Education Zone (30th April 2014)

David Mendoza-Wolfson thanked everyone for attending and went through the attendees and apologies.

The minutes of the previous meeting have already been agreed by email as this was required prior to funding (There has been an overspend of £61 in last phase of funding).

Kane Hands was actioned to email CMT to get login details for the Faculty Officer email account - this has been done.

Carla Jardim was actioned to email Lawrence Smith and Jack Brigden a list of their reps - this has been done.

David Mendoza-Wolfson was actioned to write a new policy to replace policies 0910P39 and 09109P18 - This has been done.

Carla Jardim was actioned to clarify with Democracy when this years' AGM and Open Union Council will be - this has been done and Carla confirmed that the date is 14/05/14.

Carla Jardim was actioned to send an email for the committee to approve the decisions and minuted from the Zone Committee meeting of 23/03/14 - this has been done.

Carla Jardim was actioned to email the committee a document outlining the dates and nominations process for the ETAs - this has been done.

David Mendoza-Wolfson was actioned to discuss the recall of the Medicine Officer – Alex Oldman at Union Council. David Mendoza-Wolfson and Carla Jardim had a meeting with Alex to help clarify his role, and he’s been responsive since then, so he’s still in post.

 Shruti Verma

• Trying to sort out with the faculty about electronic submission.
• Trying to talk to timetabling about computers that are accessible to engineering students as a lot of them have projects at the same time and there is no access to computers that are powerful enough to run the software that is required.
• Sorting out things with new courses. All 2nd years and 3rd years have to pick their options and themes and some people are having issues with this.
• Trying to sort out getting presentations, photos and people to represent faculty related societies at the ETAs.

 Kane Hands

• Assisted with planning of the new Natural Science course – still need to do something about the optional module so there is a feedback system where the personal tutor has a say on what is chosen. There is a FPC after this meeting.
• Sort ETAs nominations.

Alex Bees

• Looking at more career provisions and specialist ones where the faculty hasn’t had much of a specific focus (such as Engineering faculty, who have have fairs for Engineering students). Getting more of a Careers Destinations focus which is going quite well.

        Lawrence Smith

• Working on survey, starting with Music, to see what students think about feedback. The lecturers are going to look at that and then prepare what they think good feedback is with the idea of holding a seminar, preferably by the end of year but it may have to be taken on next September.

        Giles Howard

• Wrangling with ECS. Struggling with restructuring (going to 15 credits) and ECS didn’t get it in on time so they had to ask for another two weeks to delay module choices for two weeks so now we are dealing with that as we finally got modules with correct syllabuses and now we have got to put it into the system. There is a problem with MSC accreditation as apparently some of our programmes are not accredited but we never claimed that they were accredited to start with.

Last year the Post Graduate Taught (PGT) and Post Graduate Research (PGR) Officers were under the Education Committee but following the restructure to the new zones, the PGT/PGR Officers have moved to the Student Communities Zone.

The committee had a discussion regarding if the PGT/PGR Officers should come under the Education Zone, raising the following points:

• We cannot best represent PGs as we are not PGs and do not fully understand their needs.
• PGs probably would not wish to go to an UG to discuss their issues as they would not understand the issues.
• Some issues are the same for PG as UG ie. Workspace.
• Have we asked the PGT/PGR Officers what they think?
• Could the PGT/PGT elections take place with the Course Rep elections?

VOTE:

Do you believe that the PGT/PGR Officers should sit within the Education Zone committee?

Yes (Unanimous)

ACTION: David Mendoza-Wolfson to discuss this with Democracy.

At present SUSU has an Industrial Action Policy which the committee believe is lacking in what it does in that SUSU will support any action as long as it doesn’t have a severely adverse effect on students which means that there has to be a vote on every case of industrial action. David Mendoza-Wolfson was asked to write a new policy to take to the AGM. The committee has read the new policy and discussed this, raising the following points:

• ACTION – David Mendoza-Wolfson to change ‘marking boycott’ to assessment boycott’.

The ETA’s are on Thursday 8th May 2014. Invite members of staff, students, nominees, academic presidents and course reps to attend. Please can the members of the committee confirm attendance by 5th May.

David Gilani advised that hidden course costs are the extra items that are required to complete your course but are not included in the standard fee. These items can include anything from study materials to lab coats. These costs need to be paid during the academic year, whereas the course fee can be paid back later through student loans. All of these extra costs should be explained before you choose you degree.

The committee discussed the campaign for No Hidden Course Costs. Any further thought on this can be emails to David Gilani or David Mendoza-Wolfson.

The committee split into teams to discuss the opportunity profiles for the rep charter. Carla Jardim will write up the ideas raised in the session.

A doodle-poll will be created for early June to discuss this.

Carla Jardim will create a doodle-poll for a drop-in session to discuss Course Rep numbers.

The marking boycott vote has been postponed to 6th May 2014.

David Mendoza-Wolfson advised the numbers for the 24 hour library.