Your Education President's Winter Update
Hi Everyone!
Welcome to my December update. It’s been a very busy last few weeks at SMSU.
I’ve been working with our course reps and subject chairs to collect feedback from students and resolve issues on individual programmes. We held our first “Big Rep meeting” last month, where we got together with course reps across the university to discuss academic issues, including learning resources and academic support. We had 28 reps attend – a great turnout!
I’ve also been running focus groups and drop-in sessions to collect feedback from students on their academic experience, to be used in our teaching excellence framework (TEF) submission. The TEF is a way of inspecting universities, run by the OfS, the regulator for universities in England. For the first time, student unions can submit a 10 page submission sharing the views of students as part of the TEF inspection process. If you have any feedback on your course, positive or negative, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via email.
At the end of November, we ran our SIMMIE safety week campaign. I was in the shannon corridor all week, talking to students about student safety and giving out. A huge thanks to everyone who filled in the SIMMIE safety survey, stuck stickers on our campus map or just stopped to give some feedback. We ended with 404 responses, a strong number. We’ll be using the data from the survey to create a report, which we’ll use to lobby the university and will allow me to progress my zero-tolerance to sexual harassment and sexual assault manifesto points.
Earlier on in the month, I led on our sustainability week. We held a “big green meeting” where students could come along and share their thoughts on sustainability at st Mary's. Our new Eco Soc also ran a stall in the shannon corridor, and we held a “green fair” alongside the university in the ref.
Finally, I’ve also been busy working on some of my other manifesto points. I've been pushing my proposal to scrap the £100 dyslexia diagnosis fee, with more meetings with the university coming up. I’m also looking towards to the start of semester 2, when I’ll be launching a survey to capture student’s views on online lecture capture, another key manifesto point.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas break, and we’ll see you next year.
George
