I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year being the representative of the School of Business and Management. I represented students from Marketing and Management, Business and Management, Accounting and Management as well as Business with Law. From this, I gathered that there should be more effort to accurately convey the central voice of students in decisions that affect their education. I am working towards making a student feedback system for the school to use and the university overall. This is important as it will help me to work with the issue’s students have within their school. I feel this will be a great system for all students use. I also want to work with all the course representatives from the business school to update them about important matters and to hear their ideas about the course that they’re studying, so further improvements can be made if needs be.
I will continue to liaise with staff members within the school and the Head of School to ensure matters are raised, improved, and fixed. As a result of the pandemic, everything is online, so If I am elected, I will have open conversations with the Heads of Schools about issues students are facing including those that aren’t directly related to academia such as mental health, finance issues etc so the school can help and support students by having advice sessions every week or one to one session to speak to students. I will also work with the elected VPHSS from the student union to make the communication system better, such as emails and updates received from the school, improving online teaching by providing students with materials they need in advance. The issues that have been raised in the SSLC meeting should be in a reasonable time. I will help to ensure this by working along with the Programme Director of the school and involving course representatives from all years in the meeting. Being elected as a representative last year allowed me to find the most effective ways of communicating with the course representatives. I used forum meetings and social media platforms from each course that I am representing to get feedback and to know the issues they are facing in their course. I helped them by contacting the person responsible from the school to raise the issue and to help solve the issue.
I have also worked closely with the School of Business and Management Dean of School and Dean of Education and staff members with the feedback acquired from course representatives and improvements that should be made, and I also would provide suggestions. As a rep I have been working with the Dean of Education and School, also different SBM staff members, to make online teaching better for students as everything was confusing and not clear for students such as the assessments etc. I have also given feedback collected from students and other course reps that needs to be fixed, regarding modules or anything within their course. This has allowed me to know more about SBM policies. Also, in the start of Semester 2 I have worked on changing the assessment of a module that every student had issues with. I have also been working on the COVID Mitigation Conversations with the school. In October 2020, I decided to do a survey for students from all years regarding semester B as many students had contacted me wanting face to face teaching and weren’t sure what the school would do. I decided to do a survey to find out how many students were satisfied with the current teaching and if they would prefer face to face or online teaching in semester 2 and the majority said face to face. I worked with course representatives from all years to formulate the questions. I shared the results with the School of Business Dean of Education, which had a large number of responses and this felt representative of all students.
I have also worked with Cameron Storey who is the Vice President of Humanities and Social Sciences to update him on what I am working on, and would ask him for suggestions for example, students who have private accommodation have to pay fees as due to the COVID situation. I contacted Cameron to ask him what I should do, also for any school matters I would speak to him for example communication can be difficult when contacting all students from year 1 to 3, so Cameron helped me with solving the accommodation issues as 0 he gave me ways to contact them and to also ask the school. I have also attended all meetings as a rep such as the HSS board meetings to give him feedback. Also, I am working with other Student Union executive officers for education fee matters and semester B matters. Cameron and I have worked together to improve the communication system of SBM which is still in working process. My experiences as a rep in my second year has helped me be more confident and meet different people from the school and share issues with them and work along with them for issues to be solved. If I am elected again as a rep, I would want to involve more of the course reps in my meetings with the school or any externals so matters can be taken more seriously and be solved. Also, to work closely with the course reps from the school and with the VPSS who will elected from SU.