UEA Plan and Sustainability 

UEA has been working on its next 5-year plan, so over the last semester SU officers and students were contributing during a variety of ‘big shift days’ focusing on key strands of the new UEA plan. The last one of these days will be this Friday 14th on the topic of sustainability.  

There’ll be drop-in sessions in the Thomas Paine Study Centre Foyer at 08.30, 12.30 and 17.00 to allow students and staff to input their own ideas about how UEA should approach sustainability, along with a Padlet to enable people to contribute online. 

We’d encourage you to participate in the drop-ins if possible and please do encourage your colleagues and friends to take part, full details of how to join the Padlet will be published in the Square newsletter and a scannable QR code will feature on the portal homepage and digital screen across campus during the day. 

Student Charter  

This semester, we will be also rewriting the Student Charter which is completely reviewed only every 5 years. However, if we don’t approve the new proposal before the summer, the new officer team might be the one to approve the proposed changes to the charter.  

Doctoral College Strategy  

As UEA is developing its 5-year plan, both the Student Charter as well as Doctoral College Strategy development process has been slow, so both projects can align with the new plan which makes a lot of sense. This means students will be able to provide feedback on the current themes of the strategy via the Postgraduate Committee. 

Academic representation structures and academic societies  

Within the Education Committee, we have been discussing the creation of an academic representative role within academic societies, to closely interact with the current representation structures. Also, societies struggle with engaging Postgraduate students, but willing to improve, we will be considering the introduction of PG reps to help societies engage with Postgrads better. 

This is just a handful of projects you could be working on as the next Postgraduate Education Officer, so I would just like to remind you about the ongoing nominations for officer positions for the next academic year! I wrote a blog here about my role as Postgraduate Education Officer in case you might like to go for it. Nominations close midday on Tuesday 25th February so don’t waste time in getting your nomination in.