Postgraduate Education – Zarwish Shafeeq

Empowering every postgraduate through accessible, and inclusive learning. Championing digital innovation and cutting-edge technology to enhance your academic journey. Committed to sustainable campus practices that protect our future. Together, we’ll build a forward-thinking educational community where diversity thrives, technology serves all students, and environmental responsibility shapes everything we do.

Introduce yourself and your campaign for Postgraduate Education Officer.

My name is Zarwish as you already know from the campaign and I’m basically campaigning for the basically I realized after all these months, like there are a lot of opportunities for postgraduates, but still they are not like aware of them. So my basic goal is to like make awareness campaigns for PGs so that they know about the sharing spaces like apart from a student union, and a graduate center, how many spaces are available for them for community building and for the kind of networking.

So my main goal is awareness and also starting initiatives for them to make more experience, more productive experience. Because I have realized we have just one year. So as compared to undergrads, we have just a comparatively short time. So I just want to make my postgraduate community more productive and more, you know, in terms of like… networking strong in terms. There is a strong lack of the inter-school collaboration because many events happen in one school, but there is no consistency sometimes I I have to run like, okay, between the Postgraduate building and the SU, okay, this is the time. And just one day I had to attend more than three events. So I think for that purpose, we should have some strong linkage between the schools and between the SU and the Graduate School so that everyone could make use of most of their time.

Do you have any previous experience representing students in Queens or other universities, whether it be clubs or societies?

Actually, frankly speaking, I was always the, you know, the reserved student and the shy student. So during my undergrad, I did my undergrad in Communications Studies from Pakistan. So I was like, always like, okay, I know I am like good in speech and creative writing and you know public events and public speaking but still there was some kind of hesitation. So I didn’t participate in you know the student representation bodies during my undergrad but I think Queen’s gave me that confidence And all the people here are so welcoming, are so warm and supportive. And that’s why I stood for this position because they literally encouraged me that you can do this and you should stand for it.

As you mentioned, building community, not just for postgraduate students, but the school entirely is really important for your campaign. How do you plan on doing this? Are there any specific events you’d like to go forward?

The Graduate School is doing a great job like in terms of like they are already organizing like workshops for CV and for other like softwares. But I think there is still some things missing like a Master’s mingle event is like I think just like two times they organized that event. So I think we should like organize such events more frequently. And also like in terms of technology, because I am a part of ShapeAI community; it’s for PhDs and Master’s [students]. And I realized like after talking to people coming from different schools that there is a, you know, very drastic difference between schools in terms of like inconsistency, regarding AI policies. So I think we should work on making these policies uniform all over the school so that student, because I belong to Business School and my school literally encourage so much AI and leveraging AI technologies for the better result. So I think other schools should also consider such a thing that they should make use of the AI for the betterment of the students in assessments and student inputs. It’s not like always like technology and AI is for the wrong use and it can, you know, hinder your like mind and the thinking process. But it can also be used for the betterment.

Could you also describe your campaign in five words or less?

Inclusive learning and shared community.

What’s your favorite cafe? Would you drink coffee or tea or what would be your favorite cafe around Queens?

My favorite cafe in Queens is Reboot because it’s like very fun place to be there. It’s kind of a, you know, I love kind of lively environment there.

You can read Zarwish’s manifesto here.