The Postgraduate Officer role is one of seven full-time positions on the Guild of Students officer team. They are responsible for ensuring positive academic and social experiences for postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham (UoB) as well as making sure postgraduates are supported and feel a part of their community.

Also running for this position are Lucky Uddin and Aditya Sharma.

You can find out more information about the Guild Elections, as well as vote in them here.

The following candidates are listed in alphabetical order by surname.

 

Saba Ameer

Hi, thanks for taking the time to let me interview you. Please could you run me through the main points of your manifesto and what you are hoping to achieve in your role?

As a postgraduate student, I have seen how hard it can be for postgraduate students to make the best of their time at university.  The first thing I have seen is that a lot of students are struggling to get part time jobs, as a prospective postgraduate student, I would like to streamline the process to let students access part time job opportunities in the university. Secondly, I would like to improve social opportunities for postgraduate students which are exclusively for undergraduate students. Thirdly, I would like to improve wellbeing services for postgraduate students, especially international students who are struggling to access these services and I know that a lot of international students have returned back to their home countries because they are struggling to settle in here. I have also come across a few students who have been made to live in a flat of six with five people coming from the same nationality in which there are issues of language barriers. I want to make the system for allocating accommodation to students more diverse.

Why did you choose to run for the role of Postgraduate Officer?

I am a postgraduate student and one of the things I found really hard was when I arrived from Heathrow airport, there was no one to receive me at the airport from the university. I found it really difficult to arrange a coach for myself because there was the need for you to be able to book the coach from the UK. This is something which certainly needs to be improved.

A lot of postgraduate students have felt isolated due to studying and/or teaching remotely because of the pandemic, how do you plan to support them and make sure they feel part of the university community?

A lot of postgraduate students are struggling to write essays and to complete exams. I remember during the first week in January when a lot of postgraduate students were scared to attend the library and other study spaces because their flatmates were showing symptoms of COVID. Secondly, I feel that the library is too crowded at the moment, I think there should be time slots instead of letting people book the library for the entire week. There needs to be more reading spaces, maybe for example in the accommodation facilities of students and better safety and security provisions surrounding these spaces. I also think that online resources could be streamlined better because I have seen that a lot of resources are not available. I think students should be better able to access help from tutors if they are struggling with assignments.

There needs to be more reading spaces

The PGMSA (Postgraduate and Mature Students Association) would usually run-in person social events for the postgraduate community, do you plan to offer virtual versions of these events in your role?

I think it is important to host virtual socials, but I would also like to offer in person socials if government guidelines allow as I think a lot of students are fatigued from virtual social events.

I would also like to offer in person socials if government guidelines allow as I think a lot of students are fatigued from virtual social events

 

How do you plan to include postgraduate students in the universities task of finding a new vice chancellor?

I think a lot of students have already received emails about the recruitment of a new Vice Chancellor. I would like to see students more involved in the process. I think a Vice Chancellor should be someone who has a political holding as well so they can influence the resources that we need for the university community. As a postgraduate officer, I can work with mobilising the students to help include them in the process of finding a Vice Chancellor that can implement change at the global level.

I think a Vice Chancellor should be someone who has a political holding

How do you plan to strengthen postgraduate employability?

I feel that a lot of recruitment opportunities and internships are targeted at undergraduate students. To combat this, I would like to form a team of postgraduate students from different colleges who would form emails to the relevant consultancies and potential recruiters, I think this would certainly improve this issue.

 

 

Danielle Murinas

Hi, thanks for taking the time to let me interview you. Please could you run me through the main points of your manifesto and what you are hoping to achieve in your role?

I am hoping to give better mental health support to postgraduates because I feel that a lot of the support is mainly directed towards undergraduates. Services such as Pause are pushed but this service only provides support to students up to aged 25 and so I think the Guild can do more to push more mental health support for postgraduate students and for the challenges of postgraduate life. The second thing I would like to achieve is better career support for postgraduate students that extends beyond the Careers Network at the university. There is the assumption that you want to go into the specific sector that your postgraduate degree is in and this means that PHD students, for example, can face difficulties when they go for an interview outside of this sector. I want to help students to feel prepared for this and I would like to run workshops which reflect this issue. I would also like to give postgraduate students with more opportunities to share research as taught students, as this is currently largely only available on a departmental basis. I would like to see better communication between the departments.

I would like to see better communication between the departments

I am a student rep for the History department, and I would like to see better communication between the student reps and department stuff so there is a constant form of communication. Finally, I would like to see more co-operation between masters and postgraduate students. PHD’s can be extremely isolating particularly if you do not know anyone. I would like to combat this by seeing better connections being made between these two groups of students. This is really important at the moment and could take the form of Zoom study sessions, for example.

Why did you choose to run for the role of Postgraduate Officer?

After studying a History degree with a year abroad at Birmingham, I realised how much I love education. I have realised how hard being a postgraduate student is and I just think there needs to be so much support for postgraduate students. I am extremely passionate about education coming from a working class, single parent family and sometimes I do not feel that universities best represent people like me. I would like to see the postgraduate student community become more inclusive to recognise the varying types of postgraduate students that there is.

I am extremely passionate about education coming from a working class, single parent family

A lot of postgraduate students have felt isolated due to studying and/or teaching remotely because of the pandemic, how do you plan to support them and make sure they feel part of the university community?

I think this is a really big issue at the moment. A lot of students that I met on campus in the first few weeks of teaching were new to Birmingham and so were really unfamiliar with how the university welfare services work. A lot of the study sessions that are running at the moment are for undergraduate students and postgraduate students and I think there is a lot of postgraduate students that are reluctant to attend these because they do not want to attend a session with a first-year student. I think a real focus on academic support and ensuring these students are part of the virtual community is crucial.

The PGMSA (Postgraduate and Mature Students Association) would usually run-in person social events for the postgraduate community, do you plan to offer virtual versions of these events in your role?

Although this is not an explicit part of my manifesto, I will definitely try to push for these social situations even if this just involves getting together and chatting. Virtual social situations can always be a bit awkward and I think this is definitely something that will help people with isolation. I would really like to push for non-alcoholic socials that I feel would be more appealing to postgraduate students. This is something I will try and implement in my commitment to better mental health services. These types of events are also not very well promoted and so I would like to see the Guild promote these events on their website and to send out invitations in mailing lists.

How do you plan to include postgraduate students in the universities task of finding a new vice chancellor?

I would like to make students aware of the former vice chancellor, David Eastwood, and the controversy that surrounded him, as we saw particularly in the strikes last year. I would like to make people more aware of the history of the past Vice Chancellor so that students can feel involved in this process rather as opposed to just asking them the ideal characteristics that look for in a Vice Chancellor. I want to make sure that students are aware of the role that the Vice Chancellor has not just in the university but also in the wider educational community and in society.

I want to make sure that students are aware of the role that the Vice Chancellor

How do you plan to strengthen postgraduate employability?

One of my manifesto points is career advice. I am still not personally sure what I want to do in my career, and I feel that the Careers Network does not target the postgraduate community specifically. I think there needs to be tailored workshops which consider the career trajectory that a postgraduate student is on and also which prepare students to answer questions about why they have chosen a given course but have decided to pursue a degree in a different sector.  Furthermore, I think students need guidance on being able to talk about their decision to go into further education and how to use this experience to their advantage so they can easily navigate their chosen sector in relation to their masters.

 

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