SORRY I DIDN'T GET PUPPIES

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and sticking to their New Years resolutions! (Sorry if I just reminded you of the resolutions that you haven't stuck too...)

We have been back in Chichester for just over a week now! The new shop has been finished which looks AMAZING along with the new Academic Building so definitely check it out when you're back! It's very quiet without you all so please come back soon!

First of all, I'd like to publicly apologise for not getting puppies during #StressLess week in semester 1, I contacted over 12 different dog companies and was unable to get them. Who knew trying to get an event for a week that is LITERALLY about stressing less could be so stressful! There was a point in the stressful planning process that I genuinely considered dressing up as a dog but that would have been extremely weird and displeasing for all. I'm trying my absolute best to be able to get puppies this semester and have put in requests early/got into contact with other Students' Unions who actually managed to obtain puppies but please don't have your hearts set on it again, I don't think I can deal with the disappointment and I fear that there will be a tribe of students with pitchforks and fire marching up to my office to burn me alive as if my name is Guy Fawkes. 

To focus on things that I have managed to achieve :) without failing miserably...

Online Submission and Online Feedback: 

This concept has been spoken about in depth along with the feedback from the pilot study that was conducted and there have been mixed reviews among University staff. Students are all for it which is amazing but the next barrier is showing the University staff that are hesitant towards the idea that it'll be beneficial for students finances, environment and completely take us out of the olden ages of paper copy hand-ins. The good news of this update is that a working group is going to be put in place for the logistics of how it's going to happen and WHEN it's going to happen. Exciting stuff! This still may a long process and may happen for some departments straight away when the concept is agreed but we have made progress which is amazing! Thank you to all those who took part in the survey I conducted last semester, your feedback was used in meetings to make this working group happen! *Virtually gives you tap on back*

24 Hour Library:

We did it! We officially had our Learning Resource Center 24 hours for 5 weeks! There will be another 24 hour 5 week period at the end of Semester 2 in the same fashion as Semester 1. If the usage is high and consistent then there is an increased chance and opportunity for it to have extended hours/24 hours throughout the entire 2017/18 academic year.

Post Graduate Students:

Last summer, as the library hours were extremely limited, we managed to obtain L03 computer room as a Post Graduate space to do work and an opportunity to meet other Post Graduate students also. It can be somewhat challenging for those Post Graduate students if they haven't done their Undergraduate degree at Chichester which is why myself and Helen Turley (Post Graduate Officer) are looking into finding a space for PG students on a more permanent basis.

Elections!

The nominations are open as of Monday 16th January for all the full-time and part-time officer roles. Take a look at our UCSU.org website to see all the roles that are available for you to run for! This last 6 months has absolutely flown by and this job has been everything I thought it would be and more, I'm so glad I was elected into this role to be able to work on my ideas and be a part of representing students at a lot of different University boards and meetings! It's well worth looking into if you love to represent a large group of people, have lots of innovative ideas and strive for change in an inclusive manner. If you have any questions then please don't hesitate to get in contact with myself, Mike Riley (Head of Student Engagement) or any of the other officers that you are considering running for.

If you have any further questions about elections or any of the campaigns I'm involved with then please don't hesitate to contact me on facebook or email:
suvpeducation@chi.ac.uk

Once again I'm really sorry for the lack of photos on this blog! Please accept this extremely cute picture of this really sassy penguin. I refrained from putting a dog again in case it reminded you of the puppies that I failed to get, I'm sorry.

I'm really sorry.

Sorry << If all the written apologies in this blog weren't enough, click the link.

NO PAPER COPY HAND-INS!? (early stages)

Hello everyone, hope you've all had a good summer! If there are any freshers reading this then I hope you're excited as you move in and start in only a week!

This blog contains one of the many quite exciting things that I've been working on a couple of months now! We are in the very early stages but it seems that the ball is starting to roll with this so read this blog to see what's going on and how you potentially could help!

As I'm sure you're aware, when all 5021 didn't vote for me 479 voted me into this role, one of my main 4 manifesto points was FREE PRINTING!

Now this seems to be a very ambitious manifesto point but over the summer I have been racking my brains to figure out a way that wouldn't be a financial burden to the University and would benefit students to not have to pay for printing to allow for more money to be spent on a couple more cider blacks in the bar aiding your University careers with more educational equipment and books! After a lot of research I started to look into the concept of ONLINE SUBMISSION & ONLINE FEEDBACK!

After a couple of meetings with some of the University staff, it will now be discussed in the next Learning & Teaching Committee that myself and 4 other student representatives sit on in just over a months time.

The benefits of solely online submission and online feedback means that you'd only have to hand in your assignments via Turnitin (which you do already) and won't have to come into University to hand-in a paper copy version of the assignment you've already handed in - sounds like a great solution right? I know! There is also something called Grademark that allows for assignments to be marked online, resulting in the feedback being given online which would also solve the "three week feedback turnaround" as you would receive all feedback and your marks in the three week turnaround as promised!

I'm currently working with the Business school to devise some sort of pilot study to gain as much research as possible before the next Learning & Teaching Committee! Now here's where the entire student body can help! Our University really does care what students think and if there is enough voices to be heard loud and clear through the medium of questionnaires then there is an even better chance for this to come true!

I would love to know what you think of this idea (positive or negative) so please, if you have 2 minutes spare, fill in this questionnaire www.UCSU.org/surveys/onlinesubmissions to have your voice heard and to make the ball roll with this idea even further! (Questionnaire closes on the 30th September)

Once again, there are no guarantees that this is going to happen or if it does happen, how long it will take! It's going to be a lengthy, gradual process but one that could be even more successful if students were on board!

If you have any further questions about this then please don't hesitate to contact me on facebook or email:
suvpeducation@chi.ac.uk

Sorry for the lack of pictures on this blog, to make up for this monstrosity, here is a pug dressed as the ginger bread man - you're welcome!

MY FIRST BLOG! - Lead & Change: Higher Education

Hello everyone - hope you're all well and having a lovely summer!

Myself, Luke and Pauline are going to try and create blogs as frequent as possible so that you're able to keep up to date with what we are getting up to, what campaigns we are running and how far along we are with our manifesto points!

At the start of this week I set off on my way to the University of Lincoln for the first Lead & Change conference of the year hosted by NUS. If the somewhat 5 hour journey from Chichester to Lincoln on my own wasn't daunting enough, the never-ending surprise of cancelled and delayed Southern Rail services and the 'big hole' at London Bridge causing absolute mayhem made my journey a collective 19 hour trip one way due to it taking nearly 7 hours just to get to London, then having to stay in London that night to get up at 5:45am to make it to Lincoln in time - but it was all worth it!

Lincoln Students' Union (capacity of 3000 people)

A lovely, awkward, ice-breaker selfie.

Once we arrived we were given a very welcoming speech by the NUS staff and put into our tutor groups for the rest of the week. I was fortunate to be placed in the lovely Katie Shaw's group who had a very inspirational but chilled, cool way of delivering her sessions which made them extremely enjoyable - even the ice breakers which usually makes my soul shiver with awkwardness, especially when they're blanketed with different terms such as 'Mission; Impossible' to make you believe that they aren't ice breakers when they evidently are! However they were rather enjoyable as they weren't the same old rodeo they usually are but were a series of challenges to complete as a team. My challenge that I had to complete was to come up with a team name, take a selfie of the team and tweet it with the hashtag of the team and #NUSLEADCHANGE. I decided to call our team #TeamHeatwave as the weather was ridiculously hot and in the photo I looked like a hot, sweaty mess well traveled young woman who had dealt with copious amounts of stressful travelling hours on extremely hot trains prior to the selfie.

After the 'organised fun' as Steph from Plymouth Students' Union would say, over the next few days we tackled some challenging topics, listened to everyone's stories and backgrounds and looked into how to become the most effective elected student leaders possible.

The view from outside the buildings of our workshops

My "privilege" beads.

The session that hit home the most was about liberation (Liberation is a term used for freedom from limits on thought or behaviour). The session began with us being given a piece of string and 5 sheets of statements spread out across the room - the task was to read each statement on the pieces of paper and if you had never suffered from the statement then you had to put a bead on your string. The more beads you had at the end, the more privileged and liberated you were within society. It was extremely eye-opening and made us all more respectful of each others backgrounds and walks of life as we compared how "privileged" we were and openly shared stories where we felt empowered/dis-empowered which was interesting and became the highlight of my week. 

Leadership was a key topic among the week of workshops, we spoke about all different kinds of leaders from Zoella to the idiot Donald Trump and discussed how they're effective, what kind of following they have and how their values shape their leadership. This lead onto Schwartz (1992) theory of the value and belief framework shows how specific values may be categorised into what kind of person you are, my top 5 values categorised me into self-direction and achievement which I hope I can portray in the work I do in this forthcoming year. 

The view adjacent to the Students' Union

We looked at our values on the following terms which were access and admissions, learning and teaching, quality and complaints and retention and success. It was interesting to see how we all viewed these topics and how we defined them, our definitions were somewhat the same but differed slightly as different elected VP education's had different priorities when it came to these topics which were dependent on the core values behind their manifesto points for the year. My definitions were the following:

Access and admissions:

"Open equally to every single person e.g. low income background students/international students etc."

Learning and teaching:

"Accessible and high quality for everyone including equal opportunities, chances and development for all."

Quality and complaints:

"To ensure the quality is consistent and complaints are dealt with appropriately and effectively." 

Retention and success:

"Should be a high priority and to continually develop the university for students needs."

Through these definitions I want to promise that I will represent as many students as humanly possible to make sure everyone is treated fairly and equally within the academic context. We also had an in depth discussion about what we will prioritise this year - myself, Luke and Pauline will work tirelessly towards our manifesto points, they may not happen straight away but I can guarantee that there will be progress on them by time our roles end and this progress will be documented through the medium of these blogs. 

Our balloon tower!

Along with the fun, innovative ways that sessions were delivered, there was also some more 'organised fun' in the evenings. The first activity was the crystal maze which was a game show in the 90's, I was skeptical of how they'd simulate this within the facilities provided and I was right to be skeptical as the NUS staff in charge openly admitted to not knowing what the crystal maze was and hadn't heard of it before she was asked to organise it for us! It was fun nonetheless, full of different types of games to challenge us mentally and physically. We all made it through to the final (#equality) and the final challenge was to build the tallest tower with balloons, paper and masking tape. For some reason it deemed to be a challenging, mind-boggling task for every other team but mine (obvs my team was the best) as we absolutely smashed it! Other organised fun included a pub quiz with my fellow team Quiztina Aguilera and karaoke. I had an amazing time meeting new people, finding out about how they had achieved their manifesto points to help me make a solid plan for mine!

The coolest and most inspirational part of the conference was the Skype call we had with the co-founder of Black Lives Matter. Patrisse Cullors explained how Black Lives Matter started and has been running successfully for 3 years. However it seems that the awareness of this activist movement only comes to light after a horrific racism act has taken place, it shouldn't take a killing for us to support a group that are fighting for rights that we all should have. We all know that it's happening but for some reason it doesn't seem real until a racism act has been executed. We should be actively supporting movements like this to achieve the equality this world deserves and as Patrisse very rightly said to us "I won't see all the change in my lifetime but I will be on the right side of history." 

For more information about #BlackLivesMatter then please visit: www.blacklivesmatter.com

For more information on what NUS can do for you then please visit:

www.nus.org.uk

If you want to contact me with any questions or queries then please don't hesitate to email me on:

suvpeducation@chi.ac.uk

If you actually managed to get through reading this whole blog then give yourself a pat on the back, you deserve it after reading through my waffling!