I’m not really sure where the time has gone – we’ve nearly reached a third of the whole year already! The last few months have essentially been a massive trial by fire – I’ve been learning so many things and meeting so many people that I hadn’t even realised we’d reached 100 days.
One of my main focus areas has been on our NSS Action Plan. In the past, the Union has published a “Union Response” to the National Student Survey results, which the College then responds to. We’ve changed up how we respond to the NSS now, and so I’ve been working really closely with key College staff to draft our first joint Action Plan to address problems raised in the NSS. A lot of the problems we’ve identified have been around for years, so I’m really excited to get to work on trying to fix these!
Nathalie, Hayley, and I have all been working really hard on improving the College’s procedures on student discipline. We’re a part of the Student Disciplinary Procedures Review Working Group, and we’ve made some key agreements which we feel will really improve safety and student experience – see Nathalie’s update for more details. We’re getting close to completing this review and we hope to share the finalised details with you soon.
The start of the new academic year means we have our Autumn Elections – and therefore the election of all of our Year Reps. I’ve spent a lot of time training our new reps – our faculty and department reps over the summer, as well as our postgrad reps and undergrad year reps in the last few weeks. The level of engagement and enthusiasm so far has been really high, and I’m really looking forward to working with everyone this year.
The nature of the job means that things unexpectedly land in my inbox all the time. I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the College’s mitigating circumstances procedures and the College’s resit policy. I’ll be working closely with College to improve our processes on these, and tidy up the language in our regulations to ensure all students get the best possible experience at Imperial.
I’ve really loved my time in the role so far, and there is still so, so, so much to do before the end of the year – I’m getting started with my projects looking at the College’s academic feedback, mitigating circumstances, as well as beginning a review of our rep networks. The Union will be creating our next strategy soon as we come to the end of our Back to Basics phase. This will shape the direction of the Union for years to come, and I’m excited to be a part of a really excellent team which will make some truly effective change for both the Union and the College.