Huw Do You Deserve | Vote Huw Weaver

Me at the Isle of Wight Festival, 2019

Last years Leadership race campaign photo!

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Huw Am I?

Hey, I’m Huw, a master’s student on 3D Computer Games Design, and a Games Design & Programming graduate from Staffs.

In my time at Staffs I have been on the committee for Theme Park Society for 2 years (first Finance, then Manager), am a Student Ambassador, on the Ultimate Frisbee team, work in Student Engagement, and recently became a Part Time Lecturer in Games Design! You would have also seen me volunteering and helping in some other areas, like for Movember events and as part of the action team that helped with the Halls’ evacuation due to the pollution in the river!

I am running for FTO as I have quite simply loved my 4 years at Staffs, and my aim is to make sure everyone else enjoys it, even more than I did! So, assuming I get a spot, don’t be hesitant to message me your issues and I’ll do the best I can to get them sorted!

My Main Priorities

Anchor 2

Student Experience

Student Experience is the daily experience of students, both academically and socially. The academic experience always needs to be looked at and improved where needed, to keep up with ever changing industry standards and requirements, while the social experience shouldn’t be ignored so students can make memories they’ll never forget, at events ranging in scale from karaoke to graduation.

Graduation:

Two separate years of students are no longer getting the Summer Graduations that were promised to them, and if rumours are to be believed those who were promised an Autumn one in King’s Hall won’t be getting that either, and instead it’ll all be happening on Campus somewhere. Students should have the chance, and the choice, to get the graduation experience they were promised when first enrolling on their course, even if it means waiting another year.

Campus events:

Come September, we’ll have 2 years of Students that will have never truly experienced what kind of Social Events we were once all used to - Karaoke, Club Nights, Weekly Sports Matches & Varsity, Welcome Fairs, and many more. When these can be started back up, I aim to make sure they are better than ever.

Assignment Feedback:

Assignment Feedback is something that could almost always be improved in one way or another, to ensure that students can take it into account and use the advice given for future work. Whether that is ensuring it is timely, ensuring it isn’t vague and can be understood by the students, or ensuring that students know when and how they are meant to receive feedback all together.

Representation:

More awareness should be made of Department Representatives and Course Representatives, so that not only will students know who they are and what they are there for, but also so that they know who each other are and can do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Anchor 3

Student Group Support

Student Groups – the Sports Clubs, Societies, and Networks - are at the heart of University Life, and for a lot of our students they provide not only important friendship groups, but their events provide much needed escape and time away from course work too! More needs to be done to help support the group committees and make their lives easier, thereby helping them to provide even higher quality events and experiences for the members.

Points to Prizes:

Points to Prizes is a scheme that was set up by previous Full Time Officer, Scott William Smith - more information can be found here: https://www.staffsunion.com/getinvolved/pointstoprizes/

I think this is a great scheme, trouble is it’s not been used at all this past year, and even before then it never reached its full potential - read the proposal I made and submitted to the Union for it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TYY9vkpxCTsi_tgi6_FxwELIpEzkBEztFxrQzd5FefE/edit?usp=sharing

This proposal would definitely need more work, but it is a starting point that I’ve already come up with that can be easily expanded upon.

Extra website access & functionality:

There are numerous things that committees currently cannot do on the website; assigning tickets to their event pages and ensuring event pages also link directly to their Group’s homepage are just 2 examples. The functionality does exist, but instead they must go and ask Student Engagement to sort it for them. These options should be provided directly to the committee.

In addition, a new finance system should be implemented to save time and make Committee’s lives easier, and something like MSL Student Group Finances would help to do this. The Union website already uses MSL, why not get this add-on too?

More Funding and Promotion:

All groups can benefit from more funding and promotion, and the options are there so let’s use them.
For funding, although it may have been reduced, I know there used to be a large budget that Student Groups could apply for extra funds from that rarely got used - why don’t we advertise this more, or even just give more of it to groups?
For promotion, the backgrounds on University PC’s are an option - these often advertise events anyway, why can’t we turn these into slideshows that’ll advertise multiple events and allow groups to feature on there?

Staffordshire University Racing (SUR) are just one group that this could help - The promotion would help them to reach students of more disciplines (I hear they’re looking for Business and Marketing students), and the funding would give them a greater chance of competing with teams with much higher budgets.

Anchor 1

Enhanced Digital & Physical Environments

We’re meant to be a digital university, but our digital spaces are severely lacking quality in areas, and don’t offer the kind of experience or service you’d expect them to. So they can these need to be properly updated and maintained, and while doing so there also needs to be a large focus on physical environments and making sure we are sustainable.

Update and Maintain the website:

There are currently many areas of the website that have out of date information, have dead links that go to pages that no longer exist, or even are just formatted completely differently to other similar areas of the website. It needs updating and maintaining so it can feel more professionally made, and function like how you’d expect a standard website to.

Provide easier access to need to know information:

Though a lot of the information is already provided via the Union Website, My Staffs Uni app, or Beacon Bot app, some of it is hard to find or split into confusing and sometimes seemingly repeated categories. It should all be brought into one place and categorised in a way that makes more sense and is easier to understand.

A digital map of campus:

Even students in their final years can struggle to find certain rooms or facilities when they need to, so students who haven’t had a chance to come to campus due to COVID 19 will no doubt struggle when they do - a digital campus map would help with this. All rooms should be labelled with their room numbers and what they are. All toilets should be clearly shown, all communal spaces like kitchens clearly shown, and all bins and recycling points clearly shown.

Continue high focus on sustainability:

More recycling points, chewing gum bins, and cigarette bins should be provided across campus, and in those places that currently have them, extra or larger bins should be provided if the current ones fill up too quickly. More litter picks should also be encouraged, to ensure that our campus does stay clean and tidy.

Other Important Priorities

Anchor 4

Blackheath Lane, Shrewsbury, Digital Institute of London

Having volunteered at welcome experiences at Blackheath Lane, seeing for myself how many and what kind of other events they had planned, and then further learning about it from previous Officers, it’s clear that these campuses are lacking some of the University Experience we get at Stoke. There should be more official events at these locations, they should be given more opportunity to come to Stoke for events, and they should have greater opportunity to get involved in Student Groups.

Transport and Accommodation for Satellite Campus’ Students for events at Stoke::

Being the biggest campus, naturally Stoke will get the biggest events, though why shouldn’t students at other campuses be given the opportunity to join us for them? If there is enough interest in these events from the Students at a Satellite Campus, transport should be provided for them, and discounted accommodation should also be provided so they don’t necessarily have to worry about long journeys home straight after the event.

More encouragement for students’ groups to be inclusive to these campuses:

It’s in the Points to Prizes scheme already, but is only required to be done once, so once it’s done there’s no more incentive for groups to accommodate students at satellite campuses. Either add more incentive as part of the Points to Prizes revamp or find an even better way to encourage it.

A welcome fair-like event to be held at the Satellite Campuses:

Not only will this better show these students the kind of groups they can get involved in, it will also help show groups there is a demand for them in these places, further encouraging them to be inclusive.

Incentivise new start-ups at Satellite Campuses to naturally create more events and activity:

There’s already a large budget provided for student groups that doesn’t get used, why not reassign some of that to help students at Satellite Campuses set up their own groups.

Anchor 5

Access to Facilities and Resources

Students are paying £9000 a year to study, and yet in places they still struggle to access any facilities and resources that are essential to their course when they need to, and also sometimes struggle to access things in their leisure time. Although efforts have been made to help this in the last year due to it becoming essential, more work can be done - more should be available outside of the labs, and the labs themselves should be open more and better maintained.

Better communication to Students so they know what they can request, and where to do it:

While there are already systems in place that allow students to request access to specific rooms at certain times or around the clock and allow them to report any repairs that need to be made on lab machines, not many students know where to find these. How to do this should be better communicated to students so they know where to go when they need it. The time is takes for these requests to be completed should also be improved, so that Students aren’t stuck without access to rooms they need, or stuck with machines that have a dodgy mouse, or only one monitor when it should have two.

Increased specifications on rentable hardware (Laptops etc):

While the ability to rent out hardware such as Laptops is great, especially for those less fortunate who might not be able to afford their own, I know they once weren’t the best and struggled to run some of the software they come with. While I’ve heard they’ve been updated in the past year, if they’re still not up to the levels that students need then it’s clear that they need either upgrading or replacing again, so they can run the software students require.

There could also be a set of laptops that are specifically for people from certain courses, that specifically have the software they require but not others, creating a more bespoke experience for students

Increased Gym Opening Hours:

Simple point this one; the current Gym opening times are 7am-7pm on weekdays, and 10am-4pm on weekends - as Covid restrictions are eased, why can’t the weekend times be increased to further reflect the weekday ones? There are 24/7 gyms in the area, so what’s stopping ours from being open longer? Increased opening hours would help students to fit work out times into their already busy schedules, potentially offer some new job opportunities for students, and given exercise has a proven positive effect on mental health increased opening hours would help students massively.

Anchor 6

You may wonder why I haven’t highlighted large issues such as Mental Health Support, Women’s Safety, and LGBT, BAME, & Gender equality. This is because I am someone who has fortunately never had first hand experience of such issues, and so I feel that I am not in the right place to comment on them. I am empathetic though, and will help to highlight the voices of people who have experienced these issues.