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University and College Union

The Open University branch of the University and College Union

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Reps and Contacts

UCU Contacts

As part of the UCU Build the union campaign - members can volunteer to be a UCU contact - read more about what is involved or register to be a UCU contact on the UCU Build the union website.

Branch Executive Committee 2022-2023

The executive committee consists of the branch officers and 12 ordinary members who are elected once a year by ballot of the membership, plus a few ex-officio members and a limited number of co-opted members. The executive committee is responsible for the day to day running of the branch and determines the composition of our negotiating teams. The executive also sets up working groups, which usually consist of executive members but sometimes include other members. Click here to view the current Executive Committee.

Associate Lecturer Representatives 2022-2023

The AL reps are elected once a year by our AL members in each region. They are points of contact, and local representatives for ALs, and collectively they function as the AL reps’ committee, which plays an important role in advising the branch executive committee on matter relating to AL employment. Click here to view the current OU UCU AL reps Committee.

Regional/national Centre Representatives

East Midlands R05, Nottingham  Brendan Quinn 
North West R08, Manchester  Elaine Walker 
Wales, Cardiff   Please get in touch if you could be the UCU contact in Cardiff.
Scotland, Edinburgh Please get in touch if you could be the UCU contact in Edinburgh.
Ireland, Belfast  Pease get in touch if you could be the UCU contact in Belfast.

Departmental Representatives at Walton Hall

We would like UCU members to become departmental representatives/UCU contacts and on the Open University campus, we have the following reps/contacts, if you would like to be a Departmental UCU rep then please contact the UCU Office on 53069 (Deb Shann on Microsoft Lync) or ucu@open.ac.uk. If your OU unit/department is not listed then we do not have a rep or contact in that unit, please get in touch if you could volunteer to take on this role.

Academic Services vacancy
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Chris Williams, Ros Crone (History department), Julia Chukwuma (Economics department) and Francesca Benatti (English and Creative Writing) 
Faculty of Business and Law (FBL) vacancy
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)  John Busvine, Kit Power and Kevin Church
STEM - Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) Iman Naja 
Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies (WELS) Severine Hubscher-Davidson, Wayne Taylor, Alison Higgs and Lesley McGrath 
Marketing & Communications Michael Bartlett
PVC (Students) Rachel Garnham
RES - was Research & Academic Strategy Helen Bowes-Catton

Union Learn reps

We are pleased to report that we have several Union Learning representatives trained. For queries about employee education and training, contact ucu@open.ac.uk.

Health and Safety reps

We are interested in hearing from any other members who are interested in becoming UCU Health and Safety representatives - currently these people are Health & Safety reps for the branch.

Lesley Kane
Peter Piper
Saleem Rashid
Kit Power, Workload H&S rep
Caitlin Adams

Further information about Health and safety.

Health and Safety Workload Reps

Please contact the UCU office to ask about our Health & Safety Workload reps: ucu@open.ac.uk

Green Rep

The branch has multiple reps active on sustainability and Just Transition issues, with branch activities co-ordinated by Peter Wood, Branch Vice President and national co-chair of the UCU Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee. To attend Green Reps training, or to join the relevant branch working group, contact: ucu@open.ac.uk.

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Contact information:

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Phone us on 01908 6(53069) or Deb Shann on Skype for Business or Teams

Call into Room 015, Wilson C block, Walton Hall

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