Miranda Currier is a post-graduate student from Washington State in the U.S, studying for her Masters of Science in Education. And she could be your next Vice President of Education.Here’s why she thinks she’s right for the job.
Q. Why are you running for this position?
A. “I’m looking at a couple of different angles, just because I already work as a postgraduate taught faculty officer for the faculty of social sciences. Which is changing names, of course, because of the restructuring that’s going on, as a result of the severance scheme. So, seeing the fallout from that made me want to make a change.
“I feel like I’m really equipped to do that, not only with my Masters of Science and Education, as I’m learning about it as I’m doing it, but I’m an international student. I am a nontraditional, mature student, so I have different areas of my life that would really fit well with the next step in educational leadership, and, for me, the logical next step is VP of education.”
Q. If elected, what is the first thing you will do in the Union?
A. “I would work on increasing communication and feedback between students and staff because that seems to be something that’s quite pressing, especially because it intersects with immigration and visas for international students.
“I’ve been hearing that some students aren’t able to submit drafts for assignments that are heavily weighted in their postgrad degrees. So, even things like that, just getting feedback and having increased communication between lecturers, who as we already know, have a lot on their plate. We know they have an increased workload and shifting responsibilities because of the severancescheme.
“So, I would gauge what is going on with the students and get a clear idea of what is expected from lecturers to students, and vice versa. Even more so with undergrad [students], just because I’m a postgrad and I have that understanding a little bit more as opposed to undergrad. I would want to listen to them and see what’s going on.
“I don’t want to focus on assessment or reaching survey goals for the NSS (National Student Survey) surveys. If there’s no satisfaction in this area or the satisfaction is low, why? We have toask why. And then we have to see what we’re going to do about it.
“I’m someone who takes action. I don’t want to just talk about things, because it doesn’t get you anywhere. And I’m very much a go-getter.”
Q. What are your long-term goals for the position?
A. “Increase transparency between senior management and day-to-day operations. It’s a huge thing, because it seems that a lot of the senior management, as with any organisation, they may be out of the loop, to put it nicely. Out of the loop on the day-to-day activities of lecturers, students, staff, and how the decisions they make up there affect the people that are working every day to make Stirling what it is. That would be the long-term goal, to repair the gap between senior management and staff, lecturers and students.”
Miranda goes on to quote a disability rights slogan, which to her, means inclusivity. “My big thing is nothing about us without us.”
Q. What did the current person in this position do well? What did they do that you would like to emulate in your own work?
A. “So I’ve seen Adeleyo [Adebayo, current VP Education] do a lot of work with employability. Uniforced – she did that programme. I’ve been looking up other programmes that are kind of similar, just because I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and just do what she did. But I do like the level of involvement that she’s had with the students.
“And just her kindness, like, she’s very personable. She’s approachable. I’m in a lot of meetings with her, so I see her a lot and she’s just encouraged me to push the status quo a little bit. Go outside the box on my thinking, which is what made me also want to run for her position andknowing that it was going to be open. And, knowing that she would have handover documents to be like, ‘This is what I did, and take what you will’.
“So, just general, how she approaches students, how she’s engaging with students – that is definitely something that I think works really well for her and would work really well for me, just knowing we have similar personalities in that aspect. But, of course, we’re going to do different programming. We’re going to have different focuses.”
Q. What in the university inspired you to run?
“Hearing all different kinds of students come up to me and chat with me about what’s going on in their modules, not just like on the module level, but their whole programme. People know me as a faculty officer, and working with academic reps. I regularly engage with them and ask what’s going on.
“Specifically with Stirling, I think the repercussions of the severance scheme, and being in the education programme while learning about what’s going on with all the lecturers, it made me look more into the educational leadership part. And I’m lucky enough to have educational leadership and education policy as two of my modules this semester, so I’m learning about it as I’m enacting it, which is really, really, really helpful.
“I’m glad that Stirling has this kind of education Masters, because it’s more social justice focused, and moving forward with advancing technology, stuff like that. Not to say that there isn’t something to fix in every single module or every single programme, but I think that gives me a really unique inspiration, because I’m learning about it as I’m doing it.”
Q. What makes you right for the position?
“I have experience as an international student, so that is a huge demographic of our student body. Whether we’re looking at undergrad or postgrad, we have a lot of international students. I really relate to home students as well in terms of we can all find something that we have in common as students. We’re all struggling financially because of an outer market that’s out with the university.
“The job market is hard, whether you’re in or out of uni. We all have these obstacles we’re trying to face together, and I believe that, as someone who is coming from the outside looking in, and now being in, I have that unique perspective of just having a couple of years under my belt of working in full-time jobs. So, I have that, I hate saying ‘real world’ because we’re in the real world, we’re not practising for it, we’re part of it. It’s really a matter of, I’m finding something that I have in common with everyone and gauging that.
“We’re all being affected by the severance scheme. We’re all being affected by outer influences, whether it’s political or educational, and one thing that’s been reiterated this week in one of my classes is that education is political. There’s no neutral education.
“Curriculum – we have to look at that. We have to look at what students are saying, and a lot of what I’m doing, I want to be student-centred. I want people to shape the role with me. One of the things that [I am is a] person who is determined, inclusive, empowering, and empathetic, and I’m focused on real, actionable changes. And I’ll stand beside you, holding the microphone so you can speak.”