Our Academic Societies grew in 2022/23, giving students spaces to effectively feedback about their academic journey, and opportunities to develop. They were involved in:

- Employability focused events with external speakers from industry.
- Meet and Greet events for new and expanding Societies.
- Social activities such as quiz and movie nights to encourage a sense of belonging across cohorts.

As a result, we have also seen an increased engagement with Academic Societies with a 31% increase in the amount of Societies and 38% more members since 2021/22.

In February 2023, we submitted information, evidence and stories on your student experience as part of national scheme called the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). For the first time, the Office for Students’ scheme provided the opportunity for an independent student-led submission to provide a snapshot of what the last four academic years were like to be a student at Greenwich. Through a series of in-depth interviews with 10 students, we heard a range of lived experiences, highlighting what being a Greenwich student meant to you, and what a sense of belonging looked like to you as an individual student – you can read details about our submission on our website.

The University recently received its Gold Status (the highest award possible) for Student Experience. It means that your Students’ Union is contributing to your outstanding experience, and we do this through our community building, wellbeing support, commitment to diversity and inclusion as well as amplifying your student voice.

We were also asked by the University to deliver a new Awarding Gap project in 2022/23. The Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Awarding Gap is the percentage difference between BAME and White students who achieve a 1st Class Classification and 2:1 Classification for their Undergraduate studies. The project aims to gather deeper understanding of our BAME students and academic journeys to then present feedback and solutions to the University.

We were awarded £46,000 in project funds obtained from the University Student Success Board, which allowed us to employ student Inclusivity Consultants to run focus groups to talk to students across all Faculties. The project will continue in the 2023/24 academic year, with reporting to the University taking place in April 2024. Find out what the University is doing to address the Awarding Gap on their website.

Our Advice Service had 1,671 cases and enquiries opened from August 2022 - July 2023, a 9% increase on the previous year. 1,436 alone were academic cases that we supported students with. Advisers had over 5,861 interactions with students throughout the year, a 36% increase on the previous year.

Jabed, Krishmi, Anuj and Abdul were our Officer team for 2022/23. Elected in March 2022 and starting in July 2022, they worked to represent Greenwich students across the Union and University. Despite some change in the team in May 2023, they managed to affect change and bring some good wins to students. Some highlights include:

- The creation of a renewed prayer space at Avery Hill, championed by Abdul
- Getting free period products into toilets in Dreadnought, The Dome and The Hub, led by Krishmi
- Jabed contributed to research into the cost-of-living crisis, convincing the University to provide free bus tickets for the Medway inter-campus bus for students in hardship.
- Finally, Anuj launched a campaign around increasing the working hours allowance for International students, which has since become a national campaign through the National Union of Students.

Read about all of the team’s achievements (PDF file, opens in a new window)

- 454 students ran our Sports and Societies last year in a range of Committee positions. Committee training took place in November 2022 and January 2023, and their training consisted of sessions in subjects such as elections, event planning, external speakers and finance, as well as chances to network with one another.
- In 2022/23 we had 35 different student staff roles at GSU, with 318 students filling them! Most students work in our Commercial outlets doing shifts that work around their studies and home life – that’s how we can employ 230+ students in those roles alone! Our student roles provide money into students’ pockets, chance to develop skills in a fun environment.
- 74% would recommend this organisation as a good place to work (up 7% on last year)
- 87% said that people within the organisation consistently treat each other with respect and dignity (up 12% on last year)
- 77% said that GSU has a culture that nurtures and encourages those from an under-represented group to pursue their chosen career (up 15% on last year)
- 72% said that they felt that they belonged in this organisation (up 7% on last year)

We survey our student staff annually. Last academic year:

- 69% said GSU helps them acquire skills and knowledge that will benefit my future career (up 5% on last year)
- 62% said GSU provides me with good learning and development opportunities (up 2% on last year)
- Examples of skills they had developed working and/or volunteering through us are:
-- Customer service
-- Communication
-- Problem solving
-- Management and leadership skills
- Finally, when surveyed, our Student Group leaders said that they were grateful and thankful for opportunities to run a student group!

Krishmi, one of our GSU Officers, ran an Employability Week in April 2023. The week consisted of nine free different career related sessions, led by SU and University staff. There was a need highlighted for support to students as they approached the end of the academic year and began thinking about their next steps, so we reacted quickly to provide these sessions and used expertise Iin the Greenwich community.

Sessions included a UK CV session for students to improve their CVs, an interview wardrobe giveaway, networking sessions for students, and a session on how to open your own business.

In 2022/23, we delivered our Retention and Wellbeing project for the third year running. Greenwich Students’ Union partnered with the University to establish the Greenwich Students’ Union Wellbeing and Retention Project, a peer-delivered telephone wellbeing check for every student.

Our student Support and Wellbeing Assistants work with the Project Coordinator and Manager to call every student, and escalate any need for support to the right area of the University.

In 2022/23, there were 58,624 retention calls made, with 9,300 students completed their check-in. 403 students were connected directly with support that they needed as a result.

The project was shortlisted for a Times Higer Education Award 2022 for Outstanding Student Support and has been presented at numerous conferences throughout the year and featured in WonkHE.

Our free, confidential and independent Advice Service not only helps students face-to-face – they also work with other teams in the Union to provide awareness to issues that students are facing and support to the wider Greenwich student community.

- The team published a series of blogs to help students navigate key junctures in their University experience such as:
-- Academic Misconduct and use of AI and what to be aware of
-- Period poverty awareness and support
-- Getting the most of our Personal Tutor partnership
-- Support related to drug and alcohol use

In response to the cost-of-living crisis, our Advice team worked in partnership with the University to:

- Establish a food pantry in Term 1 distributing £20,000 worth of food to students in need
- Distribute 15,235, £20 food vouchers in term 2 and 3 allowing students to purchase groceries
- Distributing 1644 bus vouchers for the Medway bus
- Opening the hardship fund to 1st year international students and postgraduate research students for the first time

Our Advocacy and Policy and Voice and Representation teams worked together to run some focused activity to engage with and support particular student groups. We got agreement from the University of Greenwich to sign the Stand Alone pledge in 2022 to support Estranged students – in 2023, collaborated with them on a programme of activity for Estranged Students Solidarity Week at the end of November 2023.

Finally, Programme Reps helped identify Programme Reps on their programme, and our Retention and Wellbeing team ensured they were contacted for a wellbeing check in call to check they had all the support they needed.

Our Student Engagement and Opportunities team work hard all year round to provide free and low-cost opportunities for students to meet new people, help their physical and mental health, try new experiences and most of all, have fun!

We had a range of tailored activity programmes at each university campus through our Give it a Go schemes, Medway Move and GSUmove. There were approximately 6,500 sessions attended across each site in 2022/23.

They also run Global Greenwich, a collaborative project with the University, to provide opportunities for International students to get together at Greenwich. The programme delivered 173 events, provided three academic support and guidance sessions in Term One, and worked quickly throughout the year to provide opportunities for students affected by world events (such as the war in Ukraine and severe flooding in Malaysia) to connect and receive support.

We have over 130+ student led Clubs and Societies that we support at GSU. Some of their key achievements were:

- We held the first ever inter team event at Medway called ‘Game On’ in March 2023! It was a week long event featuring some Medway’s Sports clubs competing in fun activities to be ultimate winner at the end of the week. Students from our Basketball, Football, Badminton and Volleyball clubs took part, and over 50 students got involved across the week.
- Team Greenwich won its annual Varsity competition in March against London South Bank 9-1. There was additional activity on the day also at Avery Hill including digital gaming tournament, sport massages for players and participants, food & drink stalls, and an after party at the Lower Deck.
- Team Greenwich Cheerleading (Mermaids) became National Champions, and achieved the Grand National Title of all University divisions.
- Greenwich’s Islamic Society held Iftar for Ramadan, supported by Global Greenwich, in the Dreadnought Atrium and had over 500 students attended.
- Team Medway volleyball won their league at the end of the year!
- Enactus Society went to the National Enactus Awards and presented in front of 100 panel members. Whilst they did not get a prize, it was a huge achievement to get to the final stages.
- Finally, Societies raised £18,786 for various charities throughout the year.

The team based in The Dome in Avery Hill ran a range of free activities throughout 2022/23. We had a range of student Campus Activators who ran sessions such as Coffee and Cake afternoons for socialising, crafting sessions, Murder Mystery Night and pool tournaments. The team also expanded our Give It A Go programme from Avery Hill and Medway to Greenwich to offer similar sessions to students there.

It was our second year of being the lead union partner at Medway. We have dedicated staff members that operate services in The Hub, as well as putting on almost daily activity throughout the year, bringing crafting sessions, games and movie nights (amongst other things!) to students from Greenwich, the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Here are some highlights from our second year…

- We ran 62 events during Welcomes in September 2022 an January 2023 – most of those were in January with 37! Welcomes are a key time to introduce The Hub to Medway students, and help gather interest in our Medway based student groups in particular. 2022/23 saw 3,036 students be part of our Societies (2,927) and Sports Clubs (109), with a mixture of mostly Greenwich and Kent students being members.
- We marked liberation day, weeks and months throughout the year with events and exhibits. A highlight was Black History Month, which saw three coffee mornings, and an exhibition displayed across four campuses.
- Support to academic representation developed in this year also. Working alongside partner unions and Officers, we ran activity such as town halls and roaming forums to listen to what students want at Medway.
- Part of our Advice Team supports Greenwich and Kent students based at Medway. There were 483 new cases opened in 2022/23 (389 Greenwich students, 94 Kent students), and we supported them through academic, financial and other issues.
- Alongside our weekly activity through Give It A Go and Medway Move, we ran a number of large-scale events including Activities Awards to celebrate our student groups, Game On (mentioned earlier) and MedFest, an all-day festival with food, drink and entertainment which saw over 500 students attending.

As GSU, we consider ourselves a three-campus union, and try to ensure that all our services and activities consider each campus and its needs. With Medway specifically, this has been done in the following ways…

- During the GSU Elections, we put on a Medway focused day so students there knew how to vote in our elections, plus those of our partners.
- We conducted two research projects that provided and provided specific recommendations for the Engineering and Science Faculty – one about Cost-of-Living Research, and the other around Postgraduate Research Student Experience.
- The success of our Give It A Go programme at Medway over the last couple of years has seen its best practice spread to Greenwich and Avery Hill. The Give It A Go programme at Medway surpassed its year’s target for events by over 100%!
- Two GSU Advisers have been trained on Medway work and currently attend the Medway campus one day each week to help with the service delivery.

Our Commercial team runs our shops and venues on all three University campuses, as well as our online merchandise store, and our external hire service, Flagship Events. The whole union is not-for-profit, meaning all income our Commercial team makes goes back into the Union to contribute towards all our services and activities. Includes Lower Deck, Deep End, Candy Shack, the Tudor Café, and the Greenwich Lookbook store in Greenwich and online.

As mentioned above, they prioritise providing great value food, drink, entertainment, and opportunities for our members, and ensuring our outlets are serving their communities in the best way possible. Examples of this from 2022/23 are:

- The Tudor Café in Avery Hill: previously called The Village Shop, we refurbished part of store in August 2022 to introduce a new seating area, and changed it’s name to reflect its new offer that allows students and staff at Avery Hill to get hot food and drinks, a range of snacks and cold drinks also, and sit in to enjoy.
- Our Greenwich Lookbook Merch Store in Greenwich: this was also new refurbishment project in August 2022. We took one of our existing spaces in Dreadnought turned it into a clothes store where students can see our sustainable clothing and range of University branded accessories. The store is run solely by students, which we’re especially proud of!
- The Deep End in Medway: in 2022/23 The Deep End ran a £3 meal deal as part of there food menu to help students during the cost-of-living crisis. Students bought 1,992 of these meals throughout the year.
- Welcome 2022: our Commercial team run a bespoke programme of events at the start of term to welcome new and returning students to the University. They also provide a combined ticket offer, giving students a chance to save money on some of biggest events. Our Welcome in September saw 2,378 tickets sold for our commercial events.
- Student led events: the Commercial team collaborated with our Students Groups throughout the year to put on themed nights and events for the Greenwich community. The most popular events where Meme Club Nights and collaborative events with our Rugby Club and Afro-Caribbean Society – the Meme Club Night alone saw 367 in ticket sales!

Our Voice and Representation team ran the following activity and initiatives in 2022/23:

- We held a Liberation Lunch event for Disabled students to meet and create community in honour of Disability History Month in November-December.
- We also launch a Hidden Disability campaign, making Sunflower lanyards available to students to discreetly show that that have a non-visible disability that they may need help and support with.
- One of our Medway team ran a couple of book club events where students could sign up, read a book in advance, and then join an online session to share their thoughts with other students. The first one was for Disability History Month in November-December 2022 – the book read was and we read Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong, featuring personal essays from disabled people. The second was A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll for Neurodiversity Celebration Week in March 2023, as it featured a lead character with autism.
- For students who are parents, we created activity packs to collect from all GSU receptions to entertain their children whilst on campus. We also launched an event badge on our website that can be added to events to show they’re child friendly.
- Finally, we continued to elect and support Network Chairs to represent groups within the Greenwich student community.

We recognise this is an area we need to strengthen and gain more knowledge about also to find out what more we can do. Some of the practices we have in house are as follows:

- We have compostable boxes and cups in our all of our outlets for service in house and take away items (e.g. coffees, food)
- Many of our clothing items in our Greenwich Lookbook store and website are made by Neutral, a marketing leading and certified producer of sustainable apparel.
- Waste in our outlets is sorted to ensure that recyclable materials aren’t soiled by non-recyclable waste.
- Our Marketing team ensure that printed materials they order for teams are on recycled materials as much as possible.

These practices will continue and develop as we discover more ways to be sustainable as a Union, something which is a priority focus for us in 2023/24 and beyond.