Grawood & TRoom Society Event Policy

This past year I was the Vice President (Student Life) for the DSU and a part of my job was to coordinate the Grawood and TRoom society event nights. Most of the events turned out really well; however, there were a few that did not and because of this I wanted the DSU to create a policy on this issue.

Tonight I completed the policy and it is now going to council as 'new business' at the August 6th council meeting. At that point councilors will be able to go through the policy and discuss or change it, and hopefully approve it.

The policy is currently online at:
http://dsu.ca/aboutus/council-1/council-information-1

Go ahead and take a look at it - let me know what you think - I am very open to any comments and recommendations.

Maritime Retreat Conference

Conference season is in full swing!

This past weekend I attended the Maritime Retreat Conference in Prince Edward Island.
I worked with other student union executives to create this conference. The conference was designed to bring together student union executives from throughout the maritime universities to give them the opportunity to gain a better understanding of our counterparts, networking, and to help us each advance our goals/plans for this year and the future.

Myself, Daniel Boyle (Vice President Internal), and Kris Osmond (Vice President Student Life) attended the conference on behalf of the Dalhousie Student Union. There were representatives from Saint Mary's University Student Union (SMUSA), Acadia Students' Union (ASU) and the University of Prince Edward Island Students' Union (UPEISU).

Throughout the three days the executives were able to learn more about what one another does, found ways to help each other, and were able to take some great things from others.

The President's focus group tackled a lot of different topics but the most interesting was creating the Council of Maritime University Students. It is going to be a group that is for all maritime university student union executives to come and work together, there are no fees associated with it, and it will be able to be a place for all executives (not just for lobbying).

One of the main issues that the President's will be tackling through this group is to gain media attention to the post secondary issues that are facing all of the maritime provinces (i.e. targeted funding).

Throughout this year we are planning on having several other conferences with the 4 schools that attending this past conference and hopefully many more as well.

Overall the conference was a great success and I am highly anticipating working with the other maritime executives throughout this year.

We've got the 'ANSSA'

This past weekend I went with our VP Education to the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) - Planning Conference. It was a chance for all of the member schools to come together to help set the director in terms of goals and priorities for the 2008-09 year.

The four member schools that attended were:
Dalhousie Student Union
Acadia Students' Union
Saint Mary's University Students' Union
St. Francis Xavier Student's Union

We were also very pleased to have Cape Breton University Students' Union attend the conference as an observer.


The agenda for the conference consisted of:
- board orientation
- SWOT analysis
- meeting our mission, vision, and goals
- campaign planning
- member retention and development
- 2008/09 lobby priorities
- communications
- policy and research review

The aspect of the conference that I assume most of you will be interested in are our lobby priorities:

Short Term - blueprint for student aid
Medium Term - early outreach
Long Term - holistic/comprehensive review (Plan or Parish campaign is a part of this)

And through all of our priorities we will be ensuring that we are building and strengthening our partnerships with our members, stakeholders, and other groups to help us achieve our goals.

ANSSA has a communications plan and will be launching their new website in September. Please go and check out the current website - www.anssa.ca and then check back in September to see the progress we have made - we would love to hear your feedback when the switch occurs!

Executive and Full Time Staff Priorities, Goals, and Projects 208-09

Hello again!

It has been awhile since my last blog - I have been in California on vacation.

The June retreat that I blogged about earlier was a great experience - we all benefited from attending. Below are a list of priorities, goals, and projects that the executive and full time staff at the DSU have created for the coming year. It should be pointed out that these are items that would most likely not have occurred without this event simply because we need the opportunities to come together and talk about issues that are more than what is "day-to-day" work and our job descriptions. These sessions allow for us to progress as a student union and work towards better serving our students and stakeholders.

Priorities for 2008-09

Level 1

- Engaging Dalhousie stakeholders

o Conversation points:

§ Engaging students

§ What do we want Imagine to do?

§ Take a stand for connectivity/student engagement

§ How do we acquire and sustain hosting expertise?

§ Identities and cultures of stakeholders

§ How do we recognize the diversity of the DSU in its short and long term operations?

§ What does the building need? (services)

§ Student engagement campaign

§ Survey for DSU services, current and prospective

§ Speakers corner at information desk, video booth

- Following through on our promises/being responsive

o Conversation points:

§ How to build responsiveness to stakeholders needs

§ Keeping promises/following through

§ Having the capacity to follow through

§ Collective responsibility

§ Enable people to take change on: active role in achieving their objectives

§ Make people aware of progress or otherwise on issues they have brought forward

§ Accountability – project portal

Level 2

- Seeing the BIG picture

o Conversation points:

§ Ensuring all elements/branches of the DSU understand and are committed to its purpose

§ Shared purpose?

§ Recognize and acknowledge what is working

- How we work together (building relationships)

o Conversation points:

§ Building respect at work

§ Principles in relation to organization

§ Make our principles alive

- Becoming an organization that learns

o Conversation points:

§ How do we gather our learning?

§ How do we capture our learning/institutional memory?

§ Knowing what works vs. what doesn’t

§ How do we ensure that our solution is sustainable over many years and allows for change in itself

§ Reflection time – pros, cons, what success looks like

Level 3

- Connecting the pieces

o Conversation points:

§ Understanding the role of each piece and connecting/communicating with each

· i.e. Board of Operations, Council, staff, Executive, part time staff

§ Connectivity between “silos” of roles and departments/pilot projects

§ Connecting bodies within the DSU (Board/council/exec/staff/part time staff)

§ Recognize, act, and sustain connections

§ Clear definitions and function of the Board of Operations

§ Support from DSU for full time staff and their projects

§ Informed front line, 1^st impression

§ Ensure exec, staff, council, board, are “on board”

- Fiscal responsibility

o Conversation point:

§ Time for a stronger financial return

Goals/Projects

- reviewing DSU services

o what we may be able to add/enhance

o what may no longer be needed by our students

- fiscal responsibility

o proper allocation for budget

o regular meetings

o tracking mistakes

o board reviewing budget

o cash flow analysis

- portal

o all executive and full time staff can access

o a place for projects (progress, conversations), etc.

- engaging Dalhousie stakeholders

o maintaining a society focus (event at beginning of the year)

o Imagine event(s)

o Increasing voter turnout

o Dalfest 2008

- branding of the DSU

We have created a team of executive and full time staff that will do follow up work associated with our priorities, goals, and projects. We are hoping that this team will be able to provide status reports during the year, retain the information generated, and be able to motivated others to complete the task at hand.