Student Association at GW (2014-2016)
The Student Association (SA) at GW represents the undergraduate and graduate student body. It provides help for students who need it, decides changes in the community to make students better off, and supports student’s organizations and events. I have been involved in the Student Association at The George Washington University since freshman year (Fall 2014) until the Spring of 2016. During my freshman year, I was selected as a member of the Freshman Advisory Council (FAC), and, during my sophomore year, I was selected as the Assistant Director of International Students. Both of these positions have helped me to get to know the university from a more professional viewpoint, get more involved, and to get to know people with different interests that are all united by their efforts of making GW a better place for students.
Freshman Advisory Council (2014-2015)
As a member of the Freshman Advisory Council (FAC), I was required to meet every two weeks with the rest of the members to discuss some of the aspects that could be improved for the upcoming new students. I talked to my freshman classmates to know what the needs of the freshman class where, in order to plan a solution to it within the rest of the council for next year’s new students. The main issue they focused on was the advising program for the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, which had a shortage of advisors and was unable to keep up with the needs of the students, whereas Elliott School had fewer students and therefore a more organized and unified advising system. After I met with some Elliott School advisors to understand how their advising system worked as a role model, the rest of the council came together with ideas for how to adapt that system to the Columbian College in order to benefit younger students who are unsure of class decisions. The solution we came up with was implementing a peer advising system. The academic advising office successfully reformed their advising system implementing some of the council’s ideas.
Assistant Director for International Students (2015-2016)
The international student population at GW is about a third of the total student population, representing more than 100 countries. Is therefore necessary for the Student Association to devote a certain portion of its influence towards this population, which is done through the appointment of a Director and Assistant Director of International Students in its executive cabinet.
When I was selected as the Assistant Director of International Students, I was not only very excited to lend a hand in helping international students, but I also knew I wanted to leave a lasting impact on the international student body that would benefit the international student experience both at GW and in their future in the US or abroad. Together, with the Director for the 2015-2016 term, we lined up a set of objectives that aimed to help undergraduate and graduate international students at GW enhance their life on campus and abroad.
I focused on those students wanting to go back to their home countries or anywhere else abroad. This delegated approach aimed to develop projects that would work towards these objectives, while simultaneously engaging students on campus.
To achieve my objective of increasing student’s prospects back in their home countries or elsewhere, I decided to carry out two projects: the first one was to increase their networking skills in order to obtain informational interviews, internships, or job opportunities by engaging current students to connect to GW alumni through LinkedIn. The second project, which is still ongoing, is to further engage students with their home countries by reconnecting with their embassies, which can be great resources for a foreign student abroad. By reconnecting, students could be able to obtain professional and education aid, depending on the country.
Although these objectives seemed very clear at the end of the year, they were far from it when the year started. For the LinkedIn project, I had initially planned on creating a database of GW students and alumni, where one could search for GW alumni in other countries. However, I found out after a meeting with a GW administrator that such a database already existed; it was called the Career Advisory Network (CAN), but it had failed to click with the student population and it had turned obsolete. Later, on my behalf, the then-SA president met with the Alumni Association regarding this issue. At this meeting, we learned that LinkedIn was already doing the job CAN aimed to do by allowing students to search GW alumni by simply typing, “people that study at GW” or joining the GW Alumni Association group. As a consequence, I decided to create a flyer with the help of Career Services, to be handed to international students around campus, and specially to the incoming ones during International Colonial Inauguration (or orientation), to get students familiarized with this resource as early as possible.
With this new flier being launched that highlighted the usefulness of LinkedIn, CAN no longer seemed to be relevant. I met then with the Alumni Association to show them the flier and determine what the fate of CAN would be. To avoid any confusion from having two databases, the Alumni House decided to delete CAN during the summer of 2016.
Secondly, the project of connecting international students with their respective embassies started as an initiative I was developing as the Vice President for GW Por Colombia. In accordance to a meeting with the Colombian embassy organized by the then-Managing Director of GW’s External Relations, I decided to put together, on behalf of the organization, a formal partnership to discuss three points of needs that Colombian students at GW want from the embassy.
These were: access to internships, information about officers and prominent figures as well as events occurring in the embassy, and access to information about Colombian businesses interested in hiring Colombian talent being trained abroad. After writing the project both in English and in Spanish, presenting it to the embassy, and seeing its great potential, I decided then to turn it into a model that could be shared with the rest of the international student organizations at GW so that they could copy the partnership and apply to their specific embassies. The model is already done, which was my goal for 2016, however I will continue to make sure it reaches the rest of the necessary student organizations on campus.
The flier I made with the help of GW Career Services is attached above.