Our time as Officers so far...
Our time as Officers so far....
Last year University of Cumbria (UoC) Students elected three new Officers for the 2022/23 year, and we took up our posts in July. Your Officer team is made up of Eleanor Armstrong (Academic Officer), Annabelle Robinson (Welfare Officer) and James Wells (Activities Officer).
Annabelle Robinson is a 3rd year Business Management with Marketing student who is based in Lancaster and has been actively involved with UCSU since starting university in 2020. During her studies she has been a Welcome Helper, ran the estranged students and care leavers network and was on the exec committee for the gaming society. She is passionate about increasing the inclusion of the university and both Uoc and UCSU working together to improve student experience. In her spare time, you will find her volunteering for various groups close to her heart.
James Wells graduated from the Outdoor Leadership programme at Ambleside. During his studies he was a Campus Rep and ran the successful Paddling Society. He is passionate about increasing campus vibrancy and the collaboration of all five campuses as one whole university while also including our distance learners. In his spare time, you will find James out kayaking or paddle boarding in the lakes.
Eleanor Armstrong graduated from the Social Work programme on the Fusehill St campus. During her studies she was a Campus Rep, Course Rep and a Student Reviewer. She is passionate about increasing the communication between students and staff in order to improve the student’s success. In her spare time, you will find her spending time with her two young children.
Officer Updates
Welfare Officer
Annabelle is based on the Lancaster campus but visits other campuses on a regular basis. As Welfare Officer they want to dedicate their time to being available to the students and increasing the inclusion of students across the whole university.
Here is what they have been working on:
Accessible Study Room
To develop an accessible study room at the universities Lancaster campus as a pilot to see if it would be successful across all university locations. Annabelle has successfully worked with the head of Library Services and their team to find an underused space within the library. They have formed a working group and connected with the Estates Team who are to start work shortly.
Expect Respect
Started by a pervious Welfare Officer, Expect Respect is a campaign aimed at looking at safer nights out for students. The campaign was formed in response to reported spiking instances in major UK cities. So far a grant application has been submitted to NUS (National Union of Students) to run self-defence classes at Carlisle, Lancaster and Ambleside campuses. Work has started on planning a sub-section of Expect Respect called "Never have I ever?”, which is aimed at educating students around safer night out practices and myth busting some common misconceptions. Annabelle hopes to launch this addition by mid-November.
University Ran Accommodation
Annabelle is in the preliminary stages of planning their campaign on working with the Accommodation Team to gather student feedback and thoughts on the accommodation offered by the University. So far, your Welfare Officer as attended training from Unipol Student Homes on an introduction to the National Code for accomodation and getting a better deal on student housing. This training session was an invaluable resource for them as it helped build networks and a bank of useful resources.
LGBTQ+ Inclusion
Annabelle was part of the UoC stall at Morecambe Pride, there to promote the LGBTQ+ inclusion of the university and UCSU. They took a badge maker to make pronoun badges and keyrings as activity suggested by the LGBTQ+ student network. At Carlisle Pride Annabelle and a member of the university staff recruitment team spoke about how and why UCSU and UoC LGBTQ+ inclusion matters.
Through talking with students it was discovered there was a need to have gender neutral bathrooms on each campus to make everyone feel welcome and safe. They have been working with the UoC EDI Officer and gender-neutral bathrooms will soon be making their way onto campus.
Activities Officer
James is based on Ambleside campus but is visiting the others on a regular basis. As Activities Officer James wants to dedicate his time to being available to students and facilitating more student led experiences on campus.
Below he has listed a few of the ideas of what he would like to achieve in this academic year.
Open Door Policy
James will be putting time aside on a weekly basis to enable him to mingle with students and find out what is going on with our members. Do they need anything? Do they have any worries? Or just allow students to be able to talk, if they want too.
Mental Health
This November James will be looking into raising awareness for mental health through the Movember campaign to help remove the stigma around men’s mental health struggles. This will be done with the Welfare Officer and the university student support services.
Increase in Student Participation in Student Groups & Events
This will primarily involve encouraging societies attend the fresher’s fair and gain memberships and interaction. Events will be run at various times of the year on all the campuses to remind students that groups and societies are still available to join.
Big events such as Christmas, Halloween etc. will be planned with the input of students to make it an event which students want to attend
Student groups will be invited to put in ideas and themes of what they want from the events that are put on by UCSU. James will also be encouraging student groups to take part in the planning and preparation of events to give experience in organising events.
Create an Active & Vibrant Campus
James would like to put on small but frequent events, classes, workshop that students can get involved with, to benefit their social, mental, and physical skills while having fun outside of their curriculum. He would like to build these sessions around student’s interest to make them more appropriate and gauge higher participation rates.
Academic Officer
Eleanor, your Academic Officer held events the week before Welcome Week, this was a chance for the Officers to meet with your academics and talk to them about what the Officers & UCSU do and how can support the staff who are working with students and help in recruiting Academic Reps.
Eleanor’s main aim this year is to work in partnership with the UoC to make sure the university is inclusive and can meet the needs of all our students by making sure our policies and codes of conduct are written in away all our students can understand.
Your Officers went to NUS Lead and Change.
For information regarding NUS please see this article, here.
Welcome Week
We are pleased to say Welcome Week worked well this year with good attendance of all events by students. The Welcome Fair which was due to take place at the Fusehill campus on Tuesday the 20th of September was cancelled due to the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. To ensure that as many students could experience the fair was possible, we took most of the stalls that were due to be at the fair and added them to event up at Brampton Road and provided transport for Fusehill students.
On during the week after Welcome three staff members and Eleanor attended London campus for their Welcome activities which included a fair. The timing of these events was shifted back a week due to the congestion in London caused by the passing of the Queen. Unfortunately, this meant that we did not get to engage with as many students as we would have liked and may have to rethink how we provide the London campus students what they need to encourage engagement with them.
Be sure to check back soon for another update on everything your Officers have been working on to improve your student experience.
