Tuesday 29-08-2017 - 10:15

Bristol SU has a number of societies which have been accredited with gold status on the Balloon Accreditation Scheme. We caught up with CivSoc to find out more about their society.

What do CivSoc do?

We offer the opportunity to be part of a community of civil engineering students of all years, staff and alumni, with the aim of enhancing the university experience both socially and professionally.

 To encourage mixing of all years of students we have created families of approximately 25 students of all years which meet before most of our evening socials. Last year, the families got together for halloween, christmas dinner and pancake making among other events such as the heroes vs. villains bar crawl.

In addition to nights out, we also organise socials incudling ice-skating, a summer BBQ, and our annual winter ball, which this year was held at the Mercure Hotel.

Our graduate and undergraduate recruitment evening alongside 'Grab-a-Grad' and ICE events are great opportunities for networking and finding out more about the industry.

We also maintain strong links with the department with events including staff vs. student football, a foundation lecture series and informative trips- last year to the Eden Project and Clifton Rocks Railway.

 Where do we do it?

We hold most of our departmental and professional events as well as our Annual General Meeting in the Queen’s Building as it is easily accessible. Our family socials are usually at the head of the family’s house but we also use the Balloon Bar for karaoke, Racks in Clifton for the summer BBQ and the White Harte for the Skanska pub quiz.

 What did we achieve this year and how did we meet the gold award standard?

This year we were particularly proud of how many first year students we engaged with from the beginning of the year as it meant straight away all the years were mixing. We were also very pleased with the success of the graduate and undergraduate recruitment evening which, as a new venture this year brought in representatives from several large engineering firms, including Aecom and Skanska.

 We have met the gold standard by covering all the bases with our society as we see presenting professional opportunities and trips with our sponsors in industry, maintaining strong faculty links, and creating a social community to be equally important. We have managed to do all this while also showing ourselves to be a sustainable society, both economically and as a community.

 What are we planning to do differently next year?

Next year we plan to keep and develop the most successful events from this year. For example, we have booked a larger venue for the Winter Ball so more people can get tickets, and we want to hold an extra staff vs students football event in Term 1 as well as the one at the end of the year. Furthermore, we are working to find more speakers within the university for our foundation lectures to provide a greater range of topics, potentially adding an extra date. We are also trying to integrate ourselves with charity work such as the STEM Ambassadorship Program to try to get children interested in science by means of simple experiments.

 We are always looking for new ideas from members for social activities and are looking into organising a joint social with Bath’s Architecture and Civil Engineering. We are also researching new destinations for our society trips.