them off to the finance team so the payments could be processed. Sadly, due to the sheer volume of applicants, we couldn’t give funding to everyone who applied. However, it was great to make awards to 166 students this year. 

 

Students’ Union Governing Board

This month I had my final governing board meeting of my term. Along with submitting a report to outline my work output for the year, it also involved reviewing various SU staff reports, KPI’s and policy documents. 

 

Independence

This month there has also been several different work projects associated with looking at SU independence, including a presentation to the executive board, an information session for reps (which has been recorded and can be accessed for all students to access) and several meetings with members of the University Executive to discuss the plans for the advisory vote next month.