Where your elected officer team are up to with the team manifesto.
Mental Health
We’ve run three mental health lounges so far this year, which is especially important during these challenging times.
Also known as Rest & Reset, mental health lounges were a manifesto commitment to allow students an informal opportunity to start conversations about their mental health and explore support options in a safe, no alcohol venue.
Maxing out capacity with 24 people attending the first event, and seeing good engagement in the two that followed, we’re currently working with the University’s support teams to make these a regular feature for students.
The Impact of this is that out of 24 students who attended the initial event, 24 said that it had a positive effect and on their mental health.
Making Change Easy
In response to Covid, we’ve worked hard to make sure student voice is present during key conversations with University senior leaders, having implemented a new student charter during summer and continued contribution to key decisions via increased meetings with University Executive, as well as teaching staff.
The Impact of this is that every Staffs student has the charter as a frame of reference for their experience, and a resource for them to make sure that the University, students and the Union are meeting their commitments to one another.
This year we’ve also created the Staffs 100, a group of students who have volunteered to inform the Union’s work to make sure we’re engaging a balanced and representative pool of views when exploring key issues or ideas, and giving a voice to under-represented groups to make sure University remains accessible.
The Impact of this is that we’ve had nearly 400 responses to two pulse surveys on Learning & Teaching during Covid-19, the results of which have directly shaped the University’s approach for everyone at Staffs.
After the Christmas break we’ll be moving into Speak Week, a Voice Conference and The Leadership Race – so there’ll be plenty more opportunities for you to all Lead The Change!
Value for Money
We secured another early win for this them of work, as following conversations from last year, the University published a brochure on how their finances work and where students’ money is spent within our institution.
The Impact of this is increased transparency from the University, meaning every student can now broadly understand what happens with their £9k fees.
As the pandemic has put pressure on all of our students due to travel, childcare, software and hardware challenges, value for money couldn’t be more important.
Since we took up office, our Advice Team we have handled 331 cases for students struggling with their finances who we’ve helped to access more than £76k of financial support they otherwise wouldn’t have, as well as boosting our FoodHub provision across all campuses for when times get really tight.
The impact of our direct finance and FoodHub support means that we were able to provide 62 FoodHub bags or vouchers to students in need and also pay £1,285 in emergency loans to 26 individual students, helping them to avoid, or remove themselves, from incredibly challenging situations.
In the New Year we’ll also be running short campaign to better understand the breadth of course costs for students, looking to lobby the University to increase resources for students to leave more money in their pockets – so watch this space!
Providing Opportunities
Making sure student have great opportunities available to them is always a priority and currently it’s important to think creatively about how to make your mark and boost your personal development. In the New Year we’ll be launching Creativity Sells, where we’ll support our creative and entrepreneurial students to sell products they create and take the first step to professionalising what might, for the minute, be just a hobby.
The Team continue to with closely with the Careers Centre, exploring opportunities for students to complete placements within University Departments (both academic and within services such as Marketing and Wellbeing), plus we’re developing the support and resources needed for students to set up their own businesses following graduation or even whilst studying!
The Impact of this is that 10 new opportunities to engage with will be created by the end of 2021.
Sustainability
As an excellent rated Union, our collaborative work with the university has continued to make sure they’re setting realistic goals for the institution, rather than sustainability feeling like a box to be ticked.
Following last year’s work, there is now a Sustainability Strategy group made up of Union and University representatives, with a clear plan to achieve what is best for our students and our planet due in the new year. Following the introduction of a Green Energy tariff earlier this year, the University will also commit to being net carbon neutral by 2030; with the Union continuing to deliver excellence within our own Green Impact, the wider impact of this is that students concerns will be transformed into action to deliver a better future for everyone.
More immediately, we’ve look at the ever controversial bins and recycling collection immediately around the Stoke campus and now have data and maps of which areas don’t have their recycling collected. Now we’ll be pushing the council to fix this ongoing issue and have already had some initial meetings with them.
The Impact of this is that more than 100 students will be able to live more sustainably day to day!
- Connor, Carter, Anthony and Tuesday - Officer Team 2020/2021 -
If you have any questions for your Elected Officer team or suggestions for what they should talk about next, get in touch.
Email union@staffs.ac.uk or have your say: