Posted on Fri 26 Sep 2025 at 09:28 by
Anthony Foster ENSA BOARD MEETING
This week we had a ENSA Board Meeting. The Board are made up of external people, student directors and Sabbaticals with myself in attendance alongside admin support. When we had finished I looked at the clock expecting it to be later than our one and a half hours. We discussed so much in a short space of time! Highlights included moving away from an HR Committee to calling our group 'People and Culture' that will be looking at our on boarding for volunteers, sabbaticals, board members and staff members this year and bedding in our equality, diversity and inclusion work. We will have a one year governance and policy review to ensure we have all the charitable and safeguarding policies we need. Plus our finance and risk group will meet two times a year to review our risks and inform our financial development moving forward.
RECRUITMENT
We have had seven students come forward to be Student Lay Directors on our Board (a record!) and will be interviewing for the two roles. We have interest in new external Board Directors and have had 12 people come forward to be our new Student Academic Comunity Reps. This is a paid role, through the Department of Learning and Teaching and managed by ENSA, and again we will be interviewing for the three roles that are available for each campus.
MORE RECRUITMENT
The Napier Student Film Festival Jury has been announced and a few interns have been taken on for Events and Content Creation. We are looking for another Content Creators (again check our website) and looking to recruit more volunteers for the Film Festival, journalism, photography and content creation for social media. With an active Communications Team pushing students to see your work and the fact that your participation goes on your degree script these opportunities will help you stand out to future employers as well as being fun to do. Alongside all that you are also being encouraged to stand for Student Council or be course reps. More details here
PARTNERSHIPS
We have been confirming our partnerships recently to help support student activity. This is an area we have to do (insurance!) and dipping our toes into areas that we haven't explored before to enhance the student experience. This includes working with other providers inside and external to the University. It is not groundbreaking, but little steps to support students now with longer term goals for the future. I hope to share some of our successes and the benefits over the next academic year. All this is underpinned by ongoing support from the University, including being able to fund some of the interns and activity mentioned above.
FIGHTING FOR STUDENTS - AND LETS CLEAN UP
I wanted to share that our Sabbs went to the Scottish Parliament to ensure your voice was heard at a demo on Monday - check it out here - to find out more about why we were there check out this news report
Also I wanted to highlight a Beach Clean from the Conservation Volunteers at Portobello Beach on 4th October from 12-2pm. Please register before 2nd October. It is open to all students, staff and alumni and it would be great to get a good turn out. Clean the Beach - Enjoy the Beach. Weather currently looking soggy for the day but anything can happen in Scotland weather wise in a week! Details here