Last Week / This Week

Welcome to your weekly round-up of who your elected officers have been meeting and what they have been doing to promote, defend and extend the rights of students.

The information below mainly focuses on meetings that your officers are attending with the University and external stakeholders.  If you are interested in finding out more about what they are working on check out their blogs or the Student Voice section of the website. You can also keep up to date by following UBU on twitter: @ubunews and #ubumeets.

For the next two weeks, the officers will be focussed on planning for and promoting the 2012 Annual General Meeting (AGM), which is set for Thursday 9th February from 2-5pm in the Anson Rooms at the Students' Union.  Come along and be the boss!

• Dom Oliver attended Boat club and canoe club development meetings

• Sophie Bennett and Just Ask Advisor Katy Gullon presented on equality & diversity at a UBU Staff Organisational Day.

• All the officers met to plan the action they will take to fulfil their mandates from the AGM last week.
• Josh Alford, Student Rep Coordinator James Houston and Democracy Intern Ed Gavaghan trained a batch of the Veterinary Science student reps, explaining how they can best represent their fellow students.
• Chris Ruff attended the fortnightly Societies Exec meeting deciding the last of the £25,000 grants budget.
• Josh Alford, Max Wakefield and Gus Baker met the Dean of the Social Sciences & Law Faculty to discuss cuts being made in the School of Sociology, Politics & International Studies.

• Josh Alford, Student Rep Coordinator James Houston and Democracy Intern Ed Gavaghan will be training the Policy Studies Student Reps, explaining how they can best represent their fellow students.
• The work of the Officer Team and UBU Senior Management Team will be scrutinised at the UBU Trustees' Executive Scrutiny Committee.
• Dom Oliver attended Swimming and Water Polo Development meetings and a discussion about club devlopment procedure with UBU and SEH, and a meeting about club and society rules.
• Chris Ruff will be delivering a session at a Bristol PLuS Award employability day on the opportunities for experience at tUBU.
• Sophie Bennett and Josh Alford will be helping Democracy Intern Ed Gavaghan to run the first session in the Candidate Academy to inform the choices of potential candidates in the upcoming UBU elections.
• Sophie Bennett met with Tracy Brunnock (University Development Manager for Diversity) to set the University's student focused equality objectives. Sophie also secured funding to support disabled students to participate in student activities – email ubu-welfare@bristol.ac.uk for more information.

• The Officers will be wearing suits as they have been mandated to do.
• Josh Alford, Student Rep Coordinator James Houston and Education & Representation Manager Ryan Bird will meet to review the outcomes of their previous meeting with the Quality Assurance Agency and to discuss how they plan to use this to improve the educational experience of students at UoB.
• The Officers will be meeting the Secretary of the University's Student Affairs Committee to discuss their continuing relationship with the University through the formal committee structure.
• Dom Oliver will be attending a Judo Club development meeting.

• Josh Alford will attend the University's Technology Enhanced Learning committee to continue feeding in to the strategy that they are currently writing. Josh will use the results of the recent student focus groups to ensure that this work is led by student wishes and not by gadgets or gimmicks.
• The Officers will meet with the Academic Registrar to continue talks about how best student issues can be fed into University policy and practice.
• The Officers will report to Student Council on their recent work and plans.

• Josh Alford, Education & Representation Manager Ryan Bird and Widening Participation Officer Sophie Mew will be attending the Joint NUS and Universities UK conference on Widening Access to Higher Education. They will be presenting their current work and plans for Widening Participation at UoB and UBU as part of an NUS WP Champions session, a scheme in which we are involved.
• Chris Ruff and Max Wakefield will be meeting The Bristol Hub group along with other UBU staff to discuss the continuing relationship between these two groups.

• Josh Alford and Sophie Mew will be attending a meeting of the University's Widening Participation Strategy Implementation group to scrutinise the current WP figures and to analyse current offers that have gone out to students. They will ensure that contextual offers are being made, as they have been mandated to do by the recent AGM.
• Chris Ruff will be attending the Careers and Employability Board to monitor the University's employability strategy and to put forward any student concerns about the Careers service.

• Josh Alford will be hearing the feedback from the recent Student Barometer Survey with several stakeholders from across the University. He will then feed this back to UBU staff and students.
• Josh Alford will be attending the Library Strategy Group talking about the need for expansion of library space, longer opening hours, better short loan provision and more books to eliminate hidden course costs.
• Gus Baker & Josh Alford will be meeting The University's Deputy Registrar Lynn Robinson to discuss plans for the University to change the structure of the academic year meaning a shortening of Freshers' Week and a possible mid-week arrival for new students. UBU research shows that this is totally against students' wishes and the team will be strongly opposing this idea.
• The Officers will be reporting to and sitting on the UBU Trustee Board.
• Chris Ruff will be travelling up to Manchester with the Bristol University Challenge team for the filming of their first round match.

• Josh Alford will be meeting with students from the Med Access group to discuss how best to go forward with the Officers' mandate to support this campaign and to encourage the University to subscribe to their ideas around sharing lifesaving drugs that they discover.
• The Officers will be meeting with Stephen Williams, Liberal Democrat MP for Bristol West, to discuss national higher education policy and local issues that affect students.
• Chris Ruff and Dom Oliver will be sitting on the Alumni Foundation Grants Committee: a body which gives out thousands of pounds every year to individual Postgraduates looking for travel grants to go to conferences, as well as numerous student groups looking for funding for their activities.

• 16-20 January // 23-27 January
• 30 January - 3 February // 6-10 February