In last Wednesday’s first-ever fully online Academic Council elections, the College and School of Foreign Service elected representatives to serve on next year’s academic councils.
Former College Academic Council President Doug Britt (COL ’01), who co-chaired the elections for the College, was disappointed, but not surprised, about the 15 percent voter participation rate.
“It’s usually lower than GUSA elections because we don’t advertise as much,” Britt said.
The winners of the CAC elections for the rising sophomore class are Ilana Blankman, Shilpa Reddy, Kyle Dandelet and Kristin Thorne. Representing rising juniors are Paul Chang, Jennifer Kasten, Mita enezes and Dolores DiBella. Newly-elected senior representatives are Alli Linden, Justine Daigneault, Joseph Parry, Caragh Moynihan and Christina Lindgren. Lindgren was also elected president by the new board.
DiBella, who was elected secretary of the new council, said they many issues on their agenda. She hopes the College will soon have an event similar to the SFS-sponsored annual Diplomatic Ball and the Nursing School’s Ball. According to DiBella, the council plans to create a brochure with information on the College deans and Academic Council members to be handed out to incoming freshmen and transfer students during New Student Orientation.
Ory Abramowicz (SFS ’02), chair of the SFS Academic Council elections, said he was happy with voter turnout, especially for the freshman class. With a 51percent participation rate in the freshman SFS election, it was the highest turnout in any recent Georgetown election.
“We’re definitely going to use the Internet again in the fall,” Abramowicz said.
The SFS winners for the rising sophomore class, Kristen Wayne and Beatka Zakrzewski, defeated four other students to represent next year’s sophomore class.
Wayne is a staff writer for The Hoya.
Zakrzewski, who served on the Diplomatic Ball committee this year, said she ran for Academic Council to get more involved with academics, specifically contributing suggestions and changes to the actual curriculum. Among her objectives for the upcoming year are to build more school unity, increase interaction between faculty and students and to standardize the SFS language proficiency exam.
The newly-elected junior class representatives for SFS are Sandrea Hwang and Stacy Tsai. Hwang said she ran for Academic Council to “advocate more student involvement in all levels.”
“It’s a great forum in which I could be more involved in school activities,” Hwang said.
Elections for rising SFS rising seniors and freshmen will take place in the fall.
With a 30 percent participation rate among rising juniors in the SFS, Tsai said she was somewhat disappointed with the voter turnout. “I would like to see an increase. [Voting] is a sign of how much students care.”
No Academic Council elections took place for the McDonough School of Business, since the number of interested candidates matched the number of open representative seats for each class. Representing rising seniors are Ryan Komppa, Bill Jarvis and Kevin O’Keefe. Andrew Chappell, Alison Hager and Asif Zaman are representatives for the rising junior class, and Spencer English, Jwanne Lavergne and Andrew Phillip will represent next year’s sophomores.
Freshmen and sophomores in the Nursing School voted for academic council representatives April 5. Winners in the freshman class were Patrick Durbin, Hannah Castillo and Ashley Pereira. Abby Winder, Anne Marie Ellie and Maureen McCartney won as rising junior representatives.
The rising senior elections in the Nursing School were held April 6 and 10. Winners were Keavney Klein, Emily Huller, Jason Lawrence, Nicole Yanjanin and Meaghan Quinn.
Yanjanin is staff writer for The Hoya.