Today the elections for the University Council and the Faculty Council (School Council) have started (vote here)! Estimator has already introduced the Education Committee and now it’s time to tell you all about the ESE Faculty Council! We asked Faculty Council member Alicia Curth to explain what they do.
If you have read Estimator well, then you already know that whenever you run into organisational or content issues with your courses or programme, the Econometrics Education Committee is your first contact point. But what if you find a problem that is inherent to the whole faculty or that has nothing to do with the courses themselves? Then we, the ESE School Council, are there to help and represent you! More specifically, we as the student section of the council are there to discuss important issues that students encounter at the ESE in order to improve your university experience.
Who are we? The School Council consists of the Student Council and the Personnel Council. The Student Council consists of 2 econometrics students (Alicia and Frank) and 5 economics students (Brenno, Isabel, Ish, Mante and Yrla) and we come together with the Personnel Council, consisting of 6 professors, every 6 weeks to form an advisory body for our dean Professor Franses.
In the Faculty Council meetings we encounter a variety of issues and try to act in the best interest of all students. We have the right of approval for changes in the School Regulations as well as the Teaching and Examination Regulations. Moreover, advisory rights are given to us for the ESE’s budget and the four-yearly strategic long term plan. Additionally, we have the right to be heard on multiple issues, including education, research, financial, student and marketing policy.
On the other hand, we also have the right of initiative and have been working on a few issues this year. These include improving the ESE’s communication with prospective students as well as current students – did you know, for example, that before this year you could only contact the examination board by sending them a letter? Solving such small problems are as much our responsibility as attacking larger ones. Moreover, we are currently looking into the possibility to have a stronger student representation on course level – so to extend the elaborate course evaluations done by first-year student representatives to later years and to the economics programmes. Also, we are working on a plan to improve the bonding opportunities among all ESE students – to provide for some inter-study social events.
Our main goal, however, is to represent the ESE’s student body well. Issues that we raise in the council are mainly those that we have heard complaints about – so if there is a problem, we need to know about it before we can act on it. Thus, we are dependent on all of you for your feedback on issues that you encounter in your daily university life. Should you ever have any suggestions or issues with our faculty – please let us know by sending an email to studentcouncilese@gmail.com, via our Facebook page (here) or by contacting us in person! We are looking forward to your input!
The student members of the ESE School Council,
Alicia Curth, Brenno Baas, Frank van Alphen, Isabel Herman, Ish Ramaurtasing, Mante Abaraviciute, Yrla van der Ven