Welcome to Your Union

Posted by Matt

Hi and welcome to your Sabbatical officers blog. Here you’ll find out what we’ve been up to, what we’re going to be doing and what fun things are going on whilst we’re all at the University of Salford.

Firstly I should introduce myself. I’m Matt Webber and I’m the President of the Students’ Union for the next year. I also study a part time Masters in Scriptwriting for Television and Radio. Part of my role is to make sure we deliver on supporting and improving both the fun and slightly more serious elements of University life, listening and representing your views and opinions.

I realise quite a few new students may end up reading this whilst trawling through the website for all the info about Salford before September, so for their benefit I’ll try to explain briefly (because otherwise I would write for ages) a few of the things we have on offer.

Welcome Week 09: One of the first things you’ll notice during ‘Welcome Week 09’ is that we have a Student Activity Fair. Here you can find out info and join up to various Student Activity groups of sport and societies (there’s about sixty to choose from!) We also do a lot of one off activities which are called ‘Give it a Go.’ Essentially you can try something like Yoga, and if you like it and want to come back great but if not you haven’t committed yourself to anything. There are also trips like Paintballing and Alton Towers, basically a chance to meet people at Salford or go with mates, usually making a cost saving because tickets have been bought in bulk.

Also during ‘Welcome Week 09’ we’ll be getting involved in a variety of workshops and events, hopefully offering something for everyone. Info on that is constantly being updated on the Union website so take a look there.

The Sabbs: The next one to know about is your sabb team. That’s us by the way in the picture below.



From left to right is Jim, Joe, Me, Emily and Ricky.

Jim, Joe, Emily and Ricky are all Vice President’s of one of the four faculties and work with other students and staff in their faculties. There faculties are:

Jim is Vice President Faculty of Business, Law and the Built Environment

Joe is Vice President Faculty of Arts, Media and Social Science

Emily is Vice President Faculty of Science, Engineering and Encironment

Ricky is Vice President Faculty of Health and Social Care

Advice & Representation: We also have an Advice Centre which deals with Academic, Financial and International student areas and as part of the Representation part of a Students’ Union we also have Student Reps (one per course, per year) across the University. Student Reps work with everyone on their course to discover what the key good and bad things are on their course and then work on resolving or celebrating them with their lecturers and the Students’ Union. It’s something I did in my first year of Uni and it taught me a lot and I would recommend it to anyone studying at Salford to volunteer for.

Student Direct: The Students' Union also has a weekly newspaper during term time, anyone can write for it and again it's a really cool way to get involved and have something you've written put into print. If you want to write for the paper then drop me or any of the sabbs an email (contact details at the bottom of the blog) or find out more during Welcome Week.

Commercial Outlets: We also have Yours Cafe and Bar as well as the Pavilion Nightclub, all of which will have fun events on throughout the year and shops across campus. Again there is more info on those on the website. One of my favourite experiences in the Pavillion was getting gunged for charity. As you can tell... I enjoyed it!



There’s plenty more that I could tell you about but I’m going to leave it at that for now because I don’t want to go into information overdrive. But some of the aspects I’ll write about in the future include our AGM and ‘You Decide’(they can be fun!), elections, future one off events, and campaigns.

If you got any questions or want to introduce yourself in the meantime then please do drop me an email, call on 0161 736 7811, email me at president-ussu@salford.ac.uk or come in to University House and have a chat.