Welcome back from the holidays folks, and from what has been a busy and exciting semester 1. As we look forward to an even more exciting semester 2 with exams and all, we welcome all the fresh faced January starts who are beginning their journey here at Edinburgh College.
The biggest piece of work on the horizon for us is the third round of Class Rep Conferences, which will be kicking off in less than a week. The workshop theme for this conference is around Students’ Mental Health and will be ran by Class Reps themselves, which is super exciting!
With only 5 months left as your President there is a lot I would like to achieve before I move on to the next stage in my journey. One of the more important things I need to do is to make sure we have a new President at ECSA and that they are supported by a good team, and left with a good handover to be able to take the Association onto the next level. For this to happen we need good and strong candidates to run in our ‘Big Student Elections’. There will be lots of information coming out over the next few weeks but if you would like to chat about what it is like to be a ‘Full Time Officer’ (FTOs) in a Students’ Association, I would be more than happy to have that conversation with you. Just contact me at president@ecsa.scot
If you are returning to college in the next academic year we will also be looking for volunteer officers, known as Executive Officers (EOs) who will work alongside the 3 FTOs organising campaigns and events etc. whilst balancing their studies. There will be far more information available soon, but feel free to contact me for a chat about the positions and getting involved.
Finally, we will be holding our 3rd Annual ECSA-llence Awards evening in May. This'll be very similar to last year, so we'll be relying on students to make nominations for their lecturers, LDTs and Class Reps who have really gone above and beyond their call of duty and made your Student Experience the best it could be because of the good work they are doing. Last year we had over 700 nominations and will be looking to beat that this year!
Good luck to everyone on a successful semester 2 and if you see me floating about please stop and say hello. It’s always great hearing from you all, especially about the wonderful things you are getting up too in the college. Take care and make the most of what time is left this academic year.
All the best
Neal Black,
ECSA President