Hi guys! It hasn’t been long since my summer blog, and due to freshers I’ve had less time to work on my main projects, so this update might be slightly shorter!

Welcome:

To kick off Welcome, I visited our Loughton campus to help run the SU stall at their Welcome Fair, where I spoke to lots of students about who we are and how we support them. I also supported a number of social events, including community socials, FED in Sub Zero, and larger Welcome events like Binglow and Sip and Paint. Alongside Ata, I visited Southend to meet students at their International Social.

I delivered two departmental induction talks to new students, highlighting the support available through the Students’ Union, with a focus on the work of the Education Team. Across Welcome, the Education Team spoke to more than 2,500 students in 49 separate talks, helping us recruit student reps — as I write this, we’ve already trained nearly 200 reps!

Committees:

Now that term has started, so have the many University committees I’m involved in! Over the past few weeks, I attended the Education Committee, where we discussed how AI can be meaningfully incorporated into teaching and learning to equip students with skills for their future careers while still fostering critical thinking and prioritising the learning process. We also reviewed the latest NSS results and explored proposed changes to student support policies.

I also attended the Academic Quality and Standards Committee (AQSC), where we agreed to continue discussions around proposed changes to modules and assessments, including how these changes should be clearly communicated to students.

Projects:

Since my last blog, I’ve met with a potential platform provider for the student support tool we’re developing and had discussions with the University about how the tool could be integrated into the University website. I'm now working closely with them to finalise the mapping of common student issues and link each one to the appropriate support service. Next, I’ll be creating a demo version of the tool and, hopefully, involving students in testing it to ensure it’s effective and user-friendly from their perspective.

We were able to distribute 100 print copies of the international handbook during Welcome, including at the international social, and digital copies are being promoted through the University’s platforms as well as the SU website.

I’ve also been working closely with the Education Team to launch a campaign to support our nursing students, who are facing increasing challenges related to placements. My role has included drafting information to go out to other SUs and local MPs.

Me and our Head of Education have been discussing how we can improve the experience of our student reps this year whilst working on more long-term changes to our student voice system, and we have upcoming meetings with other SU departments to discuss some of our ideas.

Coming up:

This week I’m attending several inclusion planning meetings with the University to look into activities to support some of our student community groups, which some of our SCOs will be attending. The team will also be reviewing the Big Plan this week, checking our progress on the various projects and making any necessary adjustments.

You can follow my VP account on instagram to find out what I get up to: essexsuvpeducation