So welcome everybody to the Union of Student session today, we've got
Daniella Quill who is our President of the Union, with us today and she's going
to share more about that topic with you in a second. Before we start we just have
a couple of housekeeping notes for you to be aware of. This event is being
recorded live, there's also a live Q&A function that's running throughout the
presentation so please do submit any questions that you have in the
right-hand side chat-box that you can see on your screens. We will answer as many
questions as we can towards the end of the session. If you see a question
from someone else that you want to know the answer to then please give it a "like"
we can make sure that the most popular questions are, therefore, being
answered, so I'm going to hand it over to Daniella now. Hi everyone,
like I said, my name is Daniella and I'm the President of the Union of Students
I'm one of four, as you can see, I work with an incredible team and they all
hold the position of Vice Presidents and they specialise in their own areas which
I will go through very soon. But first, so it was only a handful of years where I was
sat in the exact same position that you are right now are wondering what
University should I go to, what am I looking for, is that the right course, is
it the right location and it's a really daunting time for any student who is
wanting to progress to higher education but it's so important that when you are
looking for that perfect University for you to attend, that it's not just about
what you learn inside the classroom, it's about making sure that what's available
outside the classroom is also something that you're wanting to get
involved with. Your parents may associate the
Students Union with, maybe the bar that is open till God knows what hour,
the sticky floor that comes with it or even the societies that you can join. We
are so much more than that now, Student Unions have really developed over the
past few years and we're really here to improve and make sure your student
experience is the best it can possibly be. But before I get into all the full and
crazy activities that we provide, I wanted to just
go over the advice service. It's one of the most important services that we
provide as a Union. We offer free independent and confidential, impartial
advice for students which cover a range of topics such as academic offences,
complaints, grievances, some things that you probably aren't familiar with at the
moment but they may be things that you do stumble across in your University
journey. But also things like housing, disciplinaries and C-Cards as well, we
do provide free contraception to students as well, so they cover a wide
range of topics and they're really here to make your journey be a lot more safe,
a lot more secure and you feel comfortable. There's no use burying your
head in the sand if you do stumble across a problem and that is why we
have an incredible advice service here to support every single student. So next we'll be
moving on to our activities, so we do sports societies then also our Student Led
Services which is our volunteering branch of our activities. So first, that
we have societies, as you can see we have so many societies, this is honestly just
a snippet of what we have. We can reach over 100 societies every year.
They are student-led, so students come to us and they said "you know what, I have a
passionate hobby, I found another group of people who have a passionate hobby, can
we make a society?" And yes you absolutely can. This list isn't limited you can
create as many societies as possible. We have a range of societies on offer we do
like to categorise them to make it easier for students to access so you may
may be signing up to the Law degree and with that comes an
incredible Law Society similarly if you're looking to do Fine Art, there's an
academic society attached to it so they're a great way to meet with
like-minded people who are wanting to be in the same career as you, attend
networking events and career development opportunities then on the
other hand you have your hobby-style societies, so we have the card and
board game society, theatre society LQBTQ+ Society as well, we have
liberation societies, really the list is endless, therefore, there is unlimited
opportunities that you can get involved with. So next we have sports, so we
run the sports club here at the University and our sport offer
is incredible. We're so lucky to be this central in England and playing among
some of the greats in the East Midlands, West Midlands and surrounding areas we
play against the likes of Loughborough, Nottingham,
Birmingham and compared to them we're not half that bad we're a really, really
great and progressing University when it does come to sport. We are now in the top
54 BUCS, which is the competitive league in which students
compete in and we compete every Wednesday as well and they compete in
the likes of the sports that you can see on the screen. We cater for so many
students, we cover so many different sports, we're constantly adding new
sports as well. Rounders is a brand, new sport that we've just introduced, as well
as Brazilian jujitsu, again this is not an exhaustive list you can add as
many sports as you want, if there's something there that doesn't take your
fancy, but as you can see we do football, rugby, netball all the sports that you may
have played at school or college and also you can get involved in lacrosse,
hockey, basketball and American football (which is very popular), so many different
opportunities. And then we're moving on to our Student-led Services so this is our
opportunity for our students to get involved in things they may have never
done before. We have a news radio and television station here at the Union and
that is under the name Phantom, it is a great opportunity for anyone who may be
studying journalism media, anything along those lines or you may be a student who
studies something completely different but you just wanted to branch out learn
new skills in news, radio and television. It is a great opportunity for students we have
a full on radio suite television equipment and also a news article that
goes out four times a year. Next we have volunteering, we're massive advocates of
volunteering here and it's a great opportunity for any students to get
involved to kind of boost their CV, gain more skills or just give back to the
community. We have an incredible platform that we have just launched, full
of new and engaging opportunities for students to get involved with. Really
exciting time for us we're reaching out to the Community Diversity Centre in
Derbyshire to make sure that is populated full of opportunities for
students. And then we have our fundraising element as you can see last
year we raised over £70,000 for charity
which is an incredible amount of money and that is all done from the hard work from
students whether that be in their student sports teams, their societies or
even individuals going out to raise money, we're big on fund raising and we
try and encourage as many people as possible to get involved. So next, leaving
activities we would then be moving into our academic side of the offer
that we have at the Union. So Academic Representation, this is maybe something
that you had at your college or your school, having a representative, but here
it's crucial in making sure that the Student Voice is heard here at the
University of Derby. We elect around two to three representatives for each
programme for each year which means we have over 1,000 reps at the moment signed up.
It's a great opportunity, you'll be part of an amazing network, amazing community of
students who are wanting to make positive student change. Moving on, we're
not just delivering academic support and activity support, we also have commercial
outlets as well, so we have three shops ranging over the
Derby City campuses, we have two coffee shops, we're proud to say we have the
cheapest coffee and tea on campus and like I said before, we still have our
bar. But with that comes incredible employment opportunities, our students we
have hired over 100 student staff members a year and with that they work
in our shops and our coffee shops, our bars, it's great pay- really competitive
rates and also very flexible hours as well, so you're able to smoothly
incorporate in with your studying because as a Union your learning comes first, so we're
able to support you with that alongside helping you earn a little bit of money
and that's fine with us. So, these are some of the things that we managed to
achieve last year, so we retained our top 50 BUCS position for all you sports
fanatics out there and also we found a brand new varsity partner with the
University of Hertfordshire, so once we finished up with all of our leave every
Wednesday, we have one big sport day where we compete against another
University it's such a great, great day that's so my students get involved in.
Alongside that liberation is key so we managed to deliver
rainbow lanyards to every single University site which has never been
done before which means a representation of LGBTQ+ history month was bigger than
ever. As well as that, we also held our first 'student sleep-out' in Derby city
centre. It was that we could team up with a charity who support homeless people and
we had first-hand experience of what that's like. We managed to get so
many students involved and raise so much money and it's something we're hoping to
continue. And also, Student Voice is so important and it's so important that we
go out and we hear it so we have student voice forums across every single site so
if you have an issue with your course, with the campus or any aspect of your
learning here at the University, we have forums from
students who have done it. So, these are the things we've managed to achieve this
year, we've managed to deliver Student Activities, EDNI training-which has never
been done before, all of our sports societies and student services have
awareness training in mental health, Black History Month, LGBTQ plus History
month and so many other things to make sure that their activities are as
inclusive as possible. We launched the brand new volunteer platform which we're
excited to really launch when everyone comes back in September. We managed to
get all of our part-time officers and reps trained in mental health awareness
which is huge, mental-health awareness is definitely on the rise and it's such an
important topic so we're really, really proud that all of our representatives
have training in mental health awareness, and for the first time this year we
actually celebrated Disability History month with a big visual campaign full of
loads of different activities. As well as that, we also celebrated Religion and
Belief and Cultural History month as well, so we're really branching out to make
sure that every single student here feels welcomed and part of the
University of Derby community. So as I round up this presentation, please do reflect on
what I mentioned at the start. When you are looking for the perfect
University, please do consider the extracurricular opportunities that are
available for students because I know when I first started and I got enrolled
and I was a student at the University of Derby, I could have just carried on my
degree in Psychology, thinking "yep, at the end of it I'm going
being Psychology graduate" but I took hold of every single opportunity that
was thrown at me and not only am I a Psychology graduate, I'm also a
Psychology graduate who was on the committee for the netball team. I was a
programme representative for all three years, I was a part-time officer, I was employed
by the Union and with that comes an incredible skill set, now if you
compare the two, I know which one sounds better and it's all thanks to getting
involved with the Union of students, thank you.
"Thank you Danni that was really great. We've got so many questions that have
come in from the audience so I'm just going to start to run through some of them
bear with me just one second, let me go to the top. So, this one was, how does
social sport work? Are there many social sports clubs instead of
competitions, so for beginners for example." "Yes, absolutely.
So we do have a competitive offer of sports but we also do social,
they tend to be embedded in each sports team so when you go and meet the club
you'd be able to see what social offer they have. For example, I never actually
played competitive sport when I was at University as part the netball team, I
was actually on the social team but alongside that, Team Derby also offer
social badminton. trampolining, social salsa classes all sorts. So yes, if you
want to get involved in sport, you don't have to go through the competitive
routes." "Lovely, thank you. Second question, are subject based societies only for
those who are studying that course? Or are they for anyone
interested in that subject area?" "Absolutely not, all of our societies are
open for any single student to join if they wish. Academic societies are
generally run by the students were part of that society but they're
not exclusive to those people, anyone can join, another example, I know a group of
theatre students who wanted to learn more about marketing so they joined the
Marketing society and that actually ended up benefiting them and helping
them with their course, so absolutely not you can join any society that you
like." "Amazing thank you very much. Someone else also asked for a full list
of societies so we just shared the www.derbyunion.co.uk
website with everybody there. Another question was around, if I want to
join women's volleyball, do you have to have any specific training?"
"Absolutely not. Any level that you have, you can enter any sports team, with that
obviously, comes your social leagues all the way to your performance leagues
but with that all of our sport opportunities are inclusive so anyone can join
regardless of if you've never played the sport before. I guess that's the beauty
sport at Derby, if you've never played it before it's definitely not a barrier to
joining in." "And the snow sports team, where do they travel to practice their sport?"
"I believe they travel to Stockton which has indoor snow sports
facilities. Snow sports is an incredible sport to join, it's such a
great community and in terms of travel they support with travel and things
like that so again, it's not a barrier to joining in and then every single year
around December time they go on a big snow sports tour, all the way over to France, I
believe, where they celebrate and meet other sports clubs who also are part of snow
sports." "That's a great answer thank you. And do we have a gym at Derby and if
so how much does it cost?" "Absolutely, the gym has been open, it's
pretty new, I think it's been going for around four years. If you're a student it's
£99 for the whole year, that's a one of cost, or alternatively you can pay in
monthly installments at a slightly higher rate of around
£11.99 I believe (£12 or so) but £99 for a full year which is the
cheapest in Derby." "Great, next question. How do you apply for
one of the jobs and where can you find a list of available jobs? "All the jobs for
the Union are available on our website: www.derbyunion.co.uk. You'll
be able to find them on there, that's where we predominantly list our
opportunities but in terms of part-time jobs in general the University also
offers some incredible opportunities in the form of ambassadors and that will
also be on their website as well so just keep
an eye out, keep looking on websites but again there's such great employment
opportunities in the city centre as well." "And the last question, as a mature
student, are there societies or options to accommodate?" "100% there are
absolutely no barriers to join in a society, regardless of what type
of student you are. We have recently launched a mature society and this year
put on a range of specific events for mature students, student parents and
carer's, community students as well, in the form of a wine and cheese night which had
a massive uptake so we've really created a community of mature student,
parent etc and also we have many communities on Facebook as well, so
if you search the Union of Students Facebook page, you'll be able to see the
small community groups that we've created one being for mature students as
well, and we have over 100 students in there and it is such a great, vibrant
community." "Lovely, thanks Daniella, really great answers there. We've answered all of the questions and we've answered all of the questions
that have come in from the audience then through the session, which concludes
the presentation today so thank you everybody for joining us and for further
information you can visit the web-page that we've shared earlier which
is www.derbyunion.co.uk and you can also get in touch with us on email if
you have any other questions after today which is info@derbyunion.co.uk you
can also get in touch with us at opendays@derby.ac.uk as well. Thank
you to everybody for joining us."