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Hi everyone, it’s me again! My name is Mari, I’m a Foundation Year survivor, Sociology graduate, and your current Education Officer! I’m rerunning to be your Education Officer for next academic year! During my time at Keele I’ve been a Voice Rep for three years, a Lead Voice Rep for two, and your Education Officer for the past year, so championing your voice and making Keele a better place for its students has always been at the heart of everything I do - but there’s still lots more that needs to be done!
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I’m rerunning to be your Education Officer because I believe there are still so many improvements I can make to your Keele experience. Having already been an elected officer this year, I know how to achieve my goals (as outlined below), and how to push the university to improve where it needs to.
I’m also rerunning because I know the Students’ Union hasn't been flawless this year. I know that we haven’t been able to communicate as effectively as we should be, but by rerunning I’m pledging to change what I know needs to change. If I’m reelected, communicating with you will be my number one priority. I’ll host weekly drop in sessions, I'll go out and talk to you directly, I’ll post updates on what I’m working on at least every month, and I’ll keep being an experienced Education Officer who will always strive to do more.
This year I’ve worked on Timetabling, the uptake of Lecture Capture, empowering your student voice, highlighting and eradicating hidden course costs, making Keele campus more accessible, changing the newly imposed standardised 10am submission deadlines, and so much more that I couldn’t possibly hope to fit into a 1000 word manifesto!
You should vote for me this election because I care so much about Keele and making this place the best it can be. From literal years of gathering student feedback I know where Keele is falling behind, what we need to improve, and how to do it.
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#1 - Timetabling
As you may have noticed, Timetabling here still sucks. We don’t get them soon enough before the start of semester 1, when we get them they’re often incomplete or riddled with clashing sessions, and once we actually get to our sessions (assuming we actually got our timetables in enough time to make it to our first session) the rooms that we’re allocated are often unsuitable as they’re too big or too small or they simply don’t have desks or lecture capture capabilities! Enough is enough. If reelected to be your Education Officer, I will work over the summer to ensure that you get your finalised timetables at least three weeks before the start of semester 1.
#2 - Content Capture
Last year I was laser focussed on Lecture Capture and increasing its rollout across the university, and I truly believe we’ve made a massive amount of progress and the ball is finally rolling in the right direction. But for next academic year, I want to expand my scope. As brilliant as Lecture Capture is, it would be blindly optimistic for me to promise that every lecture for every course should be captured in this way. So instead, I promise that if reelected, I’ll work to ensure that the content covered in every lecture style session is captured (in the form of an audio recording or the lecturer’s own notes) and are made available to students the same week the content is taught.
#3 - Amplify your Student Voice
As I outlined above, I want to further strengthen the collective student voice at Keele. I’ve seen first hand the massive amount of work our Voice Reps put into their roles and improving your courses, but it’s not easy enough to do and isn’t being recognised! If reelected, I pledge to implement online feedback forms for every course, to create space in taught sessions for Voice Reps’ successes to be recognised, and for the university’s responses to module feedback forms to be published to both current students and incoming Voice Reps to ensure that courses aren’t stagnating and that your voice is being heard, respected and acted upon.
#4 - Personal Tutoring
Every year I’ve spent at Keele I’ve had a different personal tutor, and the level of support or rapport or amount of contact time I had with each of them varied significantly. The truth is, the way personal tutoring works at Keele, it’s luck of the draw whether you get one that works for you. Incoming staff are trained upon their arrival, but fast forward years later in an academic’s career and things have changed - the price of our education has changed, our expectations have changed, but personal tutoring has remained the same. If reelected, I will work with you and the university to review personal tutoring at Keele.
#5 - Funding
Where is it? What can I claim funding for? Who is it for? How do I get it? If the university can afford to build shiny new buildings to attract prospective students, then it can afford to invest in its current students. Our education has gotten more and more expensive in recent years, and I’m tired of watching funding pots shrink. If reelected, I will fight for more funding to be made available to students, and for the funding pools that we already have to be made more accessible.
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Thank you for reading my manifesto!
(Or if you skipped over the entire thing thanks for trying - I know it was kinda long!)
If you have any questions please get in touch, and for more details check out my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/mariforeducationofficer
For a candidate with experience and the passion to do more, #ChooseChappell and vote Mari as your #1 choice for Education Officer!
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