Who am I?

A good question… who is the Chair? Or more pertinently, what do they do?

When I first became Chair I was given a mixture of advice and insight from past Chairs and committee members: From the relaxed image of having little to do except writing the Agenda, to ruling the committee and sciety with a rod of iron. In short, the position of Chair was a malleable one to be molded into whatever form was appropriate, desired or needed by the society. Therefore what I write here is simply one interpretation of a Chair who has had fun, stress and in short an "interesting" experience of running the society.

My job as Chair:

1 Represent the face of the Society

This aspect of the job was one that I performed infrequently but often to effect in meeting with University administrators, or simply to the society. This also involved emailing.

2 Write the agenda and chair the committee meetings

Writing the agenda wasn't difficult and at times I even forgot to send it out before the meeting. The importance of the agenda is simply to make sure every point that needs to be addressed is addressed and that the meeting doesn't slide into the choas of chatting or (heaven forbid) arguments. It is important to make sure everyone has the chance to have their say, but that the meeting doesn't drag on.

3 Be the spider in the web / Queen Bee… (you get the analogy)

I very much saw myself as the spider in the web of the society - I made sure that I knew, loosely, everything that was going on so I could make sure that jobs were delegated appropriately and fairly. Also, importantly, since I did not know everything, I needed to know who did know about topics such as how to fill in the Social Events form. Another aspect of being the Spider was to make sure that the society is a unit and make sure that everyone felt that they were involved, and realised that they were liked and wanted.

Relationship with the Secretary

A lot of the organisational aspect of being Chair can be shared or monopolised by the secretary, depending on what sort of Chair you want to be. Being an organisational person myself, I prefered to have an active role as Chair even in this department, but limited myself to the agenda, emailing, and notices.

If you do not set out boundaries or each explain how you see your roles, this relationship could become stressful since these two roles can be very closely intertwined. Make sure you have a good relationship with everyone, but especially the secretary. Do not over burden each other with duties nor try and take over each others position, but support each other closely and running the society should be a doddle!

Aside

I just wanted to add in a view that I gained whilst being chair. The chair is the only member of the committee who doesn't perform a specific function in relation to putting on a show, as a result I believe that a main focus of the chair should be to represent the members of the society. This involves making sure that everyone is enjoying themselves and in essence performing an almost pastoral role. I did this by taking a lead on organising socials and by making sure that everything the society did was, at it's centre, focused around improving the experience of the members…. mainly because without members there is no society!!- Andy L.