leicester union impact report

UNIVERISTY OF LEICESTERSTUDENTS UNIONIMPACT REPORT2010/2011

INTRODUCTIONwww.leicesterunion.com

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Hello, and welcome to the University of Leicester Students Unions rst Impact Report. This report outlines the Unions activities and achievements over the past academic year. Whilst it will include detailed analysis of the nancial aspects of the Students Union, it will also include plans made regarding strategy and the approach to the future of the organisation. After overcoming a dicult nancial year, the strategic plans as well as the nancial forecasts seem to suggest a great 2011-2012 academic year for the Students Union. We have also come to embrace a new vision in which the sta are committed to going forward and ensuring that we strive towards excellence and that we provide an exceptional Students Experience.

Throughout the year we are committed to improving students lives at the Univer-sity by providing crucial services such as Education and welfare support. We are committed to providing exceptional support in these areas and our vision for the next year ensures that it remains our top priority.

THE UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTERwww.leicesterunion.com

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STUDENTS UNION - AT A GLANCE

5,400Registered users on leicesterunion.com

8,230Facebook LIkes and 3,3273,427on the Freshers Facebook alone1,420

Following @PercyGee1,782 tweets

4,000survey responses in the Academic yearover

WHO WE AREwww.leicesterunion.com

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, AND WHAT WE DO

The Students Union is led by a Board of Trustees comprising, 5 current or graduating students elected annually by the student body to serve a sabbatical period on the Board. They are supported by four external Trustees who prominent gures from the elds of Business and Education.The Union serves the Student body of the University of Leicester currently

22,803 students, 48% Undergraduate52% Postgraduate (taught and research). Approximately 9,000 are Full-time home based with 8,500 Distance Learning students. The University attracts students from 67 countries outside of the EU with the largest cohorts being from China and India.

Our sta numbers are in the region of 3,700 with at mix of full and part time working patterns.

OUR MISSIONwww.leicesterunion.com

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We work to achieve the advancement of education of students at the University of Leicester by:

Promoting the interests and welfare of students at the University of Leicester during their course of study; Representing, supporting and advising students; Being the recognised representative channel between students and the University of Leicester and any other external bodies; Providing social, cultural, sporting and recreational activities; Providing forums for discussions and debate for the personal development of its students.

OUR VISIONThe Union will inspire all its members to achieve an Exceptional Student Experience

2010/11 Highlightswww.leicesterunion.com

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The Union will inspire all its members to achieve an Exceptional Student Experience

I love my Academic campaignNUS SUEI Bronze award

Get Fit for ExamsFreshers Week 2010

Executive Ocer ElectionsNUS National Demonstration representation

Launch of Team Leicester19 place rise in BUCS league tablesIncrease in student Clubs/Societies

to 212 over the yearAcademic Support and Campaigns

6Much of the Students Unions main focus is centred on Academic support and campaigns to improve the education experience at the University of Leicester. The Education Unit is crucial to providing students with support and advice and has

completed nearly 400 individual student pieces of casework over the last academic year.

Whilst we provide support here at the Union, the Education Unit is also a campaigning body aiming to improve the students academic experience. Understandably the national tuition fees debate took up a great deal of time and eort and we were committed to ghting

the now implemented 9000 fees here at Leicester.

We also had many localised campaigns that came out of the Education Unit over the past year. Using evidence from the National Student Survey regarding the general lack of comprehensive feed-back for students regarding assignments and exams, we ran a successful feedback campaign with the aim of improving the time limit that students received feedback and so student could receive feedback through dierent measures.

The past Academic year also saw the Education Unit receive national marketing recognition for our I love my Academic campaign, which received the bronze award for best internal communications campaign. Acknowledging good teaching and support by tutors in this campaign is also gaining mo-mentum and achieving signi-cant internal exposure and coverage which goes someway to ensuring Academics provide the best support possible to Leicester students.

One other crucial campaign which occurred before both examination periods was the Get Fit for Exams campaign. A joint Union and collaborative campaign with the University with the aim of providing support and space for students to study as well as resources and also knowledge about how to maintain healthy and therefore productive during the examinations. The healthy well-being of students here was the priority and provided signicant study advice.

The Education Unit also runs the course representative system

which sees over 380 students representing their peers on their courses to the University. These provide excellent opportunities to obtain feedback and also to develop student leaders. Course representatives receive hours of training from our Union sta so that they can be eective course representatives and have received a lot of praise for their abilities by senior Academics of the University.

2010

/11 H

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www.leicesterunion.com

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Developing student employability skills remains a priority for the Education Unit and the Students Union as a whole. We provide extensive training as mentioned above which allows students to take on leadership roles and make presentations etc. However, we also administrate the Students Union Leicester Award in which students take part in a year long process whereby they have to take part in various activities and they directly develop employability skills. We have three run by the Students Union, one designed for the course reps, and one each for the sports club presidents and society heads. This then ends up on the students degree transcript and in turn the HEAR which students receive when they graduate from the University. This gives those students who take part signicant advantages and opportunities.

The meetings are also chaired by the representatives, thus having a positive impact on developing student skills.

OBJECTIVES FOR THE YEAR AHEADwww.leicesterunion.com

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Improving the resources for Distance Learner Students. Distance Learners comprise a larger contribution of the total student population and increased provisions and an improvement in accessibility to support mechanisms needs to be improved. Work to ensure that all students are represented on departmental meetings. Specifically with Postgraduate students, where they are not represented to the same extent as Undergraduates at present. Continue in the same vain as the Personal Tutor Research project and conduct a research project in conjunction with the University to embed employability skills into the curriculum. Increase the interaction and data caption activities through an increase in surveys to research into the students at the University and what they require from the Union and how we can best help. This will also feed into critical appraisals of the Education Unit and contribute to the overall continuing improvement of the department.

It is necessary to be more proactive in dealing with the results of the NSS. Increased consultation with the departments in impor-tant to work to resolve issues that have arisen from student views. We need to embrace the vision and work towards ensuring we provide Exceptional Academic support

REPRESENTATIONwww.leicesterunion.com

This past academic year has seen vast improvements and developments in the democratic governance and overall engagement of dierent student demographics. One of the most signicant changes that the Students Union saw was the establishment of the new Union Constitution which was voted for in the latter stages of the 2009/2010 academic year. There was also the transformation of our Union council into now a Union Parliament and a restructuring of the representation aspect of it. There had been a nature of ineective councils in the past and so decided to restructure it to increase relevance by introducing proportional representation. This would increase legitimacy of the Union parliament and would take proportional account of all courses at the University of Leicester. In turn we have seen an increased eectiveness of Union parliament with a drastic increase in the number of strategic proposals and contributions by members of Parliament.

In order to achieve proportional representation each college receives an allocation of seats for parliament. We also elected Academic members of parliament that were elected from the course representative system.

One of the signicant changes has been the removal of voting powers of the Executive as it was thought they had too much inuence on the voting process. Increased attendances and an improvement in

discussions and debates suggests that the overall restructuring has been successful so far. Evidence of increased representation includes the election of a Distance Learner to Union parliament and student

on their Erasmus year, and their contributions were received through e-mail and social media avenues.

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The past Academic year also saw the Education Unit receive national marketing recognition for our I love my Academic campaign, which received the bronze award for best internal communications campaign. Acknowledging good teaching and support by tutors in this campaign is also gaining mo-mentum and achieving signi-cant internal exposure and coverage which goes someway to ensuring Academics provide the best support possible to Leicester students.

The Education Unit also runs the course representative system

which sees over 380 students representing their peers on their courses to the University. These provide excellent opportunities to obtain feedback and also to develop student leaders. Course representatives receive hours of training from our Union sta so that they can be eective course representatives and have received a lot of praise for their abilities by senior Academics of the University.

We had a number of priority campaigns planned for the past academic year and the NUS National Demonstration surrounding the tuition fees debate under-standably dominated the rst semester. We held a referendum at the start of the semester and students voted to ght to keep the cap on tuition fees. Signicant eort was made and coordinated by the Campaigns and Involve-ment Ocer to increase engagement with students and we managed to get nearly 1000 students to sign up to the mail base and a total of 350 students attended the National Demonstration in to London which was a brilliant eort. We ran the buses at no cost to students which were a great benet to those students who were concerned with the future of higher education and also managed to receive sponsorship to help fund some of the buses. Although the student movement did not succeed in its ght to combat the rise in fees, the amount of commitment and the number of students that marched in London demonstrated the power of the student movement.

One of the key priorities of last year was to achieve an increase in voter turnout in the Executive Ocer elections. A large review took place as well as research into other Students Unions in order to establish the best way to approach the Executive elections in order to increase turnout. Signicant changes emerged including a complete transfer to online voting, an increase in voting time and a Union wide priority for promotion of the elections. A large increase in candidates also helped to contribute to an increase in voting and as a result we saw a 42% increase in voting turnout from 2010 and a 96% increase from the 2009 gure. An increase in voting turnout from Distance Learners was also achieved and this was through measures such as streaming online the debates amongst sabbatical ocers and by using the University to e-mail the entire student database, publicising the elections. This was seen as a signicant achievement as it was the largest turnout we had ever had, and tells us that we were being successful in our approach to the Executive elections.

Our last priority campaign of the year was entitled Blood Brothers, which aimed to work to campaign for the right for homosexual men to be able to give blood. Looking after various groups as a Students Union is extremely important and this saw a large number sign the petition and we will be working with the NUS to ensure it achieves national coverage and will continue to contribute to further ndings and research.

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Perhaps one of the most important changes in the engagement is that we have made signicant gains and progress through engaging Distance Learners, post-graduate and Part-time students. A considerable eort was made to increase engagement with these types of student demographics and these were certainly our priority. We managed to get on to the welcome talks for some Distance Learner courses on campus, and have a yer sent in their mail out when departments which informs the students about the relevant support and services that we oer. The problem with distance learner students is that much of our front-facing Union activity is very much centred around campus based students so therefore an increased awareness of support measures such as the Education Unit is extremely necessary for us to be an eective Union. By coordinating ourselves and working with departments we are able to make signicant movements to increase engagements for those student demographics. We also make regular visits to the Part-time college of the University which is about 3miles from the centre of campus to increase publicity and so that we can take full account of the students views. This information gathered often contributes to academic campaigns to ensure that they achieve an exceptional education at the University.

Some Objectives for the year ahead Strive towards securing a higher diversity within Union Parliament by seeking those tradition-ally harder to reach groups, Postgraduates and Distance Learners being the priority to ensure that their views and issues are represented.

Achieve an election turnout in the Executive Ocer elections of 5000, which would be an increase of just under 1000 on the previous year and trying to increase voter turnout amongst Distance Learners. Strive to achieve the Zero Tolerance Accreditation from the NUS on Sexual Harassment for the Students Union.

Set up an eective campaigning resource network to achieve greater activism within the Students Union.

Make a visit to a Distance Learning hub to establish what they require from the Students; Union, i.e. a trip to Hong Kong to improve our engagement so we can cater for their needs.

Be an exceptional Campaigning Union, campaigning for issues to drastically improve the student life and experience.

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STUDENT WELFARE & COMMUNITYOne of the key aspects of the Students Union is to be able to provide welfare support to students, and throughout the last year we have continued to provide and facilitate support as and when students require it. To contribute to this we continue to provide free condoms to students to ensure students remain safe, and these are easily accessible to students. The entire Welfare department in the Students Union consists of members of University sta, with added support from our Welfare and International sabbatical ocer and campaigns are run in coordination with the department and to meet issues proactively and importantly reactively as well, as issues may arise that need urgent attention.Rather than large campaigns last year, it was more important to specialise on certain activities and issues that have been a concern. For example, weekly times for students to visit

Signicant eort has been made to engage and involve the local community in the Union activity. For example, we helped to organise local events such as the Christmas fair in which we worked in collaboration with the city Council in closing o roads etc. We were at the centre of the planning stages of the rst ever Christmas fair in Leicester.

Regarding the wellbeing of our students living in accommodation in the local community, we went round visiting students in the local community to investigate problems that existed whilst they were living in the area to establish potential campaign ideas and to ensure that our students were living comfortably, safely and securely.


Objectives for the year ahead To create a peer support Mental Health group to support those students at the University who are seeking support for such issues where there is currently no support network provided by the Students Union.

There is currently a gap in student employability. Even though we employ over 400 casual student sta, there is still not enough provision for part-time work. Like other unions we would like to bring back a Job Shop to improve student employability whilst they study at University.

Provide students with more information regarding seeking private accommodation to remove the stigma of the need of students to rush and seek houses after they leave Halls and give students talks and information on what to look for upon renting private accommodation.

Links need to be improved between the Students Union, the English Language Teaching Unit and the International Student Association to improve relationships with the Students Union to ensure that we provide the support necessary to cater for all students.

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This past academic year has seen vast improvements and developments in the democratic governance and overall engagement of dierent student demographics. One of the most signicant changes that the Students Union saw was the establishment of the new Union Constitution which was voted for in the latter stages of the 2009/2010 academic year. There was also the transformation of our Union council into now a Union Parliament and a restructuring of the representation aspect of it. There had been a nature of ineective councils in the past and so decided to restructure it to increase relevance by introducing proportional representation. This would increase legitimacy of the Union parliament and would take proportional account of all courses at the University of Leicester. In turn we have seen an increased eectiveness of Union parliament with a drastic increase in the number of strategic proposals and contributions by members of Parliament.

ACTIVITIES: SPORTS, SOCIETIES & MEDIA

development of new branding which has opened us up to increased

sponsorship opportunities amongst other things.


Last year saw the development of new sports branding, encompassing all sport under one unied heading: Team Leicester. There were several aims for this, including increased unication of the sports clubs to bring them together and develop a sense of team spirit around support with a uni-formed approach to team kit. Team spirit has been something which is Leicester has lacked and opened us up to sponsor-ship opportunities and those companies that will be able to sponsor the whole of Leicester support. This opened up initially with a sponsorship deal from KPMG which has gone into developing sports further and improve our BUCS ranking. On this subject the University in conjunction with the Stu-dents Union rose 19 places in the BUCS league tables last year which demonstrates that we are moving in the right direction with sport. The Students Union also played a signicant role in securing planning permission for the new sports facilities which will drastically improve the student experience in this area from 2012.

drastically increasing in their number to 212 Which also contributes to increased

engagement and increased membership of various societies. We have also continued to

implement our funding accreditation system whereby we reward active societies with increased funding if they have taken part in various actions or

achieved various things over the year, to encourage societies to be even more active.

Societies have also improved

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Our last priority campaign of the year was entitled Blood Brothers, which aimed to work to campaign for the right for homosexual men to be able to give blood. Looking after various groups as a Students Union is extremely important and this saw a large number sign the petition and we will be working with the NUS to ensure it achieves national coverage and will continue to contribute to further ndings and research.

drastically increasing in their number to 212 Which also contributes to increased

engagement and increased membership of various societies. We have also continued to

implement our funding accreditation system whereby we reward active societies with increased funding if they have taken part in various actions or

achieved various things over the year, to encourage societies to be even more active.


We have three media groups, LUSH radio, LUST television and the Ripple, the Students Newspaper. Our eorts last year were to try and get them to work together close and to coordinate publications to improve quality. Part of this approach was to place them together within a Media suite so they could all work together, this is still in its early stages and but we are condent it will be a large success in the future. All media groups published more content than ever before last year, covering lots of events and reaching out to a large number of students.

Objectives for the year aheadReform the financial system regarding society and activities financing to make the access to funds and to society money a lot easier to access for societies to remove a degree of bureaucracy that exists surrounding nancial control and access.

To run at least one Olympic 2012 related involvement campaign to excite students about the Olympics and to increase their activities and get Leicester more involved.

To celebrate our achievements and submit one item from each media group to the NUS Student Media Awards.

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OUR GOVERNANCE, STRUCTURE AND MANAGENTOur Union is served by a board of Trustees headed by the Academic Aairs Ocer

Academic Aairs OcerALEX NUTT

Keith Julian Neville Reed Alison Shakespeare James Hunt Lily Davis Suzi Burtenshaw Thom French Fenian O'Dughaen

Chief Executive

Sales & Marketing Finance Central Services




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Alison Shakespeare M.A. F.C.A

Alison Shakespeare is employed as Business Director and Company Secretary of Leicester Grammar School Trust, the registered charity which operates two independent schools: Leicester Grammar School and Leicester Grammar Junior School. This role carries responsibility for all the non teaching functions within the schools including nance, IT, HR and facilities. The schools have on role in excess of 1200 pupils aged 3-18 and employ 150 sta.

Alison read geography at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge before training as a chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Manchester. After a brief period working in forensic accountancy she moved into the not for prot sector and worked as Head of Finance for the Arts Council in the East of England region and then as Head of Finance at Connexions Leicester Shire.

Last year saw the development of new sports branding, encompassing all sport under one unied heading: Team Leicester. There were several aims for this, including increased unication of the sports clubs to bring them together and develop a sense of team spirit around support with a uni-formed approach to team kit. Team spirit has been something which is Leicester has lacked and opened us up to sponsor-ship opportunities and those companies that will be able to sponsor the whole of Leicester support. This opened up initially with a sponsorship deal from KPMG which has gone into developing sports further and improve our BUCS ranking. On this subject the University in conjunction with the Stu-dents Union rose 19 places in the BUCS league tables last year which demonstrates that we are moving in the right direction with sport. The Students Union also played a signicant role in securing planning permission for the new sports facilities which will drastically improve the student experience in this area from 2012.

James Hunt Director of Finance

James Hunt has been Director of Finance at the University of Leicester since February 2005. His role is to look after the nancial aairs of the University as a whole, which has a turnover of some 260m. He also is the line manager for the Universitys commercial activities and knowledge exchange services oce. The role also includes being a Director of the Universitys subsidiary companies, and a Trustee of the University Pension Scheme. He was for 3 years, Deputy Chairman of the British Universities Finance Directors Group. Prior to his appointment as Director of Finance, James was the Deputy Finance Ocer (Development) and then Director of Finance at the University of Warwick for some 16 years.

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Before joining Warwick, James worked as a nancial planner for Coventry City Council and as an Economic Development Ocer in Botswana. He holds a Degree in Politics, Philoso-phy and Economics from Oxford, and an MBA from Warwick.




Keith Julian

Retired as Registrar and Secretary of the University in July 2006 after over thirty four years of service. He was educated at Wyggeston Boys Grammar School, Leicester (now Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College) and St Catharines College, Cambridge, graduating in 1968 with a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages. After a period as a trainee Librarian at the University of Leicester Library and as an Administrative Assistant at Loughborough University, he re-joined the University of Leicester in 1972 as a Senior Administrative Assistant in the Academic Oce. Over the next twenty years he progressed through the administrative ranks, focusing increasingly on planning, resource allocation and nancial strategy. In 1986 he was appointed Financial Secretary, responsible for the formulation of nancial policies and the development of institutional strategic plans. In 1993, he was appointed Registrar and Secretary and head of the Universitys administration, which by the time of his retirement numbered around 1200 sta.

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During the period of Mr Julians Registrarship, the Universitys student population rose from 9,500 toover 18,000. Much of this expansion was due to the development of programmes oered both overseas and in the UK by distance learning, an initiative which he developed and managed during the 1990s.

He also oversaw and made t for purpose the expansion of the administration to meet all the majordevelopments which have come to characterise the current higher education system: the external quality assurance of teaching, the research assessment exercise, the sustained expansion of home and international student numbers and the development of the physical estate. Alongside this, he ensured that sound governance structures were in place to meet increasing requirements for public accountability, eciency and value for money.




OUR SERVICES & FACILITIESwww.leicesterunion.com

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FINANCIAL HEALTHwww.leicesterunion.com

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4,788,684ULSUs gross income from all sources this year

Total expenditure was 4,599,539 resulting in a surplus for the year of 189,145

increasing ULSU's total reserves from 441,979 to 631,124ULSU has continued to benet from the recognition and support of the University, and during this year the annual block grant went up to 714,158.

Before joining Warwick, James worked as a nancial planner for Coventry City Council and as an Economic Development Ocer in Botswana. He holds a Degree in Politics, Philoso-phy and Economics from Oxford, and an MBA from Warwick.


The Union's trading subsidiary operates a number of trading operation including: a live music venue; two shops; a bar; a restaurant; Starbucks franchise and a conference trade. This was the rst year of operation for most of these activities and a number of problems arose from the late opening of the building and sales forecasts not being achieved.

This resulted in the trading surplus being much reduced to just.

20,461which is covenanted to the Union

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IncomeBars & Live Music..........................Restaurant & Shops.....................External Sales.................................University Grants..........................Sports Grants & Societies..........Student Activities.........................

1,463,6441,182,648230,5621,315,65581,892214,284

Stock & live music costs.........................Student Wages..........................................Trading Sta Costs...................................Building Maintenance............................Campaigns & Communications..........Student Services.......................................Education & Representation................Trading Expenses.....................................Governance................................................Finance & Administration......................

1,268,655481,007326,979375,04257,434616,94094,774489,338332,568255,531

Expenditure


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5%

33%

26%

29%

5%

2%

30%

11%

8%9%

14%

11%

8%6%

2%

1%

leicester union impact report

Documents

welfare of students

dothe students union

distance learning students

com5the union

com2students union

visionthe union

university of leicesterwww

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