Hello everyone!

On Thursday myself and several key figures in the music department met with Sabine at Bartolomé House to discuss funding which the music department has been awarded by CILASS. 

In the afternoon the group was divided into two groups; compositional, and performance and academic.

It was my job to provide input from a student perspective and to discuss potential funding ideas. It was a great opportunity for the department to brainstorm and collaborate to see where the money would be best spent. Many exciting suggestions arose, some of these included;

- more ensemble and performance opportunities

- compositional workshops with outside professional composers

- investing in new technology throughout the department

Nothing is in cement as such, as we are still continuing to develop the possibilities of the ideas above. The day had a very positive outcome (the lunch wasn’t bad either!). I shall keep you updated throughout the thought process and I look forward to future prospects!

Cheers guys,

Marcella   

 

The 3^rd CETL Student Network Committee was hosted and held at Plymouth University on the 16^th of January. I explained a little bit about who we are and what we do in my previous post, so perhaps I can keep this to a short ‘update’ post rather than rant or procrastinate. The reams of revision notes which are blanketing my room keep staring at me in a guilt inducing way!
 
The meeting was called to finalise our plans for our Launch Event on the 12^th of February, and talk through a few other points. The committee have asked the attending CETLs to produce an A2/A3 sized poster on their CETL and student engagement. We managed to confirm that two members from the HEA will be attending and helping us out with our welcome speeches by introducing the history (albeit brief) of the CETL Student Network.  It has just been confirmed that the Launch Event has reached full capacity, with 70 people attending and 30 different CETLs! After the welcoming speeches from Stuart Brand, UCE’s CETL Director, HEAs Brenda Smith and of course the lovely Committee, we’ll break for an extended lunch so CETLs can admire each others posters and generally have a chat. We’re going to be asking CETLs and individuals to write any questions they have on a postcard and put them in a box. The Committee will also be providing in delegate packs pens and blank business cards/post-its so people can exchange contact details. After lunch, a world café will be held with a member of the committee placed on each table to help ideas flow. Four poignant questions have been devised to get people talking about student involvement in their CETLs, the pitfalls and the successes, hopefully, by sharing and networking ideas some answers may start to appear!
 

With the timetable for the day organised, as a committee we turned our attention to a few other matters;
 

• Unfortunately we are still waiting on the HEA to confirm our place at the annual conference in July and to clarify a few details about Warwick in February.
• Our web page on the HEA website is having a bit of a make-over as it was a little outdated. Once the webpage has been set up with our aims and probably some mug shots, we can start adding links to forth coming events and hopefully individual CETLs.
• We’ve decided to create our own CETL Student Network Committee poster for the Launch Event in February! Although we aren’t a CETL we are all involved in CETLs and on very different levels, we thought that people may wish to know a little more about us and how the Committee came about!
• We are hopefully going to have our own Logo but the idea needs to be cleared with the HEA first, so we are waiting for their copyright people to get back to us on that one as well.
• Continuation of the committee is a difficult topic which was thrown around quite a bit. As the committee is made up of students on placements, sabbaticals or on a voluntary basis, the majority of the committee members will have to leave the committee in August. As a committee, we decided that at the launch event, we would inquire whether anyone else would be interested in joining the committee; the predicament will then be addressed at a later date depending on the feedback/reception/interest received from the Launch Event.
• It was also mentioned that perhaps the Committee should be more formal, and elect a chair etc. etc. However, after looking into this a little further, we decided that perhaps our relaxed approach was adequate. Because of continuation strategies and the work load induced by delegated representatives it was deemed that more would be lost than gained. At the moment the committee’s and the CETL Student Networks ethos is based on a relaxed, informal, sharing and productive atmosphere, something which we hope to exude at the launch event! The Network can only work if everyone feels free to support the Networks common goal by sharing ideas and experiences in a non-judgemental and friendly environment.

 

It was a really exciting meeting and it is amazing to see how much we’ve managed to achieve in just three meetings from the Committees inception in September. The Launch Event is just a beginning, the CETL Student Network has been asked to attend prestigious conferences across the country and I can see it developing into a service for CETLs who wish to involve students, providing information and hosting events, supporting the idea of student collaboration in higher education.
 

Back to the revision and the Raspberry tea!
 

Over…
 

(I got chastised by a military type by saying this last time, I wasn’t aware that one person says ‘over’, and the other person says ‘out’, but then I didn’t realise that male owls said ‘towit’ and the females said ‘towoo’!)
 

….and out!
 

Tamsyn Gillan
 

 

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic holiday and partied the New Year in with style! Apologies for it being quiet on the blog-front, Christmas food and drink seems to make everything a little slower. However, we can’t get into that habit as 2007 is going to be just as fast-paced as 2006, if not more so!
 

As you will have seen from Sabine’s “invasion” post (I am dismayed Sabine, violating the sanctity and purity of our student blog, shocking! ) we won the Blog Award for best Undergraduate Blog!! This really is a testament to all the fantastic hard work that the Student Ambassador Network has put in over the last semester. So thank you to everyone who voted, (and to whoever nominated us, it’s a mystery!!) and of course to our ace bloggers.
 

Special thanks have to go to the following people too who have done a brilliant job over the last semester: the Film group (Ali, Fran, Becky, Isabelle and Maxine) who have been working extra specially hard to get the film ready about student perceptions of IBL in time for the January Higham Hall event (the result of which you should be able to see on the internet very soon! Oscar worthy material!); Tamsyn, who has been working very hard with the National Student CETL Network; and of course to everyone else in the SAN who has contributed to a great start to the academic year.
 

I can’t give too much away about what is happening for 2007, I will leave that to our working groups, but be sure its going to action-packed and exciting! Watch this space!!! (and blog lots too!!!)
 

Tim