The Stirling Fund

Grant is being used to support three team home matches.

The Students' Union have purchased a gazebo with their grant to use at events.

The team are purchasing tackle bags with their grant.

Women’s Hockey received a grant to fund coaching workshop courses for their members.

Ladies’ Lacrosse have used their grant to purchase agility ladders and to fund members to complete umpire courses.

Men’s Hockey have purchased a new goalkeeper kit for their club with a grant.

The Cricket Club have used their grant to purchase specialised equipment and kit for female members to use during play.

Organising a traditional Japanese EKIDEN race to pass the spirit of the Olympics and Paralympics to all.

The purchasing of new spray decks for Kayak Polo.

Promoting and supporting the Dance Club to compete in competitions and perform an end-of-year showcase.

The creation of a comfortable and welcoming creative hub on campus to promote creativity and positive wellbeing.

Assisting the Scottish Political Archive with the creation of a graphic history of the Scottish Parliament.

The organisation of an exhibition to highlight the participation of young Scots in the Spanish Civil War.

Providing a range of new equipment, including weapons, safety equipment and scoring devices.

Support from the Stirling Fund allowed the Judo Club to acquire new crash mats, allowing the club to offer safer training sessions and improve their competitive intensity.

There is an established need for improvement in nurses’ health behaviours, with research with nursing students at the University of Stirling showing that they have low levels of physical activity and around a quarter currently smoke. With this in mind a proposal was submitted to the Stirling Fund to support a pilot of experiential learning methods for health behaviour change in undergraduate nursing students.

Their two objectives were:

1. To improve student experience and learning
2. To improve student’s health behaviours

The SHSH008 module teaches health promotion to undergraduate nurses in Year 2 and as part of this module in 2019, the faculty ran a pilot with up to 30 students of experiential learning methods. Students volunteered to be part of one of three groups:

• walking (Step Count challenge)
• running (Couch to 5K)
• smoking cessation

The students were very enthusiastic and complimentary about Go-SHOTS, and really enjoyed the sessions.

The Sports Union's campaign #WeAreOne, which celebrated diversity at the University of Stirling, was supported by the Stirling Fund through the distribution of rainbow shoelaces. These were worn by students and staff to raise awareness of acceptance across campus.

The Sports Union is committed to continue to grow and engage with students who are not already physically active. Initiatives such as this are a great way to illustrate the inclusivity and welcoming nature of our clubs.

Funding from Alumni went towards the Brig Digitalisation Project which is being worked on by the Brig editorial team and the University Archives. The aim is to digitise the full set of the first 25 years of the newspaper, creating a digital archive covering 1969-1994. This project will help preserve the original documents by reducing handling and create a new online resource.

The new digital resource will also be of direct benefit to the Brig editorial team who will have instant access to digitised content from the first 25 years of the newspaper. This material can be referred to / re-used in current features and provide an additional resource for online versions of Brig.

The Students Union, and four autistic students from the University teamed up to hold two events in the Atrium and Macrobert Arts Centre for World Autism Day to raise awareness about the invisible illness and how it can impact student experience on campus. This was with thanks to the Stirling Fund for supporting these successful events and for supplying equipment which included sets of headphones.

The Stirling Autistic Support (SAS) group believe with the purchase of equipment it can be used in Freshers' Week events for students who might otherwise feel overwhelmed or too uncomfortable to tolerate the noise and sensory ‘overload’ that can be a barrier to participation.

The Dual Career Management Workshops for student athletes were successfully delivered on 24 and 31 May 2019 with funding from Alumni. The project was organised by Dr Hee Jung Hong and designed to enhance student athletes' experiences at Stirling.

Support from the Stirling Fund went towards providing workshops (including mentoring from retired Olympians) to assist student athletes to identify barriers, challenges, and support available to help them balance their academic and sporting commitments.

As Scotland's University for Sporting Excellence, it is crucial to improve student athletes’ experience at the University of Stirling. However, the concept of ‘Dual Career Management’ was not limited to student athletes but to a wider group of students who hold dual career (e.g. part time work-study or family care-study).

The Stirling Fund granted money to support a CPD training course designed to help Adventure Instructors on Gender Identity Awareness.

The Fencing Club was awarded money from the Stirling Fund to support experienced club members becoming coaches so that they could train current and future students taking up the sport. Support from the fund has benefitted the club greatly through helping members compete in the Stirling Sword fencing competition and at BUCS.

The University of Stirling Archives and Special Collections was delighted to present the UK premiere of the Malawi Lost History project's documentary on the 1967 Mwanza War. This was with thanks to the Stirling Fund which supported the conference and welcomed world class researchers to Stirling.

The event allowed for knowledge exchange, exhibition of current research, networking and a unique opportunity to watch the important documentary. Additionally for our students it was a fantastic opportunity for them to experience a conference setting - perhaps for the first time – and potentially present papers alongside world class researchers.

Thanks to the Stirling Fund the University of Stirling Sub-Aqua club were able to get their SCUBA diving cylinders serviced at the Edinburgh diving centre. The funding costs covered the costs of a service and safety check, which needs to be done regularly in order for them to be safe to dive with.

Shortly after receiving the funding the club went on two consecutive long weekend trips to Oban allowing their ocean divers to become qualified and give the sports divers progress with their training.

The University's Women's Football Club received funding and were able to expand by operating three BUCS football teams, enabling all players time to play on the field. The Stirling Fund has also assisted with the costs for running the club and for reducing membership costs which has encouraged more female students with the opportunity to participate with increased accessibility.

As football is increasingly becoming a popular sport amongst women all around the world due to its increased recognition by the media and successes of more national teams (e.g. Scotland’s women’s national team), the club desires to be at the forefront of providing a place where more women can enjoy playing football, regardless of their ability and experience.

Dr Fiona Barclay, Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies was a successful Stirling Fund recipient who received a grant for her project - Stirling Language-Swap: Language and Cultural Exchange. Funding went towards the design, launch and promotion of Stirling Language-Swap, which is a micro-website that is currently being created with a design to:

• equip students and staff with the cultural and linguistic skills required for effective internationalisation
• facilitate language learning
• help international students to integrate

Hosted on the University’s website, the micro-website will put individuals learning a language in contact with others who are native speakers of their target language, in order to facilitate conversational exchange. Users will be able to create a brief profile of themselves, offering conversation in their native language in return for one which they wanted to learn and, via private messaging, would be able to contact others in a similar position in order to meet for conversational exchange in an informal, face-to-face setting.

The micro-website would also be available to students planning to spend time in a different country and keen to learn about its culture (inc. administrative processes), even where they already speak the language.

Planting Change, a project by Students' Union's Environmental Development Coordinator, Matt Woodthorpe received funding from the Stirling Fund. The focus of the project was to plant varieties of perennial, hardy flowers such as Calendula, Ox-Eye Daisy and mint which allows the Green and Blue Space and Environmental Enterprise Society to dehydrate and use in student DIY cosmetics workshops.

By focusing on these types of plants Matt and his team of keen students have ensured that the funding made available to the project will have a lasting effect far beyond the funding year.

An additional advantage of this project is that it involves activities throughout the vast majority of the year. As such, students have been able to volunteer in the community garden through preparing, planting and maintaining the bed.

Funding will also be going towards student cosmetics workshops led by Environmental Enterprise Society and Environmental Projects Assistant.

The Multicultural Book Project was hosted by Library and Information Services with the aim to make the library collections more diverse, and to engage students and staff. The project promoted books by BAME (Black, Asian, Arabic and other minority Ethnic) authors, to widen the range of literature regarding different ethnic identities and cultural lives in the library.

This is an ongoing project where students can suggest books. Go to the website to suggest a book.