The internet's down again..?

Sorry for a late post; as many of you will know the Internet was down again in courts this weekend...

Last week I finally handed in the last two of my assignments, which although left me not much time to do anything before I went home for the weekend, though with only one exam to go until I'm done, I've been looking into what I can be doing before the end of the year...

Today I've been arranging another accommodation initiative to target specifically the University Courts'; I'll be coming round this week taking photos of any problems and breakages, and offering advice on any immediate problems... (not that Students paying so much should have any problems - but hopefully that's something we can continue to work on...)

Tomorrow, I have meetings with the General Elections and Bullet Review Project Groups, both of which are quite important projects, which although may not be in the students' eye, are beginning to produce some good outcomes...

Expect another post this week with an update of how things have been going...

Give me strength...

As I'm sure many of you can appreciate, I'm pulling my hair out at the moment with having two assignments due in on Tuesday...
Not really had time for much else, but expect some more interesting reports soon.

Week of the 19th...

A bit belated due to having a massive amount of work to do for the end of the week...

Other than being out and about in Courts talking to students about issues with accommodation, photographing some seriously bad incidents and giving out paper copies of the Accommodation Survey I've not had chance to do much else...

Give it a fortnight and I'll be back on track as my usual, pushy self :P

Back from the Easter Break...

Again, this week has been mainly focusing on my own studies as much as I can fit in around work.

However, I've spent a bit of time out and about encouraging students to vote in the upcoming general elections as part of the Vote for Students Campaign; personally, I can see why many students may not be interested in the general elections, but after having a close read of the main parties' manifestos, there are some significant differences which could be of great effect to students...

I'd really advise having a read, and then voting for the party which you feel would give the best deal for students...

Week Beginning 22nd March

This week has been quite hectic for me with regards to my personal studies; I have 4 assignments due in shortly after easter so have been spending a lot of time in the library!

On Tuesday some of you may have seen me having my legs waxed for charity; a painful event which raised over £120 for Haiti, organised by RAG.

Today I'm just off to take some of the SU Volounteer Awards posters out, and on Friday I'll be sitting on the Bullet Review Group.

Looking forward to the easter break!

This week...

The last two weeks have been relatively busy for me, both in terms of my Officer activities and personal studies....

Last Tuesday I attended an NUS Course Rep training event with two of our School Reps and VP Education; it was a really useful event, and something that in the future I'd hope more Reps would be attending - hopefully we can take experiences from that to help our own in-house Rep Training as well...

Wednesday's Exec Committee saw a great proposal from Emily Gough for a week of being out and about gathering student opinion on what we've been up to recently, and finding out essentially what students want now; similar to what I wanted to do at the beginning of the year but due to other initiatives looking at communications with students was scaled down a little...
On the Friday we had a meeting to discuss how this would work and the frameworks look really fun...

Also, I met Lord Young with regard to general student experience; the meeting was productive, and a report will be submitted from him to the Vice Chancellor about what we talked about; namely issues such as accommodation, contact time with academics and student involvement with many aspects of the Uni.

This Monday I attended Board of Trustees, which again had some interesting proposals, including amended sports and societies constitutions... I'll be giving a report back to Student Council on Thursday.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I attended a Communication Strategy Working Group meeting; we discussed how best to find out what our stakeholders need to know about the SU and how they could best find out that information, amongst other things.
The Comms Strat group is progressing at a slow, yet steadily productive pace; communications - particularly with regard to students - is something that we can't deal with quickly; we need to ensure that every detail and possibility is considered into the strategy, which hopefully will provide a good set of guidelines to improve communication in the future.

The last two weeks...

Over the last two weeks as many of you will know I've been out Campaigning for the position of Campaigns Officer in the 2010/2011 SU Elections; a brilliant experience...

I've met loads of new people and made good friends with many of the other candidates running alongside me, and am pleased to say I was elected by 590 votes to my opposing candidates 221.

I'm really looking forward to acting in this role next year, and can't wait to be out talking to students specifically on what they want to campaign for...

In the meantime though, I'll be back out there talking to students with regard to my position this year, taking part in a number of internal working groups pressing for particular improvements in the way we communicate with students, starting off with how we find out how they wish to interact with the SU.

Over the next few weeks, as a School Liaison Rep, me and the Law and Faculty Reps for Business and Law will be organising a kindof student/academic forum - a casual coffee-and-a-chat style meeting to bridge the massive time difference between Subject Committees and Faculty Board Meetings, which I can see being a great success which we can roll out across all faculties next year...

Hopefully this will enable students and Course Reps to have a more direct route of access to academics with issues or queries, and has been accepted as a positive move forward by members of Student Council.

Have a good week everyone! :)