► Education Officer

I'm intermitting (taking a year out of my degree) after my second year at Sussex studying International Relations and French.

I first got involved with the Student's Union through the drama society (SUDS) when I played the "Sphynx" in the Freshers play. Student politics was also pretty hot on campus during my first year, I went to a few demonstrations, and was completely inspired by Sussex's pro-active student community.

I decided to run for election because I knew that this year was going to be pretty important for Higher Education. With fees shooting up to £9000 per year, I want to do all I can to fight against the privatisation of education, and minimise the damaging effects of tripled fees for Sussex students.

My favourite thing about Brighton is White Night.

The Education Officer's role

The Education Officer is responsible for advice and representation for students on all academic matters.

I'm also responsible for the Student Rep scheme, which is a great way of identifying academic problems within the University.

I'm here to give students a voice on academic issues, I can lobby management to get stuff changed, and facilitate national campaigns too.

Activities & Updates

27th March 2012

We had our termly Executive Liason Group with University Vice Chancellors executive group. We discussed issues such as the Student Unions' access to students e-mails, the future redevelopment of East Slope, The Dissertation Dash, Sexual violence on campus.

Library Behaviour. The Library is launching new signage to help inform people about behavior in the Library. The Student's union will be helping to advertise this after Easter.

Wed: NUS day of action event in Library square looking at privatization of Higher Education. I gave a speech about what the situation is locally on campus with job cuts and closure of the Centre for Community Engagement, a whole department of the University. Around 140 jobs being cut

Senate Lobbying against the closure of the CCE. I coordinated action taken by Union council to lobby council members against the closure.

Indi and I had one of our regular meetings with Clare Mackie where we looked at continued developments of students Safety on Campus, reports that will come from the Portfolio review, and how the process of the portfolio review will be evaluated. Last year, Teaching and Learning committee approved the return of exam papers to students, but so far this hasn't been followed through. We've asked Clare to review where we are with this, and why the legislation hasn't yet been put in to practice.

Met with CCE students re; the CCE

Met with members of staff from the TDLU to discuss what help students need and formulated an info plan for throughout the structure of the year. Also looked at a new services poster to amalgamate all Student study support services available to students throughout the University.

Met with DI's from Sussex Police to discuss the poor communication over the recent alleged cases of sexual violence on campus and how we can improve this in order to better inform students of what's happening, minimize alarm caused, and still encourage survivors of Sexual violence to report.

I have been meeting with the new social policy and campaigns manager to discuss current campaigns and how she is going to be helping to push these forward in the Summer term.

I've been doing a lot of work planning for evidence based campaigns in the Summer term in areas such as Improving Academic Advising, Increasing support for Joint honors students, and improving inductions for International students.

We've been meeting to discuss the possibility of a Post Graduate Association, a PG arm of the Union, and how this might look. We'll be doing focus groups soon, to get a better idea from PG students as to what they want to happen.  

>> Read all my updates

education@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Phone: 01273 87 3324

Office: Advice & Representation Centre, Falmer House

Facebook: Poppy Firmin Education-Officer

Twitter: @EducationUSSU

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