**standing to be a student officer**

Happy day,

As many of you will be aware, election fever is gripping the concourse. i can remember my time last year getting planned up and ready to launch my campaign upon unsuspecting students.

Standing to be a student officer is a fantastic thing to do. The opportunity to represent Sheffield students is a great honour and the opportunities presented to you as an Officer are unlikely to occur at any other point in your life, at least not for several years.

You will be a representative, locally, nationally and to the University on behalf of 24,000 students. You will be a director and trustee of an £11m business and oversee the strategic development of it. You will meet a plethora of experienced, knowledgeable and helpful people to aid personal development, alongside receiving training to equip you for effectively carrying out the role.

It is especially exciting for the coming year for the following reasons:

• There are new governance structures within the University meaning greater opportunities for student representation at top University and faculty boards. We also have and a very student focussed Vice-Chancellor, who is keen to work with us.
• There are exciting developments locally with a new University/Union community strategy being formed and developing links in collaboration with Hallam.
• Nationally there are big debates to be engaged with around the funding of Higher Education, bursaries and other student support.
• The are also new governance structures of the NUS which will make it easier to engage in debate and support.
• Internally there are also exciting developments with significant adjustments to the Union building, the new Council structures entering its second year and the long term strategic planning for this award winning Union.

I would encourage everyone to stand as an Officer. You are stretched and challenged personally in many ways. There is great support provided for you throughout, from experienced heads within the Union, and it is an experience you will not regret (though at times it is much harder than others to not regret it!!) Any further questions, please feel more than able to come and speak to me in person or reply to this email.

Nominations are open now and all the way through to Friday 15th Feb for the positions of President, Education Officer and International Students' Officer.

And then following the elections and the announcement of the referendum results, there will be the nominations open for the remaining 5 positions on Friday 7th March and closing on Friday 14th March.

With any further questions, please don't hesitate to come and see me personally (level 4 of the Union building in the Sabbatical Office) or contact me personally at mark.willoughby@sheffield.ac.uk or 0114 222 8605

it's been a hard day's night, and i've been working like a dog

Happy day,

Apologies are definately in order for the length of time it has been since I last blogged. No particularly valid reason so I might as well just crack on.

The year is passing remarkably quickly. Five months in and still buzzin off the early morning starts and late night finishes.

The highlights over the last month have been ...

1. Officer roles review
I am carrying out a comprehensive blank page review of the Union Officer roles. This is a large and complex task but is a very exciting one. We have the opportunity to make sure we get the officer representation which our membership wants to have.

This process is widely engaging our membership through consultation in focus groups, questionnaires and one to one conversations.

I want to encourage you to engage in this process and make your opinion heard on your Union representatives. Please email me: mark.willoughby@sheffield.ac.uk or come and see me in person in my office (in the Sabbatical Office on Level 4 of the Union building) or if you see me in passing. I reiterate how exciting and essential this process is.

2. Representing our students:
Aldwych in Bristol
The Aldwych group is the Students' Union's of the Russell Group Universities (the top 20 research led Uni's in the country)
Emily (Education Officer) and I meet with the rest of the group monthly to further our work, the direction of which was agreed at our first meeting during the summer.
Our main two of objectives are:
1) Higher Education funding - Building towards the 2009 review of HE funding
2) National Bursary Scheme - crucial to any Widening Participation agenda is that a system of bursary allocation exists to ensure access to education for all. A National Bursary scheme is one of the proposals.
We also have 3 sub-objectives, specific to Russell Group Unis:
1) Teaching Quality
2) Postgraduate students
3) International students

At this meeting we also had John Denham MP, the Secretary of State for the Department of Universities, Innovation and Skills who we were able to lobby hard on teaching quality and bursaries.

University meetings
I've spent some of my time recently sitting on University committees, namely University Council, University Finance Committee and the Senate. These are the sovereign bodies of the University and it has been good to engage in debate in those meetings particularly around the new build proposed on the current Ranmoor site.

3. Community representation
I have recently coordinated the Sshh campaign, which took the more proactive approach of going directly to students in the residences with the message of respecting your fellow residents and the local surrounding community in the levels of noise made. Big thanks to James Gould for helping run this.

I'm also beginning the process, alongside Tom Bramall, of working with the University to draw up a Community Strategy. This is very much in the early stages, so not much to report here.

4. NUS Extraordinary Conference
The NUS (National Union of Students) was mandated at the 2007 Annual Conference to carry out a long overdue reform of its governance. For too long our national union has been ineffective and inefficient. It has failed to fight and win for students on a plethora of issues as it has spent its time on internal squabbles and relatively insignificant policy debates. The chance now exists to change that.

The consequences of these proposed changes for students could be huge. They will make the NUS easier for normal students to understand and get involved in. They will make the organisation more transparent and more democratic, and most importantly of all, they will mean that we have a chance of winning the fees debate in 2009/10.

The future of our National student movement depends upon this governance reform going through and I have been working hard to ensure this happens.

An Extraordinary Conference is being held next Tuesday 4th December and we are sending a delegation of 10 people to this Conference to engage in the debate. It should be quite a giggle.

Check out the following site for info on the conference and the proposed reform: http://www.officeronline.co.uk//events/nationalevents/274911.aspx

This is all from me for now.
I hope to resume regular blogging from now on, so watch this space...

...

life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get

Ola!

Forest Gump was onto something there. The variety and diversity of this job is what makes it so exciting but is also what makes it so challenging. Every day is different and requires a different collection of brain cells to manage each situation appropriately.

I've spent most of the last few days working on my objectives, representing Nursing and Midwifery students to their governing bodies, nationally representing us as Sheffield Union to the Aldwych group (the Students' Unions of the Russell Group Unis) who met in Southampton last Friday and showing some ex-students around the Union building.

(As an aside, these weren't any ordinary ex-students. They were a group of friends who started uni here in 1957 and have met up every year since then, sometimes two or three times a year. This year was their 50th anniversary so they returned to Sheffield for the weekend and I showed them round. A fine group of people and I greatly enjoyed showing them round. It has of course changed beyond recognition since then and they were all pretty astounded by the change)


But the thing I am most excited by at the moment is the forthcoming Students' Union Council elections. It's such an exciting prospect to have a directly elected body to oversee my work, create policy and shape the direction of this fantastic Students' Union.

Nominations are open now with the closing date midday on Monday 15th October.

Do not hesitate.
Do not delay.
Get on the website.
Have your say.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/union/student-voice/union-council/

It's such a fantastic opportunity so do please get involved and stand for your department or representative group.


Two further things to plug:
- The Burma Solidarity Demo next Monday: http://shef.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19760916688&ref=mf
- My band are playing two gigs this weekend:
Thursday night: http://shef.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13855770186
Saturday night: http://shef.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5067367729

Without facebook I dunno where I'd be.

It's worth £10bn apparently Chris Moyles told me.

Any bids?

so here we go

A huge, warm, embracing, Sheffieldian welcome to all new students of the University of Sheffield.

It is fantastic to have the hubbub of activity back on the concourse after a quiet but busy summer. It makes me realise why I stood for this position:

The bustling energy.

The creative vibrancy.

The buzz of diversity.

To new students: you are incredibly welcome here to this fantastic city, fantastic university and highly fantastic Students' Union.

To returning students: great to have you back. Look out for the new guys and help them to feel included and part of what is going on.

I want to encourage you to get involved in as much as possible that is going on this Freshers Week. Check out your Intro Week guides alongside the website for all the information you need to make this a truly memorable and enjoyable first week of university life.

As student officers, we are here to represent you so please come and talk to us about anything you want, whenever you want. We want this to be the best week of your life so far!

Our offices are located on either level 3 (offices for Sports, International students and Activities) or level 4 (offices for President, Education, Womens, Finance and Welfare) of the Union building.

I wish you well and look forward to meeting you some day,

Mark

money don't make my world go round. i'm reaching out for a higher ground.

Morning all.

Fresh out of the Dolly Parton school of philosophy, I've headed straight into the philosophical minefield that is Des'ree this week.

Yesterday was payday. But it can't be said that I am in this job for the money. Plenty as it is for my needs, my overdraft is still crying out to be replenished.

So if it's not about the money then how am I reaching out for a higher ground?

Well, this week has involved the embelishing of my personal and our team objectives. This is a process which is mostly enjoyable but also difficult at times. But it's getting there and it's an exciting time. The potential for the coming year is huge! Alongside this has been the discussion of the financial direction of the union with debate around certain retail and structural possibilities within the union building.

I have also continued liasing with sabbatical teams in other uni's, learning of their objectives and seeking areas where we can work together to build consensus around particular issues.

It is a bit of a building site in the union building at the moment. I find myself climbing ladders and painting walls that I didn't think were possible. The new media hub is under contruction which is going to be such a fantastic resource! The source is being refurbished, again a change that will create a much more flexible and useable space. The main foyer is having a repaint and new lighting. The Graves building is being considerably altered with the LGBT lounge and SURE radio moving venues and the marketing department moving into newly furbished office space. And the Fusion and Foundry is being considerably refitted with many alterations taking place.

All in all, it's a busy time. We're already the best Students' Union in the country, but as with any organic institution, not resting on its laurels and desiring continued excellence, we're reaching out for a higher ground.

if you want to see the rainbow, you've got to put up with the rain

Those are the wise words of Dolly Parton. And people say she was just a big pair of ...

This classic quote can seemlessly be used to describe two current experiences of the union officers.

But before this, let me, in classic salesman style, sell myself as the new Union President:

I come with:
- 22 years
- A degree in Social Policy and Sociology
- Double glazing
- Moderate musical talents utilised in a band
- A roof-rack
- A sister
- A broken, but well used squash racket
- An ultimate frisbee
- 6"4 inches of height
- A chicken pen
- Alloy wheels
- A young persons railcard
- A passion for The Office, Alan Partridge and The Mighty Boosh
- A winning motto: He who dares, wins (surely that's copyrighted?!)
- A shed
- A pasta maker
- A smoothie maker
- And a signed football

Back to Dolly...

Quite tangible is the occurence of very large amounts of rainfall. Graduation week last week was frequently disturbed by torrential downpours and concourse rivers forming with a current strong enough to move proud grandparents on quicker than they'd hoped.

Rain is the new sun I'm told.

Metaphorically speaking, Miss Parton's words describe another union officer experience of late. This is the feeling of being inundated and often overwhelmed by the barrage of new things - new commitments, new people, new challenges, new offices, new sleep patterns, new eating habits... The list goes on. Everything is very new. This is a very exciting time. But at times it feels somewhat like the rain won't stop.

But the rainbow is coming.

Gradually I am climatising myself to the new surroundings, the new people and the new challenges. This year offers so many exciting opportunities!
We have a new VC.
We have new student residences.
We have new democratic processes.
We have new ideas.
And this is all happening whilst surrounded and supported by experienced and knowledgeable staff, always willing to offer guidance and help wherever necessary.

My objectives for the year and the Officer team objectives will be coming soon, so refresh this page hourly and see what emerges.

Before I finish may I just emphasise something I will reiterate regularly throughout the year:
This is your union.
We are your representatives.
Come and speak to us whenever you so desire so that we can do the very best job of working hard for you to respresent you the very best that we can.

Big love x