NTSU Officer Structure Update
Overview
At the recent Union Meeting members of NTSU voted on the proposals of NTSU’s new Officer Structure. Over recent years The NTSU's permanent staff team has shrunk, meaning that our staff to officer ratio has become disproportionate when compared to sector norms. As a Students’ Union We want to make sure our Officer Team is supported to the best of our abilities. In order to do this we will be moving to a 4 Officer Structure which will be made up of:
- President
- Vice President: Education
- Vice President: Societies and Sports
- Vice President Community and Welfare
Why These Roles?
These roles were selected based on the student consultation that took place for the democracy review last academic year, with consultation with the current officer team and consideration of manifesto priorities of elected officers from recent academic years. This new structure will allow our Officer Team to become further embedded into relevant teams across the Union that best fits their role.
Increasing Part-Time Opportunities
This new structure will also allow us to give more part time opportunities for students alongside their studies. Over the last 3 years we have moved away from an election process for our School Officers, instead recruiting through application and interview. The natural next step is to make these part-time paid opportunities.
Next academic year we will be introducing 14 paid School Officers (7 UG & 7 PG) who are paid for 1 day of work per week. This will increase the capacity of the Vice President Education, and ensure they have on the ground communication with students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Brackenhurst School Officers
As part of this change, ARES School Officers will be renamed to Brackenhurst School Officers to reflect the fact that the ARES School is the only school based on Brackenhurst Campus, and according to feedback that these students relate more with their campus than their academic school.
The proposed Brackenhurst School Officers will replace the singular Brackenhurst Officer Role. The two positions will focus on the academic representation along with wider campus experience, which has traditionally been the reality of those roles as the campus experience is so unique.
Campus Representation Changes
As a Students’ Union in the past we have relayed heavily on student volunteers to help our on representation on smaller campuses. With the relatives of the modern student experience and the cost of living crisis we understand doing this has not become the most effective method of supporting campus engagement. To improve this our Mansfield Officer and a new Role based at our NTU London Campus will be made part time paid roles.
We once again propose that these the students in these roles would be paid the equivalent of 1 day per week and similar to School Officers would be become recruited through application and interviews, rather than election. We intend to include relevant students on the panels.
These campus based roles will be different to the Brackenhurst remit, with Mansfield campus having multiple schools on site already, and NTU looking to expand NTU London beyond Art & Design.
