Society means business after post-covid relaunch

A group of dedicated students have joined forces to bring back the GCU Students’ Association Business Society.

The recent pandemic meant students were cut off from meeting their peers in-person due to a lack of on-campus teaching, events and other restrictions – but that’s all in the past now!

Normality has resumed and the Business Society are looking to take full advantage.

We caught up with their President Andrew Collier to find out more:

Background

There was a Business Society previously, but it fizzled out with covid, which was fair enough given you couldn’t exactly do much during a global pandemic!

We managed to restart it during the second semester last year. Myself and some other students felt like we were missing out on the “University experience” that you always hear about, especially in terms of socialising and meeting new people. We felt a society would be a good way to really help create that sense of community with other students like us.

I reached out to Societies Co-ordinator Lora Addison and we went from there. She’d actually been in contact with one of the other business students, Danielle, the day before and he had been asking to do something similar – it was all a massive coincidence.

Lora helped us team up, along with a few others, to help get everything going once again.

Bringing together like-minded individuals

We started last year and basically just wanted to see what the level of demand was like. We held a couple of quizzes and other social events. Now we want to take things event further - it’s all about building a community with like-minded individuals.

We held a pub-crawl during Freshers’ Week and had about 30 people there, which is a good start for us. Freshers’ Fair also gave us the chance to promote the Society – we gained a lot of Instagram followers from that.

Committee

There’s five of us in total who are basically working together to try and put these events on, all while juggling our coursework. It’s been really helpful having their support - last year there were only three of us and it’s now great that we can spread the workload between us. I can already tell that we are going to be so much more productive because of the range of skills we all have.

Future

We are currently planning a Christmas event and some other socials. It’s not just all about partying though, we’ve been reaching out to industry contacts to try and arrange some employability talks as well. We’ll also be holding weekly study groups for people to come and ask any questions about coursework or life at GCU in general.

Message to students

The whole point of the Society is to provide students that social aspect that we all missed so much during recent times. It really enhances your whole University experience to build a network that can support you during your time at GCU.

I’d just encourage everyone to come along and meet new people. You can get involved in as much as you want, but we’re really just wanting everyone to make up for what’s been missed out on over the last couple of years. It’s the perfect way to make new friends and expand your overall network, which is so important both personally and professionally.

Find out more about the Business Society on the GCU Students’ Association website or give them a follow on Instagram

By Ross Clark 
Got an SHLS or GSBS story? Email me at Ross.Clark@gcu.ac.uk or message me on Twitter