Joshua Gorman Climax | University Observer

By University Observer | Mar 6 2017

Stage two chemical engineering student Joshua Gorman Climax is looking to capitalise on his prior SU experience and try to bring up the level of teaching in UCD through a variety of ideas.[br]JOSHUA Gorman Climax, a 20 year-old stage two chemical engineering student, is looking to build upon his prior SU experience for the role of Education officer. He sees the position as one where “maintaining” relationships with administrative staff is key, as well as one which “[makes] sure that we notice anything that might be a problem.”Education officer is required to sit on a wide number of committees and boards. While Gorman Climax couldn’t provide an exhuastive list, he knew of a number of UMT and EDI committees and sub-committes, though he mistakenly assumed the SU has a position on the University Management Team (or UMT).Gorman Climax’s manifesto details a number of ways he intends to help students, one being new and more extensive training for class reps. He believes that being a class rep only delivers “so much experience” as only “one or two cases” come up. Gorman Climax wants class reps to help with issues like multiple assignments being due on the same day, but this is something that the independent module coordinators and lecturers control. In response to this, Gorman Climax cites his prior experience of solving this problem in chemical engineering, and also stated these issues “can be organised at the start of the semester and benefit the students themselves in that class.”

For now, priority would be on the education.

In regards to using lobbying to get better resources to aid students and lecturers, Gorman Climax admitted to the difficulty of lobbying. He cited the myriad issues he sees in UCD today from massive rent hikes to the controversial Confucius Institute, stating lobbying “comes down to an ability to research to come up with the proposals to get into boards, to get into meetings, get talking to people who have this power and to convince them.”Resit fees also proves to be a difficult subject for an Education officer to tackle, but Gorman Climax claims that if he successfully lobbied for lower fees, the university would make that money up elsewhere as he states it’s a “zero sum game [for UCD].” Ultimately, Gorman Climax stated “for now, priority would be on the education” to stop people failing in the first place, instead of slashing fees.One of Gorman Climax’s ideas is having subject-specific societies help aid students by giving additional voluntary tutorials. In his manifesto, he states that MechSoc have successfully done this, though he admitted to having “not talked to societies about organising ones in the future.” He admitted that “in some cases it works very well, and in some cases the situation it wouldn't really be that workable.” Gorman Climax stated societies such as LawSoc or SciSoc could be benefit, though, SciSoc is an entriely fundrasing and charity-based society.

We need to be sure of the funding.

Continuing on the theme of bettering the teaching experience for students, Gorman Climax also discussed his university grinds system briefly mentioned in his manifesto. He states he started such a scheme in engingeering in first year, and spoke to current officer Lexi Kilmartin and noted she “said there’s a few grind requests every now and again.”Gorman Climax did note however that this previous scheme in engineering failed to attract users: “I organised it and had a number of tutors lined up with all their details and [...] no one went for it.” When questioned on how things would be different this time, he stated that grinds are “something that's in the constitution as mandated that I do, and I thought it was something that could be useful but not necessarily the best thing.” He admitted to not being sure as to how it would be funded, though he stated the system could be private.On the topic of fees, Gorman Climax doesn’t want to push for free fees personally, as he states “we need to be sure of the funding.”“If we end up with fees and none of the money going into actual funding and the quality... then we're going to end up fighting for to... pay nothing to do a shit degree. And get nothing from it."