Student Led
Earthquake shaking table event
This month, CivSoc ran an innovation week. We worked with the civil engineering department to run a competition where students could create model buildings to be tested on the university’s earthquake shaking table. The planning of this event required a lot of planning and collaboration with the department to ensure all the support was available in terms of health and safety, supervision and use of the shaking table. The event was a success, with 36 students taking part across all year groups (including some masters students). This event gave students the chance to work in teams, getting to know their course mates better, and gave them access to some of the university’s best facilities that they otherwise would not have been able to use. The models are yet to be tested but we are excited to see who wins!
Tunnelling talk
We hosted a talk specifically about Tunnels and Shafts, an area that we don't usually get to hear about in the course, which gave our members a broader understanding of other fields of Civil Engineering they could go into. The presentation will be from Ciara Maguire at National Grid who will give us insight into this area of industry and briefly touch on the feasibility stage of design.
Community
CivSoc Collaborative
CivSoc collaborative was formed this year by our president: Izzy Sambles, with the aim of connecting Civil Engineering societies across the country who would work together to provide bigger events (social and industry), share ideas and expand our members networks. Currently there are 12 universities which are collaborating together:
· Bristol
· Warwick
· UCL
· Edinburgh
· Nottingham Trent
· Surrey
· Sheffield
· Greenwich
· Southampton
· Swansea
Together we have shared ideas and have a couple of events coming up including a mass gathering in the summer and have successfully run an online talk with over 100 members attending from CivSoc’s around the country. We also have a successful LinkedIn network set up with around 100 people in.
Working with Project talk
We implemented a new CivSoc wellbeing week in collaboration with PROJECT:TALK Bristol society and all the other engineering societies. These activities include a mental fitness skill-based workshop (TOOLS TO:TALK) and walking social (WALK TO:TALK). Also, the wellbeing week was organised in relation to University Mental Health Day and Suicide Prevention Week.
Expanding our buddy system
We decided to open up the buddy system again for TB2 due to feedback collected from surveys. Feelings of isolation in the course and society so the buddy system aims to build connections between new society members and existing society members, as well as someone from an older year group with another student from a younger year group.
Working on collected feedback
Monthly surveys are sent out to society members to gauge attendance and understand ways in which the society can improve. Moreover, we have an open equality, diversity, and inclusion survey on the CivSoc website for students to raise any issues at any time of the year.
From these surveys, we consider the feedback and create action plans. These plans are transparent for students to view on our monthly reports on the CivSoc website.
2.5 Organized an outreach event to be held in end of April
This term, planning is well underway for the first ‘Introduction to Engineering Event’ hosted and organised by CivSoc in collaboration with the other Engineering societies. This is will be a really exciting event for local schools in the Easter holidays to help to introduce young pupils into what Engineering is and what a career in Engineering can offer them.
Organisation for this event has included liasing with other societies to plan activities and the plan for the day. We have reached out to local schools are invited a range of schools to attend. We have also liaised with relevant university staff to ensure they are aware of our plans and so that we can organise safeguarding training for the volunteers. Finally, we have also applied for a Faculty grant to fund the materials needed for the activities.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Talk with Dr Nike Folayan
This month, we ran a talk for our members with the amazing Dr Nike Folayan. She is a chartered engineer and is also the founder of AFBE-UK (Association For BME Engineers). Nike shared some of the highlights of her career (projects, innovation) and also told us more about her great organisation that can benefit some of our members. The organisation provides mentorship, job opportunities and much more for young BME engineers. We are working with Nike to promote these opportunities to our members and will keep her as a long-lasting contact so she can advertise these opportunities to our members each year. We have also made the department aware of the organisation so they can advertise this to first years as soon as they join Bristol. We also hope to get this information passed on to all the other engineering societies at Bristol so we can run this event together in future.
International and Postgraduate Networks
We have run a give it a go session for both our International and Postgraduate Networks. Both of which were successful and we now have got sub groups within Bristol CivSoc to provide a smaller group for both international and postgraduate students. The aim of each is to introduce them more gently into the society and also work with the networks to ensure that the membership experience is better for them and we are being as inclusive as possible. We also have two new committee positions which were democratically elected through an EGM and respectively the new committee positions with run the international and postgraduate networks. We are also planning more events this term for the respective networks.
Postgraduate talk
This month we are hosting a careers talk specifically directed at civil engineering postgrads, although relevant for undergrad students too, having been made aware that many MSc students are unsure about the different career paths available to them and lack any tailored events. We will have short talks from four academics who have had experience in both industry and academia and therefore can compare the two, followed by a Q&A session to give students the opportunity to have their own doubts settled. The session will be at lunchtime and therefore lunch will be provided for those who attend.
Sustainable Futures
Sustainability talk – CivSoc collaborative
Bristol CivSoc led the organisation of a Sustainability in Civil Engineering talk. We worked with Civil engineering societies from the University of Edinburgh, Nottingham Trent, Southampton, Surrey, Swansea and UCL and managed to get over 100 members to attend the hour and a half talk which was given by leading sustainability experts in our field of study. This led to lots of great questions and engaging discussion in a Q&A session at the end too.
Promotion of bringing in reusable cups to all coffee mornings
To make our society more sustainable, we decided to stop giving out single use coffee cups at our coffee mornings, and instead encourage people to bring in their own reusable cups to reduce waste. We realised that after only introducing coffee mornings this year, we now had a new source of waste, which can be avoided if people supply their own keep cup. This has been advertised on all of our posts, as seen below.
Positivity
5k run for mind
On the 27th of February we are running a 5k to fundraise for Mind. This is going to take place on the downs and we have encouraged all our members of all abilities to get involved in the run. We have asked the other engineering societies to collaborate on this event with the hope to raise more money for a great cause.
Movie night
On Sunday 6th Feb we hosted a movie night at the SU showing ‘10 things I hate about you’ as voted for on our Instagram stories! We provided drinks and snacks for the 15+ members who attended. Everyone had a great evening and a nice break from work! This was a great sober social.
Pancake night
We have a pancake day social planned for Thursday 24th Feb hosted at our 5 family houses. This will be a great way for members to talk to others from different years and socialise with people they may not have met otherwise in a safe environment.
Hi-vis social
We ran a hi-vis social night at the Hope&Anchor where we encouraged our members to rep civil engineering by wearing hi-vis or something bright! There was a great turnout (30+ people) and it was great to see everyone decked out in site gear! We had some great feedback from the survey including ‘Organised, clear about time and date, advertised well and in advance’ and ‘Amazing fun loved it’.
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