Nicole opens about her experience as a Part Time Officer and exciting plans for a new academic society for Education.
I am a second-year student on the Primary Education course, I am also the elected Part Time Officer for Education and Childhood. I’ll be honest, this role has pushed me further to do events that I wouldn’t thought were achievable by me.
So, when I received an email from the Union asking me to liaise with relevant University staff, create and present a PowerPoint to Programme Representatives and collect feedback at the Rep Conference. Well, let’s just say that I didn’t think I’d go through with it. But alas, I shook off my insecurities and persevered. I met up with my Programme Leader, in order to ask what sort of things we should collate and present to the Education students, and we decided to gather their voice on important issues around building a community and disseminate relevant information.
Before I knew it, it was the day of the conference, I was excited for the day and meeting new people, but nervous about my presentation to fellow representatives.
When the fresh faces arrived for the presentation, they sat down amongst the lecture theatre. There they were, sat in their red programme representative T-shirts. It was very peculiar feeling standing at the front of the lecture theatre, rather than being the one sat down!
Before I knew it, words started coming out of my gob and I was successfully presenting to my peers! If I could do this, I could do anything!
All in all, the feedback we received was positive and honest, all because I was stood in front of them, rather than just the lecturers. I joked about the lecturers not being as scary as we think they are, they want us to be open with them and help build the best educational establishment that we can!
The more we come together and work as a team, the better outcome we have for ourselves and the university.
Now my major question to ask the Reps was about an Education Society. The entire cohort agreed that an Education Society would be incredible and suggested ideas of Social Events that people would generally be interested in attending.
So, I literally said, if I could stand up in front of my peers, I could do anything. Therefore, I have created the first University of Derby’s Education Society for all Education Students to join!
We have hit the ground running, with Meet and Greets planned, meals out and Guest Speakers lined up! My idea is, the more the merrier! So I encourage anyone to give it a go if Education is your passion!
Find us on Facebook and Join our Official Society at derbyunion.co.uk/societies/education/
Find out if there is an Academic Society for your subject area? derbyunion.co.uk/getinvolved/societies/
Interested in starting your own Academic Society? Contact joanna.lewis@derbyunion.co.uk
Nicole Hawes, Part Time Officer (Education & Childhood), eac.officer@derbyunion.co.uk