End of Academic Year Convenor Report

Hello, all the lovely and hard-working students at the school of pharmacy! Well done for getting to this far into the academic year where we all are preparing for our summative submissions and then summative assessments! I am writing to you regarding all the work and news of what my role has undertook during the past year and recent developments!

 

Thank you for your nominations!

 

Thank you for all the students and staff that have nominated me for the two awards so far! I’ve been shortlisted for Convenor of the Year for TEA awards, and Volunteer of The Year for UEASPORT Sport Awards as your active campus ambassador ?? regardless of the outcomes I am very grateful for my work and determination to help serve students have been recognised by the student and staff bodies!

 

Big thank you to all the reps!

 

Thank you so much to all the reps that decided to input into SSLCs and took an active role in gathering feedback from your relevant student bodies, I can assure you that all the feedback gathered will be hopefully reviewed by staff and implemented into next year’s cohorts. ??

 

And also let’s thank @Andrew Round (PHA - Staff) for being an amazing SPO! He also got shortlisted for a TEA award for SPO of the year!

 

The last SSLC of the year will be taking place soon so please inform your rep of any feedback that you would like to give before the end of the year.

 

Another Thank you for being re-elected!

 

If you haven’t known already, I have been re-elected to serve as the school of pharmacy convenor for another term. So, it means that these emails and reps will continue for another year ?? (the emojis are necessary)

 

School Merger

 

UEA has planned to merge the school of chemistry and the school of pharmacy into one school. This should not affect any students in any capacity in the coming years. I will continue to advocate to the SU and UEA staff that MPharm will require their own exclusive convenor due to it being the professional course within the school and would face its own unique problems compared to both schools’ courses.

 

Any concerns please contact me as always.

 

NHS Learning Support Fund

 

Over the months I have been gathering student’s opinions and support to demonstrate how unfair the exclusion of MPharm to any government support to students or properly fund the course in terms of placements, amidst pharmacies closing and lack of proper funding in line with inflation I have tried to raise awareness to UEA and the SU and its officer team regarding this problem. As a reminder the PDA is also trying to campaign for students to receive some sort of support, with the very minimum regarding placements.

 

The PJ reported this in September of last year https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/rps-condemns-unjust-exclusion-of-pharmacy-students-from-government-support-fund regarding the RPS showing support for student funding by the government.

 

I would highly advise pharmacy students to raise awareness via writing letters to MPs and any other platforms they can access.

Together we can work for change.

 

When I am free in the summer, I will try to continue advocating for financial support for pharmacy students.

 

Academic Representation Reform

 

As some of you might heard there will be a reform of the current system to help address the problems that the current system holds in not being able to gather effective enough feedback and to make better solutions to large problems facing a cohort through student-staff collaborations. Any updates will be presented in the SSLC after I receive the latest information after the next education committee.

 

MSci PDD course paused?

 

I have been recently informed that MSci (NOT Bsc) PDD course has been recommended to be paused by UEA, I will try to find out reasons as to why, please note that this DOES NOT affect current students in any way.

 

And finally…

 

Any problems please contact me as always with your feedback, or if you are interested in being rep next year please inform me @Patryk Szalanski (PHA - Student) or @Andrew Round (PHA - Staff) so that we can know who are interested or have any questions, please note we do not exactly know if there will be a new system in time for the next academic year. Or ask questions regarding the role! It would be a perfect thing to be able to put on any applications and CVs!

 

Good luck with summative season!

 

Patryk Szalanski (PHA - Student)

 

(He/They)

 

School Of Pharmacy Convenor

Active Campus Ambassador 

Moves Ambassador