The Year Ahead: Carys Evans

As elected officers at Napier Students’ Association (NSA) we have a great responsibility for our students’ welfare and well being. We are accountable to them for our actions and for the decisions we make in their name. For me, this has become more apparent since I started my job. I have my own personal aims and ambitions as an individual but I was elected to represent the needs of the student population in general and to cater to these.

Napier is a culturally diverse university with 20 per cent EU and international students, 2500 from student population of 14000, so our union needs to be culturally aware and focus some resources on communicating and reaching out to this stakeholder group which may otherwise feel marginalised. As the university becomes more internationally focused, it’s vital that the union parallels such efforts. NSA will attempt to appeal as a union to these students through internationally themed events, road shows on campus and cross cultural activities as well as establishing a cross-cultural committee, to establish views of, and monitor progress on, our international perspective throughout the year.

As a recent postgraduate of Napier University I regret not getting more involved in my union until my final year. Student participation in union activities means a great deal to all of us at NSA: without student participation we would cease to exist. Increasing the level and quality of student participation is vital for us to strengthen our union as well as giving us a stronger voice in the places where our voice needs to be heard.

Student participation can be increased through bringing people together socially, through our student union bar. Some renovation work on the bar is almost complete and we hope to create an environment of inclusion and establish links with our freshers through freshers’ week events to encourage them to socialise in the union itself and to network more effectively with other Napier students. Increasing the numbers of sports clubs and societies and the number of students active in them is also a key priority for the year ahead.

NSA is renowned for its effective class/programme representative system that enables the union to hear and attempt to resolve any collective issues student reps bring to our Student Senate. We need to strengthen the system’s effectiveness for students by getting more reps trained and active at Senate and on university decision-making bodies. Napier is one of the first universities to have a student experience committee and this provides us with an excellent opportunity to raise issues that arise in the classroom directly with senior management and service providers and attempt to get things resolved.

Napier University has become an increasingly desirable place to study due to improvements in teaching and high graduate employability rates. This year’s figures show that 97.5 per cent of our graduates gained employment within a six month period after graduation. Napier has also been branded as the best modern university in Scotland. Underpinning much of Napier success is the "Napier spirit" and the general informality and friendliness of the place. It is our aim at NSA to help develop and ever improve the quality of the student experience from matriculation right through to graduation and to build the “Napier spirit” in a strong student identity. Working in partnership with the university in order to achieve this is crucial to us and we hope to move forward together on this in the months to come.