As I write this blog update, we're nearing the end of Week 3 already (that's a quarter of semester one gone!). As time continues to tick away from us (and Christmas approaches) I thought it was about time I updated my diary to make my September/October activities more widely known!
Freshers Week - Final Update
Following on from my other Freshers Week updates, I just wanted to round off my reflections on Freshers Week 2011. Personally, I was really pleased with the diversity of events that I witnessed PGs getting stuck into. It has been a big concern of the
Students Association over the past few years that PGs felt excluded by some of the student societies who were exclusively run by undergrads, but this year I definitely experienced first hand the eagerness of student societies to attract a PG membership. I was hugely impressed by the efforts made by Charlotte Baker, of the
Mermaids (the Drama Society), who not only held a mixer specifically for PGs during Freshers Week, but who also invited us to go and see the Mermaids productions at the Fringe over the summer. I was also really pleased to see the
Townsend (commuting) Society at the Freshers' Fayre- I met Emma (President 2011-12) during the summer to talk about the sheer numbers of PGs who commute into St Andrews every day for classes, labs or to work on their research. The Townsend Society also hosted a great Freshers Week event which a number of PGs made it along too.
This year also saw the re-invention of the Opening Ceremony, with Student Services taking the reins and delivering up two wonderful welcomes for all the new students. Unfortunately this year the Opening Ceremonies clashed with the PGR induction (one of the main reasons why we held an official PG welcome with the Provost of St Leonards College in Parliament Hall a few days earlier), but there were still plenty of PGTs who enjoyed the ceremonies. You can see a video of the first ceremony
here, and watch out for the highlight of the ceremony (for me at least) - The Dean of Arts citing the
Uncyclopedia entry on St Andrews (if you haven't read it then you should, now, it's hilarious!).
I also had the honour of being asked by the gorgeous ladies over at
Gradskills (now part of CAPOD) to give a short speech on PGSoc at the PGR induction. I really wanted to get across the message of collegiality in my welcome messages this year, but I felt this was particularly important at the PGR induction because PGRs often feel quite isolated from their colleagues in other Schools and at other levels of education, just because of the nature of doctoral study. Anyway, the PGR induction was really well organised- It had a fantastic range of speakers, they had invited lots of relevant groups from across the University to set up stalls for PGRS to browse during the breaks and -most importantly I suppose- the timekeeping was really good!
I also had the great pleasure of getting a tour around the newly re-furbished ground floor of the
Main Library during the pre-sessional time. I think most, if not all, of you will have seen the refurbishment for yourself, and will have made up your mind about it- But I thought I'd share a few of the facts and figures I learnt that day (and that way you'll have something to impress fellow PGs with in the new Library cafe!)
- They have managed to create 74 new study desks on the new ground floor
- The nnumber of bookable study rooms has risen to 9
- Study rooms will soon be bookable online and accessible using a specially created keycode
- The materials budget (used to buy books and databases etc) has been increased by 40 percent
- 17 percent of the 1.2mn volume collection is classed as 'special collections' (rare books/manuscripts)
- Last but not least, the library will soon be equipped for *very* late opening (just check out the giant black barriers at the entrance)
DRA Cocktail Party
Interesting Fact No. 7: There are over 500 PGs living in DRA-FP this year!
I certainly wasn't aware of this interesting fact until the lovely Michael, one of the Wardennial team at DRA-FP got in touch over the summer to talk about the possibility of co-organising an event to be held in the DRA facilities building. We had originally planned to free ticket the event through the yourunion.net website, with the DRA wardens giving their 50 percent of the tickets out through their team of assistant wardens. What we didn't take into account was the insane levels of demand we would get for the event!
I gave the first sign-up opportunity to those new PGs who came along to visit our society table at the PGR induction and the Freshers' Fayre, and by the time those events were over we had given away the lions share of the tickets! After that I opened the giveaway up through the Facebook pages, and we had a complete sell-out within one day! The DRA-FP wardens were also (I think) slightly surprised to see queues of PGs waiting for tickets during every office hour in the run up to the event!
The event itself went really well- I manned the door myself to make sure thuat all those who had been allocated a ticket got in (and all those naughty PGs without tickets who tried to barge in were put on a waiting list). The drinks went down a treat... If slightly quickly... I think we might have to rethink the business model for next semester!
On a serious note, we're making a real effort to organise more co-branded events this year (that's events jointly hosted with other societies, university departments and sports clubs)- It's good for us (because we have a limited budget) and it's good for you (because that budget goes much farther in terms of the number and variety of events!). On that note, if you're part of a society and think you might like to co-organise an event with the PG Society, just send me an
email and we can have a chat about it.
Committees
What with it being Week 3, the timetable of committee meetings is really beginning to heat up. You may not realise how many committees PGSoc is involved with, but as your representative body we have a duty to try and speak the PG voice in every forum we can- Regardless of whether hot drinks are complimentary (unfortunately). The year kicked with the Student Services Committee (SSC) meeting in week 1, SSC being one of the two committees that constitute the day-to-day running of the Students Associationa nd it's societies. The SSC is where the Presidents of various important societies share information with the sabbaticals (aka sabbs: the elected full-time, paid student employees who run the Union). This first meeting back was mainly a post-summer catch-up, but it did involve a cheeky little pub crawl afterward (I tried to keep up the PG side as well as I could, it wasn't easy!).
Week 1 also saw the first Academic Council (or Senate) meeting of the year. Academic Council is the highest decision making body comprised of academic staff in the University, and as such is a very interesting (if also a little intimidating) meeting to be a part of. Naturally, much of the talk at Academic Council focussed on how the changes to the education sector are being managed by St Andrews (think £36000 fees...) and on various strategic aspects of University management. To be honest, as someone who feels very strongly that education is a universal right rather than a commodity, I felt a little sad after Academic Council that a room containing some of the most intelligent people in the country couldn't see past how we would be 'coping' with changes as they were presented to us- I'd really like to see St Andrews leading the way in terms of presenting strong evidence for why we think education is too important to be placed in the hands of short-term-ist poiliticians. But, I have a plan on that, which is beginning to come together....
The following week saw the inaugural (for this year) meeting of the Students Representative Council (SRC), this is the second of the committeees which coordinates Students Association business, and the SRC deal s primarily with representation issues. As such, the various members of the SRC represent various student groups across the university, and there are 3 members of the PGSoc committee representing postgrads at these meetings. At the moment (as the AGM hasn't happened yet) it was just little old me, so I gave an update on all the PG representation issues we've been dealing with over the summer (accommodation, class reps, gradskills and changes to PG wardens). At SRC there was lots of interesting ideas about solutions to the accommodation situation (the situation being that there isn't enough) and also about who might be standing for Rector at the upcoming elections....
And finally this week we had the second SSC of the year (which thankfully did not feature a pub crawl!) and the first Teaching, Learning and Assessment Committee of the year. PGSoc is new to TLAC, we were asked to sit on the committee this year by the lovely Proctor, Lorna Milne, who felt that the PG view could be more strongly defended through a seat on the newly re-constituted committee for a PG student representative. I'm really grateful for this, not just because getting to sit on TLAC is a massive opportunity for someone planning a career in academia, but also because management across the University are really making a concerted effort this year to have the PG view represented, and including us in important decision making bodies such as TLAC really demonstrates this commitment, and also goes along way towards securing this input for future PGs.
ANYWAY, I think that's quite enough PG updating for now- My fingers are about to fall off! I'm off to enjoy a nice dinner at the fabulous Dundee Rep Theatre before I head off down top Edinburgh this weekend to get some proper PhD work under my belt before Week 4!
Study Hard!
Holly
What a night! Thanks to Dee for organising the event, and for taking all the great photos on the night!
