Student leaders hope to restructure a council that meets with the provost to make the body more inclusive and responsive to student concerns.
Both Shelly Cox, former Student Government Association vice president of academic affairs, and Lisa Crisalli, who assumed the post yesterday, said they wanted the Provost’s Student Advisory Council to represent a broader range of campus constituencies. Provost Nariman Farvardin said he was open to ideas and the structure of the council should be determined mainly by the students.
Cox said they have considered many different plans, but Crisalli favors a format that would first create councils in each college to advise each dean, similar to the Dean’s Student Advisory Council in the behavioral and social sciences college. Members of those groups would then serve on the provost’s advisory council, guaranteeing there would be at least one representative from each school.
“I think that’s one reasonable, viable solution,” Farvardin said, referring to Crisalli’s plan. But, he said, certain issues would need to be worked out.
While he called it “a great idea,” Farvardin said forming student advisory councils in every college and keeping them active would introduce “a layer of complication.” He said they would also need to ensure graduate students had a voice on the council.
If each college had one graduate member on the council, it would include at least 26 people — much larger than the 10 to 15 Farvardin said was ideal.
Outgoing Graduate Student Government Vice President for Academic Affairs Aaron Tobiason said the current representation model works well for graduate students but he would be open to new ideas.
Crisalli said her system could make the council more focused on addressing issues than it was this year, when she said meetings usually just consisted of the provost explaining what was going on within the university.
The council’s impact is determined more by the specific actions members take than by the body’s structure, Farvardin said.
Cox and Crisalli both stressed plans to reshape the body were in preliminary stages, and no decisions have been made yet.
As it is now, much of the council’s membership is drawn from campus governing bodies. It is co-chaired by the vice presidents of academic affairs of the SGA and Graduate Student Government, and several members come from University Senate committees. Other students sometimes request to be on the council, and members can elect to stay on the council after they have served on it once.
That organizational plan has resulted in overrepresentation for some colleges that typically have the most engaged students, such as BSOS, Farvardin and the students said. Rob Waters, assistant to the president for equity and diversity, said students from BSOS have filled many council seats recently, but representation had previously been broader.
“For the committee to be most productive, everyone agrees there should be better representation from different parts of the university,” Farvardin said.
Cox said she would meet with Waters to discuss the council’s structure but that any changes might take some time to implement because representation on the council is part of the SGA’s bylaws.
cox at umdbk dot com
