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Yousuf Yaqub

ICSMSU: Clubs & Societies Vice Chair - Volunteering and Academics

Hey guys! I’ve been involved with academic societies at a range of levels for many years; I’m familiar with all the challenges that they face and I’m passionate about working to try and optimise things going forward.

Relevant Experience:

  • Academic Chair (SU) 2024-25 – Oversaw mocks with SurgSoc, MedEd, AMSA, and MM
  • Academic Officer for Early Years (SU) 2023-24 – Organised CPA mocks with key societies.
  • MM (2021-2025) – Fresher Rep → VP for Education → Alumni Officer.
  • SurgSoc (2022-2025) – Trauma Subcommitte, General Executive (Plastics & CPA lead), Trauma Conference Chair.

Key Challenges/ Potential solutions:

Problem 1: Conference Issues – Ticket sales & room bookings are tough.

Solution:

  1. ICSMSU support sessions for societies (marketing, logistics, budgets).
  2. Internal calendar to prevent clashes & ease room booking conflicts

Problem 2: Declining Tutorial attendance

Solution: Promote a switch to developing high quality pre-recorded tutorials and develop a centralised ICSMSU managed website to host all content.

Problem 3: Difficulty advertising

Solution: WhatsApp advertisement is inefficient and spammy. I would work with the rest of ICSMSU to come up with alternative advertisement strategies for societies, including:

  1. Use of other platforms
  2. Regulation of group chats to reduce spam

Ideas:

  1. Introduce a Centralised Certificate System – Faculty-signed certificates stored in a database to ensure all certificates are recognised for portfolio points, which is not the case currently.
  2. Stronger V&A Community: Build on the brilliant work done by Eric at this year’s V&A awards night to further bolster the sense of inter-society community between societies.

Thank guys:)))))