Workshop - UTN och Sektionerna

Uppsala Union of Engineering and Science Students (UTN) currently consists of 16 sections. It is the sections that builds up the UTN and they drives the organization strategically by adding representatives to UTN's council. Each section consists essentially of a compound that has taken the responsibility and the role as a section. The Sections compounds have their own businesses and are not connected to UTN's activities more than that they are adding representatives to various bodies of the UTN, such as the council.

This fellowship may in many cases be difficult to grasp, and the difference between the sectons differ significantly, both in the scale of operations and how they relate to the role as a section. In other words, it is important that UTN and sections have the oppertunity to meet and discuss their relationship to find forms of cooperation.

The workshop, which took place on Sunday the 11th of November, began with a brunch and started out with a brainstorming where everyone had to think about the mening of the word sections. The results of this part can be seen HERE compiled in a mindmap. After that Frederick Härlin (Member of UTN's board) held a short presentation of UTN's orgnaisation and structure.

The Workshop's main core comprised four disscussions were the substances was; the sections and UTN's role and responsibilities, support and resources, maintaining the student-educational interests and student influence, and, the future. Some of the issues discussed was: How are the sections and UTN linked together? How and when should the sections follow UTN's policies and guidelines? What type of support and resources need the sections? How should the coordination of student influence look like? and, How should the sections and UTN work to keep up a continuous dialogue?

Inviting all UTN's sections to this workshop is one step in getting the sections more involved in UTN's operation, increase their ability to influence and discuss their role in the organisation. UTN's board think questions like this is importentant and they also have UTN's sections as one of their focus questions during this fiscal year.

The workshop got many positive comments and likely their will be more workshops organized in the future. If you like to know more about what was discussed or read the summary of the discussion sessions, you are welcome to contact me at josefin.svensson(at)utn.se