Our vision for 2021 brunelstudents.com
Introduction The ever-changing landscape of Higher Education has highlighted both the importance and relevance of effective student representation. To embrace these challenges the Union of Brunel Students has undergone an extensive strategic review with the aim of developing a robust and effective strategic plan to guide its activity and priorities through the next five years. This Strategic Plan has been developed after extensive research and discussion with all key stakeholder groups, including current and past students, with assistance from Redbrick research. The Union analysed and interpreted the information and used those interpretations to mould and produce this Strategic Plan. This plan will lay the foundations for our work over the next five years. It will challenge and motivate us to strive to represent and empower our members and ensure their time at Brunel is the best it can be.
Our Purpose
The Union exists to ensure that every Brunel student has the opportunity to enjoy, challenge, influence and benefit from all aspects of their studies and the wider student experience.
Our Mission
We deliver on our core purpose through 4 main areas of operation:
1. Advice and support - helping individual students find solutions to personal challenges and overcome barriers to getting the most from their time at university.
2. Student voice – ensuring that the views and needs of students influence decision making at the university and beyond. 3. Student led activities – encourage and enable students to establish and join active communities based on shared interests and values.
4. Commercial services – delivering financially sustainable social experiences that reflect our values, increase our self-sufficiency and make everyday life better for students. Generating income through external partnerships and investment to support our activities.
Our Values Membership driven
Supporting and responding to the needs and desires of our ever changing membership, and ensuring members views can be represented through our robust democracy.
Ambitious
We are passionate about our purpose, and always looking to improve and make every effort to be the best that we can be.
Empowering
Helping people to help themselves, giving people responsibility and accountability in equal measure.
Accessible
Providing a welcoming, safe and friendly environment for all, actively taking positive interventions to drive equality and remove barriers to inclusion.
Integrity
Always being honest, open and doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Strategic Themes We’re constantly listening to our members and refining how we work. Every few years we also undertake an extensive research and consulting process to look at what big changes we need to make. Our most recent research in 2016 helped us identify the following key priorities for change:
Ensuring students are genuine partners in academic decision-making
Create a culture of sustainability
Enhancing students’ every day needs
Tackling non-completion
Clearly demonstrating the real benefits of Union engagement
Goals for 2021 – “what are you going to achieve?” For each of our priorities, we have defined clear and measurable headline goals to be achieved by the end of the 2020/21 academic year.
Each department within the Union, every staff member, officer and volunteer has a contribution to make towards achieving these goals. Departments will publish their own plans showing how they will change, and staff members will be encouraged and supported to set personal goals that contribute to the success of the whole organisation.
Ensuring students are genuine partners in academic decision-making
Academic development is the principle purpose of a University. We will continue to build an effective partnership with the university and ensure that our elected representatives are at the heart of all decision-making, and students are genuine partners in their development. GOALS • By the end of their first year, students will be able to identify a specific positive change achieved through their rep • Ensure all parties fulfil their obligations under the existing University/Union/Student Partnership Agreement • Average attendance at academic rep meetings is significantly increased • The overall NSS score for teaching at Brunel improves APPROACH We will improve the recruitment, training and rewards system for academic reps in order to attract and retain high quality, committed student champions. We will introduce systems and processes to facilitate information flow up and down the academic rep structures, and will ensure that reps are accountable for their activity and replaced rapidly when needed.
Better quality and more timely intelligence on academic issues will increase the value of officer contributions to university decision-making, encourage the university to invest in Union systems, and will improve teaching and learning outcomes for students.
Tackling non-completion
Dropping out or failing to complete can sometimes be the right thing to do. But more often it’s catastrophic for the individual, disruptive for other students and damaging for the university . We will seek to research, understand and address the underlying causes. GOALS • Rates of non-completion are significantly reduced • An ongoing programme of data capture, research and information sharing between the Union and the university will have been established • A joint University/Union ‘Completion Strategy’ will have been agreed with an allocated budget for both pro-active and re-active programmes of activity APPROACH We will establish a strong working partnership with the university to tackle the issue of noncompletion. Our first challenge is to understand the deep underlying causes and effects of non-completion, including the disproportionate impact on students from low-income and underprivileged backgrounds. We will use this knowledge to draw up a joint Completion Strategy and achieve adequate funding for its implementation with the explicit aim of reducing incidences by 25% by the end of this strategic cycle.
Clearly demonstrating the real benefits of Union engagement
Building skills and enhancing employability are key priorities for many students. We need to work harder to ensure that engagement with the Union delivers real benefits and to demonstrate and communicate those benefits more effectively. GOALS • Each individual Student Led Group delivers a high quality experience and positive member recommendations • Student activity leaders will feel able to recommend leadership as a positive experience • Electoral candidate lists are significantly more representative of the Brunel student demographic • Establish a successful and sustainable student certification / awards / benefits programme • Improve participation in sport by removing the perceived barrier of membership fees • Investigate participation barriers and generate an intervention plan APPROACH We will adopt or develop a formal system for capturing and documenting the beneficial outcomes of engagement with the Union including, but not limited to, participation in clubs and societies, leadership roles, volunteering and standing for election. This may be in the form of certification, awards or other form yet to be determined. It will be a condition of Union funding that clubs and societies gather evidence, document and publish these beneficial outcomes for their members and prospective members.
Enhancing students’ everyday needs
Being on campus should be a positive experience– that means improving the campus environment and facilities, including developing high quality outlets offering excellent value food and drink that helps you save money. GOALS • Green Impact Award • A diverse entertainment program to increase participation in nightlife • Best Bar None award • Students will be satisfied with the range of accommodation cost options available to them • Students will agree that they have convenient options for on-campus food and drink APPROACH We will establish mechanisms for monitoring and understanding how day-to-day student needs vary and change over time. We will enhance our staff recruitment and training activity, and work to establish a stronger culture of staff empowerment and accountability towards meeting students’ basic living needs.
Create a culture of sustainability
We have a responsibility not only to our current students, but also to generations of Brunel students to come. We need to secure our revenue streams both through generating income and with funding, and invest time and energy now to ensure that all aspects of our services and operations are sustainable for the long-term. GOALS • Develop our corporate structures to enable flexibility and agility in making our reserves work hard for us, and de-risking personal financial liability on our Trustees • Commercial services combined financial contribution • Union reserves used to drive income not to satisfy revenue shortfalls • The Union will be recognised as a Top 250 Employer in the UK APPROACH We will review our organisational structure and make changes necessary to reduce long-term risk, including addressing increasing pension liabilities and establishing stronger external governance. We will review all areas of commercial income and non-commercial expenditure, setting strong departmental financial targets to ensure that cross-subsidies do not mask poor performance. We will continue to develop HR systems and processes prioritising recruitment, performance management and retention of talent.
Membership driven Ambitious Empowering Accessible Integrity The Union exists to ensure that every Brunel student has the opportunity to enjoy, challenge, influence and benefit from all aspects of their studies and the wider student experience.