Campaigns
The GSA coordinate campaigns and information sessions to highlight areas that are affecting Postgraduate Students here at York. Phillip Mason has been elected as Campaigns Officer for 2010/11. He is responsible for leading these campaigns, bringing these issues to the university’s attention and assisting with seeking a resolution.
Ongoing Campaigns
Academic Integrity & Skill Development
The postgraduate student body is a mixture of students who have just finished their undergraduate degree, students who have returned to university after a long break, and international students who have never studied in the UK before. For all, the rules on academic integrity can be confusing, and it may be easy to fall into the trap of breaking these regulations.
The GSA play a major role in the yearly Academic Integrity Week, a campaign jointly coordinated by the University, YUSU, the ISA, and GSA. For the 2010 event, following a notable rise in postgraduate plagiarism cases, we were very active that week; organising sessions on correct referencing, using technology to help with essay writing, and how to stay calm and relaxed during the busy essay writing term. The 2011 event will be much bigger, and for the first time will have an extra postgraduate focused week.
We also work with the Academic Support Office to run these courses throughout the year, and ran three very successful academic training events in Welcome Week.
Past Campaigns
Some of the campaigns we have run successfully in the past include:
- Ensuring the University run the PRES and PTES surveys to gather feedback from Postgraduates on their student experience at York
- Fought for the exemption from Council Tax for all 4th year (writing up) PhD students.
- Lobbied for quality teaching undertaken by postgraduates to be recognised, leading to a new set of Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Awards specifically for PhD students, running alongside the already high profile and successful set for academics.
