Health Sciences College Officer, Tia Cullen, is no stranger to the SU, and hopes to create a knowledge surge around the available supports in UCD.
Tia Cullen is a Stage 3 General Nursing student who, during her time in UCD, has been a Stage 2 class rep for General Nursing and the auditor of the Nursing and Midwifery Society. She is the current Health Sciences College Officer, and is campaigning to be the next Education Officer for the SU.
Cullen credits her role as College Officer for giving her the institutional knowledge, communication, and organisational skills needed for a sabbatical position. In her current role, Cullen has held the first ever clinical uniform sale, in which she lobbied graduated students into donating their uniforms to the SU, and sold them on behalf of SU charity partner, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Cullen also organised a Health Science Roadshow, where trade unions linked to health sciences came to UCD to promote themselves to students.
Whilst her manifesto focuses on the four key areas of accessibility, engagement, cost of education, and policy work, Cullen believes “the two biggest parts of [the Education Officer role] are casework and policy work, and I think you need to try and find a healthy balance between the two.”
Cullen’s delivery methods lean heavily on the promotion of information, and improving existing supports for students. For example, she hopes to create simplified guides on UCD policies for students, and to build on the work of the current Education Officer, Sarah McGrath, by hosting more exam information sessions and academic workshops.
Explaining this, Cullen stated that “the union does quite a good job supporting students through College Officers and the Sabbatical Officers, but if we can give the students the information themselves and help to work with them to resolve their issues, instead of us doing it for them, [then] we can work together to solve their issues,” adding that “it is important to give students the power to advocate for themselves.”
“It is important to give students the power to advocate for themselves.”
This stance is repeated in Cullen’s accessibility plans, where she hopes to firstly increase supports for students who enter UCD through ‘non-traditional’ routes, and secondly to push for improved supports for students on clinical placements, internships, and for incoming and outgoing Erasmus students. When asked what type of supports Cullen is referring to here, she notes that many students in UCD would have been eligible for the HEAR scheme or the Cothrom na Féinne scholarship upon entry, but simply were not aware that they met the requirements. Similarly, she states that “a lot of students feel quite disconnected” when on clinical placements, and are unaware of the supports still available to them in UCD, such as counselling services and student advisors. Cullen hopes to tackle this through the “proper promotion of the supports that are currently available, but also to try and increase the [funding of] supports that are available as well, like the Student Support Fund.”
Cullen highlights that the cost of education is a huge challenge, particularly alongside the cost of living and accommodation crises. She elaborates that “the government could be doing more to support students, and I do think that there is huge opportunity to do a complete overhaul of SUSI and improve accessibility to SUSI by increasing the income threshold that makes you eligible…, but also the specific bands; I think we can increase the amount of money that students get within each band, and even take into account graduate entry courses, as well”. Acknowledging the particularly high and rising fees for graduate entry medicine courses, Cullen aims to “cap or reduce the current graduate entry medicine fees, but also [to] try and include graduate entry courses in being eligible for SUSI.”
“The government could be doing more to support students, and I do think that there is huge opportunity to do a complete overhaul of SUSI.”
These are ambitious goals with a national scope that would make implementing them quite difficult for Cullen. She therefore aims to collaborate with the future Campaigns and Engagement Officer and SU President, alongside national bodies such as the USI, to engage in lobbying and campaigns which catch the attention of the wider Irish media. She believes that “UCDSU has been quite successful over the past year with media campaigns, and I do think we can kind of build upon that.”
In comparison to her number of ambitious long-term goals, her short-term goals are limited, but do include promoting the wider use of lecture recordings, hosting more exam information sessions and academic workshops, and organising additional education events, similar to the clinical uniform sale.
One area where Cullen’s manifesto perhaps falls short is a lack of attention to neurodivergent accessibility on campus, and little mention of equality or diversity. However, she does promise to stick up for students, and proudly states that “I have had no issue with going toe to toe with heads of school, with lecturers, with faculty, because I’m passionate about the work that the union does, […] I'm not afraid to speak up and disagree with academics when students' rights are at stake.”
“I'm not afraid to speak up and disagree with academics when students' rights are at stake.”
Cullen also confirms her support for Palestine and the UCD BDS movement in her manifesto, concluding that “UCD not taking a stance on the genocide in Gaza is unacceptable. The president of UCD did put out a statement regarding the war in Ukraine, and I do think that we should be taking a stance on [Palestine]. Other universities have started to do it, so we should too.”