The Highlights of my Achievements in Office as your Current Vice President 21/22

Health and Wellbeing

Worked with the Head Coach, Annie Thompson and the Staffordshire Scarlettes to raise over £100 in donations for Movember in 2 hours!

Movember campaign for Men's (all) Mental Health

One of the bigger immediate tasks that was passed on to me immediately from the previous Movember ambassador and Ex-SU President 19/20 -20/21 was the Movember campaign.

This was the first skipping stone for myself as it was big shoes to fill with mental health being one of my biggest points in my manifesto 21/22 as well as a personal note.

This campaign showed my resolve, aptitude, and drive to continue raising awareness on the issue of Men's mental health. In this month, I actively in person or online promoted as many things as I could to support the cause, I broke it down to 4 different topics per week begining from:

Week 1 Movember Converstations (Time to talk)
Week 2 Suicide Prevention (Get support and give support)
Week 3 Prostate and Testicular Cancer (Testing and symptoms)
Week 4 Substance Abuse and Addiction (Support, alcohol, and drugs)
While continuously promoting awareness of the University services, external partnered services and informative posts for wellbeing.

Free weekly sessions with NorthStaffsMind, running Mens mental health support groups every wednesday for the rest of the first semester 21/22

This month did a lot more me and for students as far as I could see, supporting students, actively promoting the importance of mental health and how to support yourself or where to get support from as well as a range of inviting activities to learn more about the topic and finally raising just over £500 for Men's mental health.
Actively Lobbying and Making Change to The University Partnered Medical Centre GP

Ensuring you have a GP to you can access to is one of the most vital aspects when you are moving to University where potentially is a place where you have never lived before.

One of the things that was a key area I wanted to improve on was the GP services that our University is partnered up with due to its poor accessibility/ communications, as well as bad reviews.

I wanted to change that, it shouldn't be the case for a student far away from home and not have access to services they need to keep themselves healthy.

Thus in my time so far, I have made progressive leeway with our University and Harley Street GP themselves with integral meetings and active lobbying for student priority and adeqate support thanks to you all who helped me produce some qualitive feedback that was sent to them both.

I have been able to get the University actively work on the current agreements with Harley Street to improve their service in response to the feedback give BY YOU ALL! THIS IS THE POWER OF STUDENT VOICE, YOUR VOICE!

Harley Street is due to give a response within the next month to progress our demands as students and I will continue on that forefront, making change as long as you let me!
Revised and Re-implemented the Wellbeing and Inclusion Officer Role to Student Society Groups

Over the pandemic and lockdown/s, the Union had temporarliy created "Welfare" roles within student societies, and only a few were officially nominated, I planned to bring this back in full force for our students especially post-covid, however, the "welfare" part would be too extensive, thus working with our engagement team and others within the Union, we re-invented the role to be "Wellbeing and Inclusion officer" for student groups and soceities with revamped training to ensure that it is purely a SIGNPOSTING role for students to help members that might show signs of stuggling or help new members find their feet in the group!

Along side this, I am currently working with our University Wellbeing Services and on the way to agreed action plans for their direct support with our Wellbeing and Inclusion officers when they might reach a tough case that would require more immediate support as well as a general network hub of the role to see what the landscape is for their memberships.

A massive thank you and recognition to Joshua Barnett for the main concept of this work as he had laid the foundations, and I have the privilege to wear the mantle.
Promoted pre-existing safe spaces with various topics in Rest and Reset Lounges

Amongst bringing back the student experience that Staffs had temporarily lost due to the pandemic, my main goals to bring back that student experience, campus is nothing without the student body.

To do this, we had to find ways to make students feel comfortble coming back to campus after 2 years of being locked inside.

The use of Verve change to a non-alcoholic bar has immensly supported the development of the Rest and Reset lounges. Being able to see the development as a current officer also allowed me to run sessions for students to openly attend while having the support of our own Mental health & Wellbeing Society and a fully qualified nurse from the University wellbeing team.

This was a massive win as it enabled that safe space for our students to come back to enrich, and grow the student experince back on campus to pre-covid levels.
Promoted University Wellbeing Apps and Services

Some of the things that aren't widely known or supported is the University's range of external support such as wellbeing support apps that is promoted by the University. One of my goals under mental health support of my manfiesto 21/22 was to promote these, as University wellbeing support and the local GP services can only see so many at a time, so why not have other resources at your disposal if they are meant to help.

No one should have to wait around for any form of support, so if you have to wait for the bigger support, might as well start small so you aren't completely stuck.
If you need any of these then please click here!
Recruited New Key University Staff Members that Understood Student Priorities such as the:
Director of Student Development Services and Head of Residential Services

I was able to sit on the facilitated conversation panel for our next Director of Student Develpment Services feedback and recruit who would be the best candidate to work with that cared about the support of student wellbeing needs at the higher levels at Staffordshire University (Which we do now have!)

I was also personally invited to the formal interview panel for our next Head of Residential Services (Maternity Cover) and recognise the best candidate that could come in and hit the ground running to support our students that live in halls of residence's needs

Worked with University and NorthStaffsMind to promote active workshops for Men's mental health for the whole of semester 1

Promoting University wellbeing support apps and services for students that are struggling or waiting for further suppor

Setting up a donate to play dodgeball session with one of the commitees of Dodgeball, Daniel Bampton. Running the session for our game for over 2 hours and gave away free brand new razors for Movember

Correlated feedback for Harley Street that was presented to the medical practice and University

Promoting and attending the Rest and Reset lounges

Safety and Sustainability

From December 2021, we discussed for officers to focus on certain areas of our team manifesto, and I had the opportunity to focus directly on this area of the manifesto, so it might be bigger than the rest by a little!

Changing the University's 3 main energy providers to sustainable generating ones

Working with students to plan out safety plans for the rest of the year for students on and off of campus

Planting Wild Flowers on campus

Started and Achieved a 24/7 Safety Initiative for the whole London Campus

In December 2021, I began some safety work for our students as it was coming to Christmas holidays and wanted to raise awareness of safety around these cheerful times. Coming from that I started a piece of work around what our University can provide in terms of safety at our London campus forit being so far away, and it turns out it was nothing.

I made meetings with our lovely SU co-cordinator in London and our Head of Security at Staffordshire University to seek appropriate safety measures and support for our students in London.

After various meetings and a few months of work, I have been able to finalise, present and inform you all that there now is a 24/7 SAFETY INITIATIVE for our entire London Campus, I am extremely proud of this work as it was something that has never been done at our London campus so I am extremely happy to have pioneered this for our students safety at our London campus.
COVID-19 measures for our students

During the first semester back on campus, a big concern for our students was COVID-19 on campus, this led to us generating quick response COVID-19 measures for our students. This ranged from help putting up pop up stalls to get the first, second and third vaccination shots for all of our students, staff, and members of the general public in the local area.

Secondly was the introduction of the Covid passports, I was the only officer to lead the march for our Venues for its first iteration of the Covid passport usage just before the Christmas period, ensuring all students that entered has a valid Covid passport to help ensure safety measures for all of our students and defence against COVID-19 on campus.
Working with Students directly to tackle student concerns on campus

Safety being one of the most important initiatives to get right for our students to engage and come back onto their campus, it was in the forefront for what I wanted to work on this year.

I have been able to use various forums, posts, and personal feedback around student safety concerns on campus to directly push towards our safety and security teams as well as safety initatives that I can create with the Union and members such as students from the Cop Shop program.
Free union bespoke safety alarms for all students

For student safety, I believe in helping the student feeling as safe as they can be, whether that be our on campus safety teams, or in this case, providing them with free safety alarms to feel safer when alone.

One of my points is to try and make students feel safer when they are alone and this was done by providing safety alarms during welcome week for all students, so much so that we went to acquire more with bespoke Union branded safety alarms that are now also being distributed to our Stafford and London campus!
Implemented academic focus towards our key groups such as Cop Shop for more direct work for student safety issues on campus

When I started working with Cop Shop, the one thing that stood out too me was that the students that get involved are those that soley volunteer, and I thought, Why?
We have students who study the relevent fields at the campus, at Staffs, so why don't we give them the chance to use what they are learning at Staffs and make campaigns around student's safety as they are students themselves!

It also gives them a chance to get experiece for themselves working with PC Simon Stone who has connections to forces all around the county.

After establishing key meetings with PC Simon Stone, Director of JSS School, and Head of Department for policing to establish a framework for the incoming academic year with our students who study the relevant disciplines for an opportunity to use their knowledge and increase student safety while on campus and studying.

Thus implementing an academic focus to the Cop Shop group to involve more students that can have direct say on what they want to make better and safer around the campus.
Working with local police force to raise awareness of safety concerns for our students (New Students move in, Christmas breaks, local area, etc.)

On my to do list was to ensure our new students and old that are coming back to campus feel safe and are aware of potential safety concerns around campus, whether that be when they move back into Stoke-on-Trent, moving back home over the holidays and leave their belongings at University or just knowing whats hapening in the local area!

Working with Simon the entire of Semester 1 producing safety videos and informative pieces around the local area or certain events/ times of the year to keep students up to date.

Lobbying with Simon and adding value to safety goals such as repainting the path to safely get to Hanley and back or adding safety/ security board notices around Shelton to deter theives from lingering around your student accomodation.
Promoted in various ways the University bespoke Safety app - SafeZone app

One of my main safety prioritise when entering the role was to work with and promote the new "SafeZone" app, which is to support students in the Stoke campus.

It has the capabilities to: Call the safety team for non-urgent, emergencies, or first-aid reasons, as well as the options to report suspicious activites under a variety of options. This app also has the ability to set a timer for yourself if you are in a building by yourself to keep the safety team notified if you are okay.
Online Safety and Cyber-awareness

Apart of launching my Free Cisco Cybersecurity certified training to all students, it helped promote online safety and cyber-awareness to students in stem and non-stem fields.

Working with our Student cop shop leaders and PC Simon Stone to pull work around developing a month around Cyber-awareness and online safety for students.

Lobbied and Changed the University 3 main energy providers to sustainable ones - One being "Britain's biggest carbon-zero electricity generator!"

This has to be one of the biggest, if not biggest achievements I have done in my FIRST YEAR as an officer. Being able to directly contact our University sustainability engineer and discuss the ways and views as a student for improving our University's sustainability. It has to be being able to change their 3 largest suppliers of energy to sustainable ones!

This shows hope for me, as sustainability is one of those topics that people are either really into it, or not super bothered about because "what can i do as an individual" speaks the most, "it's the big companies and businesses that need to do the change", I have dedmonstrated here that my individual voice has been able to change the big institute and I am so proud of that. So it is time for you too, with your choices, you can help make a difference to the future that we will be in!
Re-assess the Students' Union's "Sustainability, Environment and Ethics" policy

As the Officer leading on Safety and Sustainability, I worked with our engagement manager to look over a range of projects that varies, one being sustainability, and is to lead on re-assessing the Students' Union's "Sustainability, Environment and Ethics" policy, which dictates the Unions actions moving forward for their activities, purchases and more to follow sustainable options for people and the environment as well as ethically sourced goods.
Implementing academic focus to our sustainability activities and increasing awareness on campus projects

Similar to the Cop Shop academic implementation, this was with our staff and students who have academic focus on sustainability such as Biological sciencecs and Geography to be more involved with our Union sustainbility services such as volunteering and other activities that are going around on campus.

Apart of that is us having students that work on sustainbility projects, so why not have them improve their campus with what they are studying about and actually making a difference, this brings attention to their work as well as helping show other students what they can do on campus.
Planted a range of Wildflowers on our campus to improve the greenery at Staffs

Apart of Green Week with the Union, one of the more active tasks that I was able to do was make more green spaces on campus, this was going out to College Road side of campus, and spent a couple hours planting wildflowers to grow on campus, and increasing the greenary.

Launching the 24/7 Safety Initiative for our entire London Campus!

Promoting and making aware of COVID-19 safety measures such as the booster vaccine avaliable to our students on campus!

Raising awareness of local area safety, and safety concerns around housing during the holidays with local police forces

Free Cisco Cybersecurity Training

Opportunities and Employability

FREE CISCO Cybersecurity training and certification

As I studied Cybersecurity at Staffs and graduated with a 1st Class Honors, I believed that Cyberawareness is for every student at Staffs regardless of the degree you are currently studying, techincal, stem, non-stem, I believe that this is something that is accessible to all students.

Thus I began some talks and work with our Department of Computing and Course Director for Cybersecurity to propose the plans for cybersecurity training to all staffs students. To ensure this happened, multitude of meetings and serveral negotiations, I managed to get Cisco branded Cybersecurity training for FREE to ALL staffordshire university students.

Apart of the training is self-taught learning so you can study at your own pace. Upon completeing the training and its exams, you will also recieve Cisco certification for completing the training that can be attached to online CV's such as LinkedIn to build your employability for potential employers.

(You can still access/ find it in your student emails from the Students' Union!)
Promoted and pushed for FREE Microsoft certifications (Around £100 per Certification)

Since I started here at Staffs in 2018, I thought what else can I get for my £9,250 than just my degree, what else can I get for free, this was when I discovered that the University provides FREE training and examinations for Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications (MOS), which are incrediable invaluable for students to take this opportunity.

Thus I ran promotions for the MOS and more certifed training as this would be amazing on any CV and brilliant opportunity for students as it is an industry wide recognised certifications avaliable for FREE to them, this is value for money.
Promoted Sports Coaching opportunities at Staffs at the SSMSC

One of my points in my 21/22 manifesto to bring in more awareness or more Sports coaching opportunities, the University is rich in sports, so why not let our students have the opportunity to recieve some coaching experience and even qualifications for it.

This was done in 21/22, on the SSMSC's website that allows students and even local coaches to sign up for coaching and refereeing programes while at Staffs.

Sports coaching opportunities