It’s been 6 months since I started my role as AEO (Activities and Employability Officer) and sometimes it’s hard to keep students up to date about what I’ve done and what I’m working on. I could be lazy and send you a link to my Google doc where I list everything I’ve done each month, but something tells me a five page document wouldn’t be too fun to read. So what better way to update you on what I’ve done and my goals for this term, than a blog?
What I’ve done:
This isn’t everything I’ve done, but this is a nice summary of my progress so far:
- Society training opportunities- Before I was the official AEO, I helped to shape the training week over summer. Since then I’ve run academic society specific training on utilising your school, organised accessibility training from Disabled Students’ Officer Imogen and came up with ‘Not On November’ which saw four Not On training sessions being run each week of November for societies.
- 156 Redbrick articles approved- It’s quite often forgotten that the AEO is Editor-in-Chief of Redbrick, but since July last year I’ve approved 156 articles to be uploaded to the Redbrick website.
- Activities committee- We had a democratic referendum last year to change how the democratic systems work within the Guild. One of those changes was transforming the Student Groups Executive (SGX), into the Activities Committee (AC). We had Autumn Elections in October and since then the Committee has met twice. A sub-committee has been formed to handle the operational side of the AC, such as constitutional changes, which then get fed back to the main committee.
- Employability Week- With Covid having such a big impact on the working world, Education Officer Jules and I wanted to ensure Birmingham students were as employable as possible when applying for work. So, we got Careers Network, DARO and Worklink involved, to talk to students about employability opportunities and help provided at the University. This included running sessions from everyone involved, and an Employability Hub was launched on the Guild website to advise students where to go for careers support and opportunities.
- First digital welcome- I won’t lie, the period before welcome I felt awful, I had just told groups that in-person activity wouldn't be allowed and I was asking myself ‘how do we deliver welcome virtually?’. There was a saving grace when Lakeside took off, as there was something in-person for students, and we had some really good engagement numbers which was great to see!
- Manifesto- I can tick ‘encouraging groups to collaborate’ off of my manifesto, as I’ve introduced the collaboration event of the month and I ran my collaboration forum in December. ‘Equal attention and resources’ can be ticked- as we’ve recruited 3 new Co-ordinators which puts the student groups team back up to full capacity, meaning more time can be put into societies. My training point can be half ticked as I’ve introduced some brand new training, but there's more work to be done and in the works!
- Supporting societies- I did a post every day from the start of September until Welcome Week, each one advertising a different society. I’ve written 7 blogs on societies and their activity to help promote everything they’ve done. Society of the Month and Spotlights have both continued to highlight the great work societies have put in to engage with students, alongside the collaboration event of the month. In December, I also met with a number of societies to discuss what their experience had been like so far, assisted in the shortlisting of the Alumni Impact Fund and ran Connected Christmas to both support students staying in Birmingham over Christmas and also promote our societies. Finally, I met with student engagement officers (or equivalent) from different colleges, about the work they are doing with academic societies to advertise and support them.
Believe it or not that's only a snapshot of what I’ve done and the meetings I’ve been part of. It’s not been easy and there’s been some incredibly tough times where I’ve had to pick myself up to continue to work hard for students, but reflecting back I feel that I’ve made a lot of progress!
What's to come?
So ‘what are my plans for the next 6 months?’ I hear you ask. Well, I’m going to do a whistle stop tour of some of the plans I have:
- Super AGM- Get feedback from groups on their experiences with student groups and areas that have worked well or could be improved.
- Guild Awards- Even though this will be online it doesn't mean we can’t revamp the Awards and celebrate student group achievements!
- Student groups handbook- We have a policy, but an accessible handbook with all the info needed would be an amazing document especially for handover (another manifesto point in the works).
- Training- With AGM season coming up, it’s time I started work on summer training/new committee training and what that will look like. I’m also working on overhanging training projects I started looking at last semester.
- Documents online- There's a digital working group looking at getting all documents online, and I’m hoping for some really good progress by the end of second semester with this. I'm also working on the committee hub website.
- Transparent and accountable Guild- I’m working with the Student Voice team and our Communications team on a survey to ask students for their thoughts on the Guild.
- Employability Week 2.0- There's some ongoing work happening around a second employability week and what this might look like. This will be focused on volunteering.