Young minds often challenge well established patterns. Education aims at stimulating these free minds to grasp knowledge in order to further prove that there can be room for better. This idea has been clearly reflected in the democratization of the European universities, which found its starting point in 1968 in Paris after massive student strikes at the University of Nanterre and Sorbonne. Following the Paris strikes, only one year after, University of Amsterdam students were the next to raise the stance towards a more democratic teaching environment, by occupying the Maagdenhuis building. This strong desire of making students’ voice heard has taken the shape of a new faculty body, the student council.
Nowadays, following multiple laws given by Dutch ministers, each and every university in the Netherlands has to establish at least a student council, whose members vote and give advice on policies advocated by the board of the university or the faculty. Thus, we, as the FSR FEB, represent an influential body with controlling power at our faculty. We are dedicated to ensuring that the FEB is constantly improving and to tracking down any issues that you encounter.
But what are we exactly taking care of? How are we specifically contributing to our faculty? In order to answer these questions, let us introduce ourselves.
To begin with, Samantha van den Hoek is our Chairman, the first among equals. She is the voice and guidance of the Council, constantly up to date with FEB issues and actively engaged in any interesting topic that comes in front of her eyes. Among her multiple activities, Samantha is mainly preoccupied with the smooth implementation of the New Bachelor’s model, closely collaborating with the Board of the Faculty towards establishing the new curriculum. Our Vice-Chairman, Nickardo Postma, strives to consolidate our team’s strengths and collaborates with Swiss Jurriens in order to follow and improve the implementation of Blended Learning. Under Blended Learning, the curriculum of most courses is to be modified by introducing digital learning tools, such as short videos and a testing platform.
Victor Oprea is the Chairman of the Education and Research Committee. Besides that, he focuses on improving our current Honours Programme and collaboration with the study advisers. On the opposite pole, Rinus van Grunsven is the Chairman of the Organization and Media Committee, managing the plans and projects proposed there. Moreover, he is devoted to assuring that the infrastructure of our campus meets the expectations of our faculty’s community.
Tijmen de Vos represents the eyes of our council and, together with Swiss and Mourad Farahat, is truly engaged in gathering input from FEB students through the Think Tank and Coffee Time projects. These two projects are held really often throughout the year, encouraging you to speak up your mind about the faculty. Tijmen is also keeping track of a new bachelor’s program, PPLE. In order to keep ourselves connected with the central level of the UvA, Mink Perée was named as our Central Student Council representative, who now mainly ensures that our council becomes informed about decisions and news that concern our university as a whole.
The finances of our council are closely supervised by our newly appointed Treasurer, Ioana Nicolau. On top of that, Ioana works together with Mink and the rest of the Council in order to organize campus activities that blast a feeling of community throughout our faculty. For example, we were happy to delight you with cookies during Christmas time! Moreover the piano in the E-hall seemed to be making a lot of students joyful. Further on, Mourad is keeping an eye on very diverse projects, but is mainly busy with research on the Socratic Teaching model, together with Tijmen. The Socratic Teaching model consists of an open discussion about current global issues, which aims at improving your motivation, discussion skills and study results. The distinctive feature of this discussion is that you will be able to leave out the theory and discuss the practical implications of different matters.
The OER (Onderwijs- en Examenregeling – Teaching and Examination Regulations) of our faculty and especially midterms are in the attention of Mick Fruytier. We revise the points of the OER every year in January and we give an advice on the points we do not agree with. The goal is to cooperate with the board of the faculty in order to make sure that changes in the teaching and examination regulations are appropriate and please our student body. Last but not least, all of our aims would be hard to attain without our Secretary, Renée Bijvoets. She writes the minutes of our meetings and manages different organizational matters.
Curious about how we work? You can always join our weekly meetings. They are officially open to the public, so if you wish to join our discussions, don’t hesitate! In case you would like to become part of the Student Council, be prepared for the elections taking place in May.
At the moment we are doing our best in defending your rights and interests, but, of course, we cannot possibly know everything that concerns you. This is why it is very important that you communicate us any change that you would like to see at the FEB! In the end, we represent and shape your ideas about how education at the FEB should be like. Maybe you have suggestions about regulatory matters; or perhaps you own the perfect receipt for strengthening the bonds in our community. Any idea is more than welcome and therefore, we hope to hear from you very soon!
You can find us in room E0.06, Roeterstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam.
Telephone number: 020 525 4384
E-mail: fsr.feb@studentenraad.nl
Check out our website/Like us on Facebook : www.studentenraad.nl / www.facebook.com/fsr.feb
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