A C&G Union Sabbatical

City & Guilds College Union, as the largest of Imperial's four Faculty Unions, is responsible for coordinating events and activities for over 5,000 engineering and management students. Over the past decade our activities have expanded enormously with new service initiatives launched to complement our range of traditional social and sporting events. Academic representation has also become increasingly important, particularly with the maturing of the college's faculty structure.

Maintaining our current level of activity is becoming increasingly difficult. The workload taken on by our officers is extraordinary - many of whom are dedicating five to ten hours a day to keep the union running as well as pursuing a full-time engineering degree. This situation simply isn't sustainable.

The Union has for a few years been committed to securing a full-time "sabbatical" President for engineering. The student elected would take a year's leave from studies to concentrate full-time on running the Union. This is already the situation with the Medical School and Imperial has nearly twice as many engineering as medical students!

To achieve this goal we need to secure an annual income of approximately £25,000. For this, we need to establish a capital endowment fund large enough to yield approximately this amount each year. Raising this amount of money isn't going to be easy, but it must be done.

This website has been set-up to provide some more information on why we need a sabbatical and how we hope to make the idea work. If you are able to help either personally, or through any industrial or commercial links you may have, you would be making a very valuable contribution to the quality of student life for Imperial's engineers.

Yours Sincerely,

Mark Mearing-Smith,
City & Guilds College Union President