Our Strategy

UUSU is led by you, our members, and it has been this way since we were founded in 1984. We underpin our operations with students coming together to work collectively in our member interests.

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Our Mission

We are here to improve the lives of students by being an inclusive and supportive community where students can fulfil their potential and ensure their voice is heard

Our Priorities

  • To Represent the student body effectively both in the University and with external stakeholders.
  • To have services and offerings that Support the student community.
  • To Connect students to make lifelong friendships whilst at university.
  • To listen and Engage effectively with the student body to ensure our offer is relevant.
  • To provide a first-class student Experience across everything we do.

Our Values

We are...

AMPLIFIERS

working to represent the student voice from the grassroots upwards and providing our members with a platform to be heard.

HONEST

and don’t shy from difficult conversations to make the student experience everything it should and can be.

INCLUSIVE

and will compassionately strive to represent and welcome all students into our UUSU family.

SUPPORTIVE

ensuring that students can adapt to, and benefit from university life.

TENACIOUS

and are driven to ensure that students are empowered, and beneficial change is achieved.

Our Journey

Circle of Commitment

This is our promise to you REPRESENT SUPPORT CONNECT

Please click on the cross below to see our commitments in more detail.

    • Our Commitments

    At the core of UUSU are our members. We represent members from all different backgrounds and as such we will ensure that ‘all our student member communities will have a strong voice’. This will be through ongoing interaction and engagement with all membership groups, ensuring we hear what you want, need and desire from us.
    As a member-led organisation, UUSU needs to understand the issues that our members face. UUSU will not assume we know all the answers and will ensure that ‘we will capture and collect authentic feedback which reflects our membership’. This will be achieved through providing more opportunities for you to engage with us, in different ways and with different time commitments.
    It isn’t any use us being aware of the issues members are facing if we are not prepared to push for a solution to them. As such, ‘we will be ‘change makers on the prevailing issues impacting our members’ and will reflect these to those that can make change a reality, pushing for positive action at every opportunity.
    UUSU represents all of our members, and as such ‘members will have a feeling of inclusion, diversity, and a sense of belonging’ in everything we do. Such an approach and attitude will be woven through our work, campaigns, and engagement with the membership.

    It is critical that there are development opportunities for you during your university experience. As such, through a revamped, redeveloped, and enhanced volunteering offering, ‘our members will gain new skills and experiences whilst part of UUSU’.
    Our members have consistently told us that mental health and wellbeing are among their top concerns at university. In response to this ‘we will deliver wellbeing support through an ongoing mental health action plan’ that was developed in 2022-23 as a long-term intervention and in direct response to the needs of our members.
    The needs of our members can change quickly and in response to circumstances brought on outside of their control. UUSU will pledge that ‘relevant campaigns which target positive progress for our members will be in place’. These campaigns will have clear asks and target tangible outcomes to ensure that any change is in the interests of our membership.
    To achieve all that we want for our members, ‘additional income will be generated for investment in member services’. This will be garnered through securing additional pots of external funding through grants, partnerships, and fiscal opportunities.

    Your university experience should be second to none, both from an academic and social perspective. As part of this ‘opportunities for social engagement will exist for all our members’ with UUSU offering and delivering a varied social calendar, with year-round opportunities and big-ticket events at key moments in the academic calendar.
    As a member of UUSU you have a right to know what we are doing and when we are doing it. Therefore, ‘our communications will be simple, streamlined, and focused’ and won’t inhibit your busy university experience. We will strive to offer regular, accessible updates on how we are supporting you and promoting opportunities for how you can get involved with your union.
    UUSU will take proactive steps to ensure that our members know who we are and what we are doing. To achieve this ‘there will be a strong, visible, and accessible UUSU campus presence’ allowing you to easily access us when you need us, without having to seek us out.
    We recognise the value our members bring to UUSU. We are committed to finding a way in which ‘our member connection can continue after the university experience ends.’ To do this we will put in place alumni links to allow those that wish to do so, to stay in touch with us and have touchpoints back into UUSU as their post university experiences continue.

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