PG Officer Blog

It has been nearly two months since I began my role as Postgraduate Officer here at The SU Bath, and that time has flown by! I feel very privileged at becoming only the second ever Postgraduate Officer at our SU and having the responsibility to represent and improve the student experience for all postgraduate students. I suppose you are wondering what I have been getting up to this summer?

Well… alongside being the Postgraduate Officer I am also a current full-time MRes Politics & International Studies student at the university. So when I haven’t been working in my capacity as an elected student officer, I have been planning and writing up my dissertation on the Labour Youth Vote in the last General Election.

Over the last month I have been collecting the views of 18-25 year olds who voted in the last election. I am now currently in the analysis stage of my project and hope to have my dissertation complete in time for Freshers Week!

Speaking of Freshers Week, one of the things myself and the SU have been planning over the summer is the postgraduate Freshers Week events. There will be lots of fun activities throughout the week, both during the day and into the night.  You can see the full list of events here. I can’t wait to come along to these events and meet both new and returning postgraduate students!

For the first time ever, postgraduate students will have dedicated Freshers’ Week crew, which I hope will allow us to fully reach out to the postgraduate community and get them along to our amazing events.

I have been working with our Postgraduate Students Association (PGA) putting on a BBQ event in early August, which sold over 150 burgers to postgraduate students. I also joined a trip to the Bath boating station, attended by students who are in Bath over summer. It’s important that we as an SU are putting on events over the summer for our postgraduate students, who study all year round.

This is something I am keen to expand upon for next summer, working with the new PGA exec, which will be elected in October! It is great to see that the current PGA exec have already started planning for next year’s PG Ball, which will be held on Thursday 7 June 2018.

With the rest of the officer team I have been working to create our annual Top 10, where I have been successful in getting two specific postgraduate matters included: doctoral supervision and postgraduates who teach. With the introduction of the Doctoral College we have a real opportunity this year to work in partnership and improve the doctoral student experience.

With the University continuing to shift their strategic focus towards postgraduate education, there has never been a better time to drive positive change that will develop the postgraduate student experience. This is what I see as my principle responsibility.

You may be thinking but what does that actually mean, to develop the postgraduate student experience. It’s about making continuous improvements for postgraduate students while they are at the university, both academically and socially. This is what I see as my main goal.

I hope to post regular updates on this page throughout the academic year! Thanks for reading my summer update and feel free to contact me with any postgraduate related queries you may have at supostgrad@bath.ac.uk

All the best,

Liam, your Postgraduate Officer.