Amy Stanning is running for the role of Mature Students Officer. Her reasons for running for the role include ensuring that mature students have a clear, articulate role on campus, as they are a minority and have certain needs that she would make sure were well supported. This includes students who are returning to learning who might need to relearn technique and writing, and international students who might be bringing partners and students with them, and would help them to adjust to life in a different country, and assist with potentially childcare and part-time jobs if necessary.
Mature students tend to not to get involved with the social side of University especially if they’re part-time and don’t live on campus. Around 40% of mature students are part-time and have different needs that Amy aims to support.
Amy has plenty of experience that she can bring to the role of Mature Students Officer. She is in tune with her fellow mature students’ needs, and is ‘connected to her constituency’ and engaged within this community. She has been an academic rep for history, is on the Athena SWAN gender equality committee and has experience in helping to support both students and the university. When not studying, Amy works with companies and charities on developing inclusion within the workplace, with emphasis on the LGBTQ+ community, and is articulate. Within her career, she was a team leader and acknowledges that the PTOs and FTOs form a team, and qualities such as collective responsibility are necessary. If elected, she would like to help the SU develop a greater degree of ‘cohesion and collective responsibility’.
The first thing she’d like to do in office would be to engage with all the new mature students entering the university and to create forums to ensure mature students feel like they are being listened to. She plans on creating a bigger support network for them by seeing what is provided, what is missing, and what to build on for more support. She would like to create more drop-ins for mature students to better support them, and to get to know the other PTOs and FTOs to better get a sense of a shared purpose.
Although she is running unopposed, Amy says she doesn’t take anything for granted and is campaigning so that mature students know who wants to represent them and doesn’t want to be a default choice. She thinks that she has something great to offer to mature students and to help the SU represent the entire student body, including mature students.
She would like to see more communication and accountability from the Students Union and thinks that they should connect better with the student body. She believes that the whole exec should host a public meeting with the student body, possibly per term, which would help with accountability and communication between the Union and students.
When asked about her plans for the mature student’s forum, Amy challenged that and stated that she did not know that there was one, and wants to look at why it is not known about and would promote it far more.
She plans to work with the other PTOs and aims to learn more about groups such as BME students and students with disabilities in order to better understand their needs. She plans on communicating with them as much as possible to achieve her goals.
