So, you're enrolled, you have managed to get into Teams & Moodle (eventually) and you have got to grips with your timetable... But there's more to being an Edinburgh College student than just that, surely?

As your VP Activities I have put together a little list of some other ways to get involved on (and off) campus that could help make your student experience even more fun and rewarding. From societies & equality networks to volunteering or student representation, there's loads more ways for you to get involved now you're an Edinburgh College Student:

Follow ECSA on social media
We’re in an online world, there’s just no escaping it, and so the majority of our info is online too. With this in mind; join ECSA’s social media pages: @ECSAonline on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for notifications of events and ideas about getting involved on campus, as well as suggestions for other events and pages you can follow in relation to becoming a part of the EC community.

Join "The Virtual Campus"
As mentioned above the Edinburgh College Virtual Campus 2021/22 on facebook is like all the chat, from all the Campuses, all the time! You can find students on your course/campus, see what the Students' Association is up to and tell us how you're getting on. Join the Edinburgh College Virtual Campus here!

Become a Class Rep
Did you know there’s more than 20,000 students at Edinburgh College? At ECSA we work hard to ensure the student voice is heard and Class Reps are absolutely vital to the success of that! Class Reps are students elected in their class to represent the student voice and to help ECSA improve the learning and teaching experience at Edinburgh College. They act as a link between students, college and ECSA. 

Class Reps are invited to meetings and other activities, and they receive full training so there’s no need for prior experience! Class Rep elections will be happening in your class in the next weeks - if you’ve not heard anything in your class by the October break feel free to get in touch!

Join a society
Societies are great places to meet people with the same interests as yours.  ECSA has a number of affiliated societies ranging from Anime to Gaming, Photography to Cooking. Don't worry if you missed the Welcome Week Inductions you can check out the Activities Hub to find your ideal society. Or if you really can't find what you're into, why not start your own society? All you need is an idea and some interested students… Just drop me an email to ask any questions or get more info.

Join the Equalities networks
Representation is key to happy, empowered students. Therefore, we facilitate students to run liberation & Equality networks established to represent students who self-identify within a number of protected groups. We currently have a number of groups set up and you can join them here: 

  • Women’s Group
  • LGBT+ Group
  • Men’s Support Network
  • B.A.M.E student Group
  • Student Parents & Carers
  • Care Experienced student Group

These groups provide a safe space for members to chat about their time at college with students who may face similar issues. In the long term, we hope these groups can encourage positive change by voicing your views and challenging the College to ensure equal opportunities for all students. 

Go Green
ECSA’s Go Green project is here to help you reduce your textiles waste at the Swap Shop and food waste at the community fridge (coming soon), travel more sustainably to campus and increase your understanding of climate change. To get involved right now, we are looking for donations of clothes, accessories and books to the Swap Shop. Just drop off your clean, good quality items at your nearest ECSA office. We also have lots of high-vis and bike accessories available for free to help students cycle and walk sustainably to campus that you can also collect from the ECSA office. 

The Go Green Hub on the ECSA website has loads of information to find the most affordable and low-carbon way to travel to campus and plan your journey, reduce your carbon footprint at home and much more. If you have any questions, ideas or want to get involved, just email go.green@ecsa.scot
 

I hope this list is useful and you'll take me up on the offer of getting involved with some of the amazing things we've got going on! I am super excited that we are starting to see more activities happening on campus, however I am also really enjoying meeting and chatting to you on Teams and generally online. Please keep in touch and let us know how you get on. 

Peace out from Victoria