Joshie Christian - Vice President Education

Hi, that's a really great question! I was really proud of my work as a course rep, although I couldn't have done it without the other students I was working with! I could write a lot here so I'll go through some that I think had a big impact. In my first year, we reviewed all the deadlines in the second and third years of the mathematics courses and asked lecturers to make deadline changes. A few students had a combination of modules that had really nasty deadline clashes, that we wanted to help with. Later on in the year, we collected feedback from first and second year students about a module that many students were struggling with, and through the Student Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) meeting that month, we presented our findings about the declining quality in that module, and discussed how to improve it. Later in the month, I was asked to help select a new module lead and he reached out several times during the year to chat about the new coursework he was writing and ask about the feedback we had been hearing as he started teaching in the next semester. As an Academic President, I started the year with a full rewrite of the set of course rep roles in maths, giving more joint honours student dedicated rep roles and increasing how many students would be able to have the opportunity to represent their course, which I felt was super valuable as the number of students studying maths increases year-on-year. I was lucky to be involved with Programme Approval and Review (PAR) that year, the process of reviewing all the modules in the school, editing their content, shifting exam and coursework percentages, and opening new courses! These reviews happen in every school every five years (a few schools go through PAR every year) so, as VP Education, I will find out who is engaging in PAR next year and offer one-to-one support for the student presidents in those areas to help them lead the student reps during PAR consultation. I would be happy to organise a meeting early in the year with all the reps in any school reviewing their modules to encourage them to push for the changes they want to see and be critical during these processes, as student consultation is a required part of the PAR process that the school has to pass to have changes to your programmes validated. Later in the year I worked on a staff committee that is currently rewriting the dissertation project module in our school to make it better reflect student needs. Some other stuff I worked on as a school president - together with three other presidents in the Faculty of Social Science, we planned and launched a mental health awareness panel, which I got to sit on, for a student-led discussion of our mental health struggles, promoting talking about your mental health with your friends and family, and discussing how we as panel members have sought support or cared for ourselves. One thing I've learned along the way is how often my reps and I give feedback that staff struggle to understand - most feedback is emailed around to module leads after the SSLC meetings - so I have been thinking about how to identify and address this. Feedback is more effective when we ask reps to provide an outcome that they would like to see, and where possible I have been meeting with module leads in person to talk over their feedback and provide the student perspective. I have been asking staff, in emails and communications at SSLC, to ensure that when they do not understand our feedback or don't know what steps to take in response, they should continue a line of communication with reps until the matters are understood, resolved, and never ignored. I'll share some of my experiences as a rep during training in the next academic year. I want to uplift the student voices at Southampton by sharing successes from across the uni that highlight rep involvement. Some of the new guidance documents for reps are great, and I'll be making good use of those, making sure reps know the value of their voice at SSLC and helping them feel confident to work on student feedback outside of meetings, via emails and directly communicating with lecturers when needed. There's one thing I want to focus on adding to all rep training. All your course representatives and student presidents are volunteers and their studies should always take priority; reps will be one of my points of focus in my plans to improve your work-life balance this year. I'll encourage rep group chats for each school (WhatsApp, Teams, and Email Group, whatever works for you!) and promote sharing the workload and designating responsibilities fairly. During training, I'll discuss how to confidently email a lecturer, write feedback for SSLC, how reps can ask for support (including on my new Reps Q&A webpage). Reps in different school all work in different ways, but I am planning general advice for setting up feedback forms to collect strong qualitative and quantitative data, and templates for emails to staff. THAT WAS A LOT! Thank you for reading, I'm so excited to support our student reps and am really passionate about our student voice :)

Thank you for asking - the answer is YES! I have an Instagram account - I hope you follow my campaign on @joshie_vp_education This week, I'll be posting about all my plans and policies, and adding extra information every day about all the stuff I couldn't quite fit into a 500 word manifesto, so it's worth checking out! As questions appear on the SUSU page, I'll answer some of those on my Instagram too. There's also a few videos that will be popping up over the week about what I've been up to at the University of Southampton over the last couple years...

Thank you for asking this. I’ll answer each part in the order you asked. 1) Everyone should use the bathroom and changing room they would like to, and we should make sure they feel as safe as possible to do so. They should have the freedom to choose what is best for them! 2) I’m a big fan of gender neutral facilities, especially the toilets in B100 that give students their own cubicle with all the facilities included. I’m also in support of gender neutral changing facilities, lots of people feel safest in cubicles! I think it’s good to have a range of facilities available, so everyone can access the option that suits them best. In the role of VP Education, there is the opportunity to consult on the new educational spaces - specifically the new building being constructed in the North-East carpark, and I’ll be making sure that the university fulfills their current promise of gender neutral facilities in this building. 3) Trans people should be welcome to participate in gendered sports, and it is the responsibility of our sporting communities to be welcoming to trans people. I would want our new VP Sports to work to make sports at SUSU more welcoming to transgender students, and would want to help them with student consultation, shaping better SUSU policy with the opinions of students and their lived experience of what needs to change. 4) As far as I know, both SUSU (In their Expect Respect principles) and the University (In the Inclusion and Respectful Behaviour Policy) agree to protect all students’ gender expression, change their name on all systems, and welcome them to access spaces separated by gender. In practice, there are many issues with deadnaming across the university, and in some areas, there are signs that seem to suggest transgender people are not welcome in the appropriate changing room, so there needs to be better implementation and care taken across the board. These policies are very vague and very weak and they follow the national policy, which is currently completely inadequate. Policies like these are not good enough, and will continue to be inadequate until transgender students feel safe and welcome in all areas of their studies here. The Union President and VP Education are both involved in many areas of university policy, and if electied I would be working closely with our VP Inclusion to deliver improvements. Please let me know if there is any policies I am unaware of and I will make sure to educate myself on those.

Hi, thank you for the question! I have a few plans around inductions, mostly aiming to address the big differences across the university! The overall aim is to improve quality of and access to information about modules and programmes in every school. Once a school creates a good informative overview for its students, these will be made available for all students in every year, as there is lots of important stuff that is relevant at every stage of your studies. So what are my plans? In some schools the induction is run by a designated member of staff each year, in some schools your student president is solely responsible for the whole event - which is a big ask! I'd designate an induction lead in each school, usually the Deputy Head of School (Education) or Director of Student Engagement. There has been some great thinking this year about the staff we bring to the Student Staff Liaison Committee meetings (SSLC), and I'd like to put together a similar structure where we introduce your Head of School, Director of Programmes, and Senior Tutor, whilst welcoming students into the community they are joining by meeting their Student President, the Peer Leaders or Buddies in their school, and representatives from Academic Societies and Social Groups. Inductions are mostly very long and very hard to follow, so some clear templates for staff that encourage showing off resources and information in a way that signposts students to everything they need to access in their own time, rather than talking them through hours of content that only leaves them overwhelmed. The presentations will be designed to be shared around to all student after the event to act as a jumping off point for all the information a student needs while finding their feet. Examples include a flowchart of the modules available, including which programmes can access which pathways, to help people switch course early if there are modules they definitely don't want to miss out on! Information given for each extra opportunity your course offers is always valuable, the years abroad, in industry, or what placements look like in later years. I'd also like to include a breakdown of the tutoring structure to show where to ask for support, an overview of your course representatives, and more!

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This question was also asked to Alice 'Axolotl' Robertson, Michael Collyer