PhD researcher in Mathematics, Floris Claassens, from the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science (SMSAS) at the University of Kent has been awarded ‘Life and Honorary Membership’ by Kent Union for his outstanding contribution to student experience.
His nomination read:
Over the last three years here at Kent, Floris has dedicated so much of his time to Kent Union. He has a strong sense of responsibility and believes in doing his roles diligently. Floris first came to volunteer for Kent Union as a student rep in his first year as he felt it was important to be represented which led to him becoming the sciences faculty rep for two years. While he was sciences faulty rep he has done many campaigns and projects some being very far-reaching and having a huge impact on student experience going forward. He has spent time working with Medway students trying to improve transport links between the two campuses so that Medway can have easier access to Canterbury-based activities to help link the two campuses. He also made sure that Liberty Ques housing put postgraduate students together in their accommodation. He was instrumental in the implementation of the postgraduate officer position, routinely defending it in meetings and spending time speaking to other postgraduates about the role and its advantages, this included writing a letter to show support of the role. He later, after much debate, ran for the same role and after losing the election has spent time making sure that the incoming officer is aware of issues facing the PGR community. By far his largest project was his work around Pastoral Care. After realising that the pastoral care for students in his school was far better than what other PGRs had access to, he embarked on a quest to find out what the provision was for all PGR students on campus where he spoke to at least a staff member or student from every single school. His conversations with students were to see if despite the provision from the school if PGR’s even knew what the provisions the university has in place to help them during their studies. He finally culminated his research with a survey that was filled in by 10% total of PGR students. With this, he wrote a paper which was praised at Graduate School Board and led to the creation of a working group to look into postgraduate pastoral care and wellbeing. This paper has resulted in additional provision in schools for pastoral care and the guarantee that every school will have at least one adequately trained support staff member. It has also been fed into the Universities new support and wellbeing strategy. Floris very clearly has left a legacy here at Kent, his impact will be felt for years to come, alongside the large projects listed above he has done numerous small things during his time as a volunteer. He has worked closely with his full time officer, is a regular attendee of university meetings, UEC meetings having always read all the papers in great details. The amount of time and care he puts into his role is extraordinary. I can’t think of anyone else more fitting of life honorary membership.