Napier Students’ Association (NSA)
Napier Students' Association exists to support the needs of Edinburgh Napier students, from the fun social things such as freshers’ week, bars, sports, clubs and student societies through to advice and representation when things aren’t quite going to plan.
NSA provide services, opportunities for participation and development and represent the student body to the University management and to the wider community. As your representative body NSA are involved as partners in University decision-making.
Representation
This is the core of the Student Association's business and the fundamental reason for NSA’s existence. It is a student-led organisation and the student leadership (the Student Executive) is made up of students elected by the student body. Three of these are full-time and salaried for their year of office, but there are other part-time volunteers on the Student Executive. All students can stand for elected office and all can vote in the student elections.
There are also around 350 programme representatives – students on every year of every programme Napier delivers all have students as their representatives making an ongoing contribution to their education. NSA trains and supports their needs to help make them as effective as they can be – and NSA has been seen as a model of good practice for student participation in higher education.
Advice Service (ISAS)
NSA runs a professional advice service for individual students. ISAS stands for Independent Student Advice Service and that’s exactly what it is; professional, confidential, non-judgemental and non-directive – and it is part of NSA, not the University.
ISAS aims to provide a holistic system of support which can address any problems you may experience while on your programme and give you the options on courses of action.
The advice offered is practical and rights-based and covers things such as: Funding and finance; Budgeting & debt counselling; Housing & tenancy rights; University Regulations; Employment; Immigration; Problems on your programme; Complaints, academic appeals, disciplinary issues and mitigating circumstances.
Freshers
To give you the start that your University career needs and to get you off on the right foot socially, NSA organises a Freshers’ Week packed full with events and entertainment. There are club nights, quizzes, live acts, the freshers’ ball, the legendary pub crawl and lots of fun things to help you meet other students and get you settled into student life.
NSA runs the biggest freshers’ fayre in Scotland to give you a taste of what you can get involved in as a student, the opportunities that are available to you, the clubs and societies you can join, and there are lots of free samples given away by our stall-holders too. NSA also produces a Freshers’ Handbook and you will receive this when you first arrive to help steer you through your first few weeks as an Edinburgh Napier student, and a Survival Guide which will provide you with detailed factual information on all aspects of student funding, accommodation, education, etc.
Sports Clubs & Societies
We have a range of sports clubs and other student societies to bring like-minded people together for some shared activities and fun – in these clubs the students are office-holders and run these clubs themselves. Clubs and societies are a great way of meeting people, and many of the friendships formed through sport or other society activities are lasting ones – often outlasting your time at University. As well as the social aspects, these clubs are also a good way to keep fit and healthy.
We have lots of different clubs on offer: football, rugby, drama, hockey, go-karting, clay-pigeon shooting, snooker, Christian Union, whisky tasting, gay, lesbian and transsexual society and many more.We’re always looking to increase the diversity of activities open to Edinburgh Napier students. So, if there are 15 of you wanting to start up a sports club that we haven’t thought of, or 10 wanting to start a society for an activity we don’t cover, there’s help in getting things up and running, and perhaps funding too.
We also provide training in aspects of organisation, budgeting and health and safety to our club office-holders to make sure that they are properly equipped and supported to run their own clubs. It’s all good for you and your final CV.
Entertainment
Work hard all day, play hard at night is the student mantra. If you want this, Napier Students' Association is happy to help. It organises club nights, music nights, band nights and quiz nights.
It also organises private hires at weekends for birthday parties, programme nights out and other special occasions.
