By Student Lives Editor Angelina Zhao.
DCU’s part-time postgraduate officer, Josh King, has called for structural changes to the DCU Students’ Union executive. He argues that the current single postgraduate role cannot meet the needs of just under 5,000 students across taught and research programmes.
Josh says the challenges he faces as the Postgraduate PTO are not from the students, but from the university itself.
“The biggest issues are a lack of engagement from the university in terms of communication of supports and events for them to go to,” he said.
Before entering the role, Josh expected that research students would struggle with isolation. Instead, he found something different.
“I thought before coming into this role, there would be a lack of isolation for research students, but actually, there wasn’t as much as I expected,” he said.
“They don’t feel isolated, they just feel disconnected.’
He added that taught master’s students often form their own social circles off-campus through accommodation and other groups. This can sometimes limit their involvement in DCU life and societies.
Josh previously studied economics and policy analysis at the University of Limerick, where he said postgraduate engagement was far stronger. “I was under 20 when I studied there, and it felt like everyone was engaged as a postgraduate student there” he said.
UL offered many events for postgraduate students and had a full-time postgraduate officer there too. He expected a similar experience at DCU when he began his PHD, but soon he realised it was completely different.
“Once I started, not only PHD students come around like ghosts, master’s students are completely unrecognised,” he said.
Josh is now pushing for the Postgraduate Part-time Officer position to be split into multiple roles as part of the Students’ Union’s ongoing constitutional review.
“I’m hoping to get the role split, as the DCU SU executive is currently doing a constitutional review,” he said.
He has been meeting with the AMLÉ postgraduate officer to explore different ways and ideas on how to split the role.
He ideally would like it split into two or three separate roles. Taught Postgraduate officer representing 3,709 students (2024/25), Research Postgraduate Officer representing 960 students, and Engagement Officer to help with events and communication across both cohorts.
Since running in the role for the second year as PTO, Josh has taken several initiatives to rebuild the postgraduates community. He has run the Postgraduate Society for the past year and has collaborated with multiple societies since September to increase engagement.
He also created a WhatsApp group for his postgraduate faculty, which now has over 450 members. He updates it regularly with events and opportunities to help connect students with life on campus.
Josh hopes the Students’ Union will take on his proposed structure so it can better help the students as a whole with the complexity of postgraduate students’ lives.