Martine Brekke Klingberg is a fourth-year psychology student running for Vice President of Education. Martine spoke to Brig about why her experience as a faulty officer for natural sciences makes her right for the role. She wants more students to get involved and share their opinions on their education.
Q. Why are you running for this position?
A. “I’m running for this position because I’ve been involved in academic representation for the past three years here at Stirling, so I went from being academic rep to a division officer and now I’m a faculty officer for the natural sciences, so I’ve sort of seen every side of the system.
“I would really like to improve the communication between us and the university. That includes decision making which has been huge lately with the academic restructuring going on, and I feel like our voices have been left out of the conversation.”
Q. If elected, what’s the first thing you will do in the Union?
A. “The first thing I want to do is I want to get as many students as I can engaged, and I also want students to know me personally.
“If you sign up as a rep, I want to be there to say hi and I want people to know my name and face. I will also open a drop-in session and other sessions to be able to give people an opportunity to say what they want because I will be doing this work for you.
“Prioritising connecting with the entire student body as soon as I get into post, going from there to strengthen our communications with the university.”
Q. What are your long-term goals for the position?
A. “The university has policies on how many students they consult before they make changes and that the feedback [is] acted upon so there are more rigorous policies and regulations around how we use feedback.
“I want them to change the feedback loop into making them more accountable in terms of action points.”
Q. What did the current person in this position do well and what did they do that you would like to emulate in your own work?
A. “Adelayo [Adebayo] has done some really nice work on employability by running the Union Employability Program which I think is a really great opportunity to give students outside of their course another option to work on their employability skills and to work on a real-world projects.
“That is something that I would also want to build on further in my work and I think that’s definitely the direction we should be going.”
Q. What in the University inspired you to run?
A. “I think the academic community we have here is amazing and I think there’s a lot of students who have a lot of valuable opinions and feedback and I want to be able to take that to where it matters and put the feedback where it can change things.
“We have so many great things going on, I want to lift that and showcase that. To give students the voice and the opportunity to speak where it matters.”
Q. What makes you right for the position?
A. “I have been involved in academic representation since my second year here at [the] university. I’ve gone through doing it on a volunteer basis to doing it as a part time job.
“I have a large network within the university, so I’ve spoken to pretty much every faulty member in my own faulty, I have sat on quality review panels for the university.
“I’m also an intern at the work-based learning and careers team so I have connections in that world and would bring that into the role. In terms of employability, I would use the network I already have here at the university. At the end of the day I do really care, I want students to be able to feel like their voices are heard and that it does matter and it is actually worth your time to give feedback.”
Martine’s manifesto can be found here.
Featured image credits: Martine Brekke Klingberg
