During Global Induction week, the three groups of officers from the UK, Dubai and Malaysia came up with this year’s Global Priorities. These are high priority objectives which will significantly improve student life across the three global Heriot-Watt campuses. The three priorities are:
Relieving financial pressure
The first of our priorities is to help relive the financial pressures that students are facing. We know that students, globally, are suffering from increased cost of living, and we want to make sure that we and the university is doing as much as possible to support students during these difficult times.
This priority will address financial pressures by ensuring that students are given as much support as possible. Previously this has been the expansion of the Hardship fund, financial guidance and support from our Advice Hub as well the community larder and meals. We will be continuing our work on all of these and expect to see some new ways we are helping to relieve financial pressure soon!
Empowering and building communities
Our second priority is focused on tackling student loneliness and isolation by helping students find or build communities and empowering these communities to thrive and do amazing things. Last year, we found that 7% of students said they had no friends. We want all students at Heriot-Watt to feel apart of a community and have a sense of belonging. We aim to achieve this through, creating new opportunities for societies, creating more social space and making access to clubs and societies easier.
Improving access to education and recreation
Our third priority is to ensure that education and recreation is truly accessible to students. Access means different things to different people, through tackling financial pressure, student loneliness we are already improving access. However, we want to go beyond that and make sure that students can access the things they want when they want, how they want.