Annual Report 2010/11
Mar 29, 2016
Annual Report
2010/11
2
3
Table of Contents
President – Chris Dingle 4
Democracy and Policy 4
Governance 5
Finances 5
Commercial Services 6
Kat Kepa - Vice President Education 7
Learning, Teaching and Quality 7
Love your Degree, Love your Future 7
KUSU Student Support 8
Academic and University Advice 8
Citizens Advice Bureau 8
Vice President Activities – Lauren McCormack 9
Sports 9
Societies 10
Volunteering 11
Lucy Williams - Vice President Communications 12
The Website 12
Social Media 13
Twitter 14
FRESH 15
Executive Committee 16
What have we done for you? 17
What will we do for you this year? 17
4
“KUSU is continuing to fight on a range of issues across the
university for students and aims to improve the services we
offer in the coming year. I am confident that the Union is
organisationally capable to meet the challenges ahead and to
become even better at ‘Making Life Better for Kingston
Students’.”
President – Chris Dingle
Democracy and Policy
The last year in Higher Education has been one of turmoil, change and
protest. The government’s changes to Higher Education funding have
been far ranging and will have a huge impact post 2012. The last year has
seen KUSU engaging with government ministers and MPs alongside the
NUS in an attempt influence government policy. It has seen protest,
drama, scandal and intrigue. The vote passed by 12 votes and will likely
change Higher Education in the UK dramatically.
This now leaves us in a critical position. As Union, we are presented with
an opportunity to drive for huge improvements to the student experience
at Kingston and have a large influence over the new strategic plan of the
University. To that end I visited Universities and Students’ Associations in
New Zealand at my own expense during the summer. The trip aimed to
find areas of common interest in good practice between the two
countries who will now share very similar fee systems. A copy of my
report will be going to the University Board of Governors with several
recommendations as well as the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills in Whitehall.
National protests and local action are bound to follow the new changes.
KUSU will face difficult choices on whether to focus on the national issue
or the host of issues we face locally at Kingston University. The following
year promises to be challenging but also offers opportunities to have
huge impacts on our students.
5
Governance
KUSU has in the last year reviewed nearly every part of the organisation
and we are beginning to make changes that will dramatically improve
your union. A new strategic plan looking forward over a longer period has
been developed and this will allow us to develop KUSU and your services
in a coordinated manner over a longer period of time, without impacting
on our core activity: representation.
We have also now become a charity as all students’ unions are now
required to under the Charities Act 2006. This has meant a new trustee
board with 6 new members, including another 3 student trustees. I am
also pleased to announce that in August the Trustee Board appointed 3
external trustees for the first time as part of our charity registration. The
new external Trustees are:
Mr David Miles
Mr John Azar
Ms Claudia Gough
All of our new Trustees have a wealth of experience in charity
management and will help the Union develop our services and structures
so that we can better fulfil our aim or ‘Making Life Better for Kingston
Students’. We also now have 3 elected student trustees:
Charles Haworth
Myriam Dijck
Ben Stupple
Finances
As you will see from the attached audited accounts, the Union continues
to be in a strong sustainable position. KUSU generated an overall surplus
of £66,133 in 2010/11 financial year. Whilst this represents a fall from a
£79,539 surplus in 2009/10, it is part of a longer term trend of generating
surpluses which has built our current level of reserves to £629,814. Whilst
the Union’s aim has never been to simply generate profits and build
reserves, such surpluses and strong reserve ensures that we are in a
strong position to continue representing students even in these difficult
uncertain times.
Affiliations for the year were £44 419 – this includes our affiliation fee to the NUS, The Union trustee board has begun scenario planning so that we continue
to monitor external risks and mitigate any risks before they arise. We are
budgeting for a small surplus again for coming financial year.
6
Commercial Services
2011 has again been a difficult year in the licenced trade and for small
businesses, however I am pleased to say that KUSU is bucking the trend
and trading continues to be generally positive. We continue to run our
three bars and our two shops
Hannafords
Knights Park
The Space
Penrhyn Road Shop
Kingston Hill Shop
The Space Bar finds itself under a new management team this year and
we have re-focussed our delivery into creating an expanded and more
diverse events programme. This has included the launch of successful
comedy and club nights as well as a hugely popular sports night and an
increased number of society events.
An ongoing concern is regarding the status of Kingston Hill shop and we
would hope to be able to upgrade the facility, should KUSU win the
tender for the new shop in the University’s Campus Development Plan.
As the spending power of the student market continues to diminish, we
are beginning to face increasingly aggressive competition from clubs and
bars in town; however we are confident that a longer-term, more
responsible approach towards our customers (which resulted us in
winning 5 awards last year for our responsible management of the bars)
is the correct approach in ensuring our bars will still be here to serve you
after many bars in Kingston have closed. This extends to our management
of the relationship with the local community, which is sometimes
undermined by the behaviour of a handful of individuals late at night.
Trading made a net deficit of £8 687 deficit before recharges. This year
we have looked at the way recharges are made to trading outlets. We are
now budgeting for a surplus for the coming year from our commercial
services.
Additionally, we have received £15 000 from the University ring-fenced to
support Hannafords trading during the quiet weekends and holiday
periods to recognise the key social role that the bar plays on Kingston Hill
campus .
7
Kat Kepa - Vice President Education
Learning, Teaching and Quality
The last year has been a dynamic and difficult one. The external
environment has meant a new focus has been placed on improving
standards at higher education institutions and Kingston has been no
different. In the last year Kingston has undergone a review by the Quality
Assurance Agency which KUSU gave input into. KUSU has continued to
actively engage through the University Committee structures. KUSU has
also been involved with several committees on a national level
particularly within the QAA.
Love your Degree, Love your Future
Last year saw KUSU begin to run a campaign called Love your Degree,
Love your Future. The campaign aimed to make long term improvements
in the academic experience for students and the short term objectives are
all close to being achieved. From this campaign KUSU produced the
manifesto for change based on student consultation:
KUSU is now actively campaigning and lobbying the University to deliver
this manifesto and the route map is now forming the basis of the
University’s new student experience strategy.
Phase 2 of this campaign will be consulting students more widely on the
student experience to include non academic issues and help develop the
University’s new strategic plan as well as delivering a better experience
for students at Kingston.
8
KUSU Student Support
KUSU’s student support department continues to offer advice and
support to students in the following areas:
Housing
Academic Misconduct
Academic Appeals
Employment rights
Money advice
Complaints
Disciplinary issues and misconduct
Notice to Quit
Fitness to Practice
In the last year Student Support has seen 786 students and recovered
more than £30,000 for students.
Academic and University Advice
We continue to offer students advice on matter relating to their academic
study at the University on issues such as plagiarism through to disciplinary
hearings, through our in house advisors. During the last year they have
helped more than 275 students.
Citizens Advice Bureau
We continue to subcontract Kingston Citizens Advice Bureau to offer
generalist advice to our students in house. Last year this service saw over
500 students.
We have now extended this service to
include a CAB advisor 5 days a week
during term time who will be
coordinating further services at
Kingston Hill and Knight Park through
volunteer teams. This means that we
can offer help and support to more
students than before and beyond
Penrhyn Road campus.
9
Vice President Activities – Lauren
McCormack
Sports
2010/11 was a big year for Sports, not only did we continue to offer over
36 sports and compete and perform well at many levels but we also
welcomed a newcomer to the Sports team at KUSU Dave “Kingston”
Cougar is our new mascot and has been well received. The Kingston
Cougars brand has begun to take off and this has been seen as a positive
move by both staff and students at the University.
The annual Sports Awards were once again held at Twickenham and had
record 250 students attending and was opened by the new Vice
Chancellor Prof Julius Weinberg. The black-tie event is the pinnacle of the
University’s sporting calendar. University Full and Half Colours were given
to individual students that had make an exceptional contribution to their
club over the year and the highly prized Sports Personality of the Year
was awarded to the student that had contributed significantly and
encapsulated the spirit of university sport.
The annual Varsity against local rivals the
University of Surrey returned to Surrey
Sports Park for another year of
competition between the 22 sports that
were played. Sadly it was Surrey’s year
however Kingston did bring home the
trophy for winning the Tug of War!
The sports tour to Rimini was also a
success with 150 students from Kingston taking part in the tournament in
the sunny Italian city.
To top it all KUSU engaged 1276 students in Sports last year.
10
Societies
KUSU’s Societies have enjoyed another successful year with more than 75
societies now active at Kingston and have engaged 2721 students in
societies. That was an increase of 21 new societies from the previous year
and the list continues to grow.
The Annual Society Awards were once again well attended at the Surbiton
Assembly Rooms and students from across the breadth of societies were
presented awards from guest including the Pro-Vice Chancellor.
The Societies Trip to Amsterdam was also well attended as students took
to the stunning Dutch city for short break with KUSU.
Improved training was offered to society officers this year which has
resulted in greater consistency and competency in student officers and
continues to be an ongoing project. In the coming year it is hoped we will
train and support even more of our society officers.
11
Volunteering
Over the course of the 2010-11 academic year KUSU registered 155 new
volunteers and had 309 students actively participating in our voluntary
activities. Kingston University students gave 3725 hours across 99
voluntary opportunities in 50 organisations throughout the Royal
Borough of Kingston and neighbouring boroughs.
One off Volunteering continues to be incredibly popular with a wide
range of students taking part. KUSU supported 60 one-off voluntary
events in 2010/2011 lasting from an hour to a full day, providing students
with a flexible programme of voluntary activities to engage with.
External one-offs this year included several with local children’s cancer
charity Momentum, stewarding at the Bloomsbury and Wandsworth Arts
Festivals and Kingston Reader’s Festival. Volunteers also assisted at the
Kingston Christmas Light Switch on and many more local events and
charity collections.
Staff led one off projects are predominantly organised as part of London
Student Volunteering Fortnight and Student Volunteering Week. Student
Volunteering Week this February saw 53 people volunteering across the
week on a number of different events.
There have been 4 Student-led voluntary projects this year with 10
students in leadership roles.
‘Community Volunteering’ (previously referred to as ‘The Community
Bureau’) involves the placing of volunteers in mid-long term volunteering
positions across Royal Borough Kingston and some areas of Greater
London and Surrey. Students provide support to a range of local
organisations and charities in a wide range of roles on a regular basis,
generally once a week or once a fortnight.
Our school volunteer programme has spent the year recovering from a
number of challenges caused by several schools withdrawing from the
scheme (temporarily or otherwise). However, Kingston students have
continued to support pupils both in the classroom and through specialist
sports support at King Athelstan Primary and Southborough High Schools.
They have also worked one-to-one with pupils through a learning mentor
scheme at Tolworth Junior School and Reading Partner Project at
Southborough High, helping to raise confidence and levels of academic
achievement.
12
Lucy Williams - Vice President
Communications
Communication is one of the most important areas of the work of the
students’ union. In the last year much work has been put into this area
and we will be bringing forward proposals during the next to restructure
the union and our delivery of this important aspect of our work.
FRESH magazine is now operating more successfully than before with a
hard working team of student designers and writers taking a much more
central role than previously. We also have long term plans to launch
FRESH Radio and FRESH TV. A pilot of FRESH radio through podcasting is
currently being operated.
The Website
We have long recognised the importance of having an effective website
so that students can access the students’ union. In the past we have
undertaken redesigns and changed the way the website works but over
time have become increasingly dissatisfied with our website provider. To
that end we are currently attempting to end our contractual relationship
with that provider and have now identified a provider that we feel can
deliver what students need and want from KUSU.
The new provider only provides websites and membership management
systems to students’ unions. Their current clients include:
13
University of Kent Students’ Union
University of Greenwich Students’ Union
University of Reading Students’ Union
University of Exeter Students’ Guild
University of Wolverhampton Students’ Union
LSE Students’ Union
St George UL, Students’ Union
University of Edinburgh Students’ Association
Royal Holloway UL, Students’ Union
The system will allow us to have a website offering:
Club and Societies Management (including online sign up)
Barcoded Fresher’s Fair
Tills Intergration
Job Shop
Volunteering Database
Email / SMS
Venue Management System
Entertainments Listings and What’s On Calendars
Social Networking – Photos, blogs, comments, polls, surveys
E-Voting
A fully functioning attractive website
It continues to be disappointing for us that we are still unable to contract
this system due to legal issues with our former provider but we will
continue to use our current site to the best of our ability until we are in a
position to contract the new system.
Social Media
KUSU continues in its commitment to engage as much as possible with
social media. The Facebook group (‘Official Kingston University
Students' Union (KUSU)’) at present has over 1200 members. We also
have a new Facebook fan page which has received over 200 ‘likes’ in just
a few weeks (at the time of going to press), as fan pages are more
accessible and Facebook seems to be phasing groups out. Facebook as a
whole is emerging as a vital tool for communicating with our membership
as it allows us to communicate with students at their convenience, as well
as creating ‘event’ pages to circulate all KUSU goings-on. Facebook offers
the students’ union a more direct channel of communication as we can
14
message those in our group with information we feel may be relevant to
them. To that end all our departments make use of Facebook for
advertising and this is proving to be increasingly successful in engaging
with our members. This year we used Facebook to promote our Bye-
Elections with an online form and received a record 27 nominations and
filled every position on our two largest committees through this method.
We continue however to realise that Facebook and Social Media is a
supplementary form of communication and we should not solely rely
upon it.
The union has also taken steps to increase its presence on Twitter. The
students’ union’s Twitter account (@kingston_su) has attracted almost
400 followers. Twitter provides another way for us to directly interact
with students in another way that is convenient for them. It also allows
students to keep up with what the sabbatical team is doing by following
them on Twitter. It is also linked with our Facebook pages to keep time
updating various social media outlets to a minimum.
Various KUSU departments have and control their own social media
outlets also, so students can choose which parts of KUSU to engage with
online. For example, a student can ‘like’ KUSU Volunteering without
having to get constant sports updates through the Kingston Sport page.
This way it keeps users engaged with their interests rather than creating a
blindness by anything KUSU-related as it doesn’t appeal to their specific
interest.
Blogging
Blogging is also continues to be an integral part of how the union
disseminates information amongst the student body.
President Chris Dingle maintains his own word press blog:
http://chrisdingle.wordpress.com/).
Blogging is emerging as a great way for the sabbaticals to outline their
views on certain issues. In the future we hope that the blogs will be read
more widely and be a spring board for student debate.
15
FRESH
At the moment, Fresh exists mostly as a magazine. This year we hope to
move in a big way online. The regular contributors will be able to use this
as a space to continue to submit their writing between print issues of the
magazine, and it also opens the door to students who would like to get
involved and submit articles an an ad hoc basis – much like the One-Off
Project system in the Volunteering Department. We also hope to
produce two magazines a term, designed in-house to save on Indigo
designing costs.
Radio
Last year saw efforts begin to launch FRESH Radio which resulted in a
sucessful bid to the University Opportunities Fund for equipment. The
equipment necessary to launch into radio (beginning with podcasts and
growing henceforth from the popularity of these) has been purchased,
tried and testedand is now being used by students in a podcasting pilot.
As the podcasts will be part of the Fresh brand, they will in turn advertise
the magazine (and TV channel at a later date). As it stands, we do not
need a licence for podcasting, meaning no extra annual costs at present.
This continues to be an exciting project and opportunity for students.
FRESH TV
Our ultimate ambition is to also launch FRESH TV. A TV project is
something that would provide invaluable experience and opporunities to
students on an even larger scale of courses, for students with a specific
interest in television. It is a fantastic chance to get involved with KUSU for
those students who have not engaged through volunteering, sports and
societies, or through visiting our bars, as it is such a different and exciting
project.
16
Executive Committee
This year we have been able to fill all of our Executive Committee posts. The Executive Committee’s role has changed slightly with the new trustee board
taking responsibility for Finance, Strategy and Governance and the Executive Committee retaining responsibility for student representation and politics. The
executive committee this year is:
President – Chris Dingle
Vice President Education – Kat Kepa
Vice President Activities – Lauren McCormack
Vice President Communications – Lucy Williams
Disabled Students’ Officer – Jamie Pipkin
Mature Students’ Officer – Sheila Leatherdale
LGBT Students’ Officer – Tinna Gunnarsdottir
Unity Officer – Lyndon Mukasa
International Students’ Officer – Sulaimon Awodeji
Women’s Officer – Clare Keogh
Postgraduate Students’ Officer – Eric Smith
Students in Professional Practice Officer – Sibel Cahir
Ethical and Environmental Officer – Will Scott-Barrett
Partner College Officer – Shreya Roy
Part Time Students Officer – Douglas Tham
Non Portfolio Officer – Ricky Lewis
Non Portfolio Officer – Stefan Mattison
Members of the executive committee continue to sit on all University Committees from the Board of Governors through to Disability Action
Group and International and European Committee. Union staff also sit on committees that deal with operational issues and support officers in their
representative functions.
What have we done for you?
Over the last year we have undertaken the following actions for you, to
make life better...
We introduced monthly Sports Nights
Had our first Alumni Fun Day
Gave a home to Dave Cougar, now the official mascot of Kingston
Cougars and had our biggest and best Sports Awards night ever
Liaised with the University, police and the local council to launch
a Student NightBus back to halls of residence
Lobbied the local council for an improvement to river safety in
Kingston
Improved our Student Support team to ensure you get the best
advice possible
Ran the Love your degree, love your future campaign to improve
the academic experience
Got a fairer deal for students through the University Committee
structure
Lobbied the government on student funding
Registered as a charity
Reformed our governance and representation structures
Worked with the University to develop a student experience
strategy
Inputted into the new University Strategic Plan
Filled every position on the Executive Committee
...and we won the Tug of War against the University of Surrey in
Varsity 2011!
What will we do for you this year?
KUSU aims for the next year are:
Launch FreshTV and Fresh radio station
Give you a more interactive website and improve engagement
through social media
Widen participation within our sports clubs through intramural
events
Lobby the University for a Student Centre at Kingston Hill campus
Let you shape the way your University is run through the and get
involved with Union activity through the “Be Part of It!” campaign
Continue the “Love your Degree, Love your Future” campaign to
improve the student experience at KU
Lobby the University for longer opening hours at the library and
in workshops at Knights Park campus
Focus on creating a better experience and wider participation for
International students
Improve our relationship with the community through events and
volunteering
Celebrate YOUR successes and achievements as a Kingston
student
Launch the “What is KUSU doing 4U?” campaign to let you know
how we’re doing with all of the above!
Improve access to KUSU across sites by opening up some services
on other sites
Deliver a new website and membership platform to make
accessing the Union’s services easier for students
Kingston University Students Union 2011