Priyansh 'Pri' Shandilya - Social Sciences Faculty Officer

I’m applying for the role of Social Sciences Faculty Officer because I’ve spent the past few years working within student representation, and I want to take that experience further by improving how the system works across the entire faculty.

As a Course Representative for BSc Finance and a member of the Students’ Union Student Council, I’ve worked directly with students and staff to raise concerns, challenge decisions, and push for improvements. Through this, I’ve gained a clear understanding of how representation operates in practice—where it works well, where it becomes inconsistent, and how outcomes are actually delivered.

One thing that stands out is how differently representation can function across departments. Some students are well-informed and actively engaged, while others are less aware of how to feed into the system or don’t see clear outcomes from doing so. As Faculty Officer, I want to focus on making representation more consistent, accessible, and effective across all Social Sciences courses.

This means ensuring broader and more meaningful student input into SSLCs, improving communication between representatives, faculty, and the Students’ Union, and making sure that actions agreed at faculty level are followed through transparently. Having worked within these structures, I understand both how to raise issues and how to keep them moving until they are resolved.

I am also interested in the role this position plays in identifying wider, faculty-level challenges and coordinating solutions across different departments. Working alongside the VP Education and contributing to university-wide initiatives is an opportunity to ensure that student concerns are not handled in isolation, but addressed in a more joined-up way.

What I bring to this role is experience, reliability, and a structured approach. I am comfortable working with a range of stakeholders and I focus on clarity—understanding the issue, communicating it effectively, and following through on outcomes.

I’m not applying to simply represent students at meetings, but to make the system of representation itself more consistent, accountable, and effective across the faculty.