Giles Howard opened the meeting at 2pm. Everyone introduced themselves with their name and role.

Apologies were received from Faaizah Rabbani (Postgraduate Taught Welfare Officer) as she was feeling unwell.

All other members of the committee were in attendance and we were joined by the Vice President Student Communities and the Vice President Education.

One of the major discussions were around Events and this was discussed further in the next item on the agenda.

Giles Howard reported his work to date involving working with the Doctoral College on Special Considerations for PGRs, as well as a review of the regulations which is on-going. Another large project taking up his time involves improving pay and conditions across the University for PGR students employed as demonstrators.

Jaya discussed what he has managed in the first few weeks of his role since taking office just prior to the Christmas break which involves surveying Postgraduate Taught students regarding modules with 100% examination content. He aims to continue this work in each academic unit into the near future.

Other members of the committee did not have much to report due to only taking up their posts recently and this being the first meeting of the Postgraduate Committee.

Giles Howard and Flora Noble introduced the issue of the expense of Coffee and Cake (Meet & Mingle) on a Thursday morning. Due to it costing a very large portion of the postgraduate events budget, scaling it back was discussed, as well as utilising the money more efficiently to bring events to other sites as the current event regime is almostly entirely Coffee & Cake which is based entirely on Highfield.

Discussions were had as to the nature of what events could be put on instead and the various stakeholders who would need consulting, as well as what timeframes would be necessary to make this change.

Summer was discussed as a timeframe when the Union could be doing more for postgraduate students who are almost entirely still here.

Other discussions were had regarding carrying out more events for development of PGT/PGR students and potentially collaborating with the University on getting these accredited to drive further engagement.

Freshers' planning having begun recently came up as an opportunity to inject more events into the induction period for PGT/PGR students such as cultural events. 

Discussions around scaling back Coffee & Cake indicated that it should be undertaken when we have more engagement from postgraduates and know what flavour of events postgraduates prefer.

Giles Howard reported that the Festival planning is heavily underway and there is a funding pot available for postgraduate research students to bid for in order to hold events under the banner of the Festival of Doctoral Research. This will be administered by the University.

Aneesha Sethi suggested she could push this out to postgraduate society contacts if they are otherwise not already aware.

Elliot Grater is currently liaising with the Doctoral College with regards to a Festival event potentially being held somewhere on the Union, either on the concourse or in the Bridge.

This was primarily discussed in Item 3 - it was decided that targeting July/August for a programme of events to target PGT/PGR students would be beneficial as this can be a critical time for both cohorts.

Freshers' planning currently sits under the Vice President Engagement and several members of the committee discussed meeting with him in order to ensure more postgraduate events within the freshers calendar as many of the events this year were quite successful in terms of turn-out.

Aneesha, as Events & Activities Officer, to spearhead this discussion going forwards.

It has been announced that City Gateway halls of residence will be converted to a Postgraduate-only halls and so training will be required by the City Gateway Halls Committee from the Postgraduate Committee and staff in order to help them to engage the new postgraduates come September.

After a brief discussion, it was decided that the committee needed to reach out and form a network of the unofficial PGR reps across the University in order to more adequately engage our PGR community.

Daniel Cernin, as PGR Academic Officer, was tasked with this with support from Giles Howard where required.

Giles Howard to follow up with each member of the committee to ensure they have access to their email addresses or if they want new ones issued to reflect their role titles.

Jaya's email is currently being chased-up by Flora.

Jaya, Giles, Daniel and Wilson to meet Elliot to discuss how the academic elements of the committee can work together.