As the academic year draws to a close, students are in the process of electing their respective schools’ academic council representatives for next year. Though Georgetown College’s elections are ongoing through Monday, the School of Foreign Service, McDonough School of Business and School of Nursing & Health Studies elected representatives last week.

Across all four schools, the top agenda items for incoming and outgoing academic councils are increasing transparency and communication in their positions as liaisons between the deans’ offices and students.

Incoming SFS Academic Council President Kyle Zhu (SFS ’14), who ran unopposed, said he hopes to give SFS students a greater say in the formation of their curriculum and academic life. According to Zhu, the new SFS Academic Council will work to increase communication with the students through a regular newsletter and weekly open houses.

“I wanted to make sure that SFS students know where to access resources for research, internships and other academic passions that I never knew about until much later at Georgetown,” Zhu said.

For example, Zhu plans to lobby for access to classes in the McDonough School of Business.

“Many SFS students want to take these classes but are currently barred from taking them and instead can only take a watered-down version for non-MSB students,” Zhu said. “The inability of SFS students to obtain a minor also makes it difficult to access certain classes and resources from academic departments at Georgetown.”

The SFSAC succeeded in instituting a joint introductory macro- and microeconomics course this year, a focus of outgoing SFSAC President Jon Askonas (SFS ’13).

College Academic Council Vice President Kamil Lupicki (COL ’14), who is running for CAC president, said he hopes to increase interschool collaboration, something he thinks has fallen by the wayside.

“Over the past academic year, there hasn’t been that much dialogue between the four academic councils, though I do hope that it can return to prior levels over the course of next semester,” he said.

Lupicki highlighted the multiple CAC events this year that were created to increase communication between students and deans, including an ice cream social this past Wednesday.

“We found that for many upperclassmen, they stopped using the resources available through the Dean’s Office after sophomore year,” Lupicki said. “Obviously, this is partly because, for juniors and seniors, they have a better idea as to what they will focus on in terms of studies, but we definitely wanted to reopen those lines of communication between deans and students.”

This year, the CAC worked to establish a printing plan automatically included in tuition, similar to the models for MSB and NHS students. According to Lupicki, while the council has shown a proposal to the university administration, officials are still not ready to move on it.

Current MSB Academic Council member Patrick Moore (MSB ’15) reflected on the past year’s efforts to increase transparency about course requirements.

“We really put an emphasis on trying to clear up requirements for majors for underclassmen along with normal course requirements for all MSB students,” Moore said, specifically mentioning a majors fair for freshmen held earlier this year.

MSB Academic Council elections concluded April 19, with Alana Magli (MSB ’14) succeeding Nikhil Lakhanpal (MSB ’13) as president.

Outgoing NHS Academic Council Co-Chairs Scott Wisniewski (NHS ’13) and Katie Dunn (NHS ’13) have focused on increased faculty-student interaction this year.

They also succeeded in their efforts to reintroduce philanthropy to the council’s agenda by fundraising to support St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a Jesuit school for AIDS orphans in Kenya.

Antonia Kopp (NHS ’14) and Jamie Schlarbaum (NHS ’15), who were elected NHS Academic Council co-presidents March 5, said that continuing these philanthropic efforts was a main priority of theirs for the upcoming year. The rest of the NHS Academic Council was elected on April 19. They are the first co-chairs to be elected at such an early date in an effort to facilitate a smoother transition under the leadership of their outgoing counterparts.

“It was really helpful to be able to have this period where we could still look to Scottie and Katie,” Schlarbaum said. “They’ve been so accessible both inside of meetings and out and have always shown that not only is this job extremely important to the school, but it’s also a lot of fun.”