Matthias and Imogen look back
Matthias and my (Imogen) main role has been to put forward a student perspective on issues encountered during the programme, and to help reach solutions that will benefit the student body. As our term as Programme Board members came to an end this October, we feel grateful to have had the opportunity to represent our fellow students and help improve both the programme and study environment for International Studies students. This year the Board has worked on a diverse range of issues brought to us; here we have summarized some of the most notable changes made to the course.

Together with the OLC we’ve helped bring more study spaces to Wijnhaven, with an additional 170 new places being added this summer!

• We helped make the decision to split Cultural Interaction into two separate courses – a linguistics course and a cultural studies course. In the future students will have the option to pick between the two, giving the lecturers more time to go into greater depth within the discipline and build on knowledge gained in first-year and area courses.
• The student members of the Programme Board also proposed a new system of enrolment for electives, which will be piloted this academic year with the third-year elective. Students will be able to submit a preferred list of electives and will then be allocated a class accordingly.
• We also developed a plan to take away midterm exams in International Studies, which will be piloted with Cultural Studies and Politics beginning this academic year and carried out across the degree if successful. This will help take away stress around the midterm period, where many other assignments are also due, as well as helping prepare students for completing assignments over a longer period of time. Moreover, it will also reduce the workload for tutors, while allowing the weight placed on exams to be decreased to 60%. This will allow tutors to place more focus on giving feedback on assignments, the weight of which will be increased to 40%.

Introducing the new student representatives
We feel that this has been a successful year for the Programme Board, but as always there are more issues to tackle! A job for the new student representatives, who will take our place in the board for this academic year. We asked them to briefly introduce themselves to you.

Jitske Louise Veenhoven
“I’m Jitske Louise, a third-year student of BA International Studies. I chose to specialize in the Middle East with Arabic as my language and am currently taking a minor in Law. Additionally, I am writing my thesis on the legal position of street children in Egypt’s capital Cairo. In my spare time, I enjoy playing and listening to music and last year I was active within BASIS as the President of the Music Committee.

As this year’s member of the Programme Board, my goal will be to overlook the issues that concern you as a student in our course and then act upon them and try to sort them out. I’m very excited to take on this position and work with Mimi and the other Programme Board members to improve your study experience.”

Mimi Hu
 “My name is Mimi Hu, I am 20 years old, and I am in my third semester of BA International Studies, majoring in East Asia. I was born and raised in Austria where I gathered my first experiences working in student representation and education policies. Representing and pushing for the wishes and opinions of my fellow students has been part of my academic life for a long time turning out to be one of my passions.

Besides my bachelors and the Programme Board I am also doing Honours College Tackling Global Challenges and I am this year’s president of BASIS Career Committee. In order to be able to bring forward all students’ complaints, communication is key. Together with Jitske, I look forward to being a strong voice on behalf of our fellow students as student representatives in the Programme Board 2018/19.”

Get in touch! (also see walk in hours below)
We have enjoyed representing International Studies students on the Programme Board this year, and we are sure that the new representatives will continue to bring positive changes to our course! If students would like to get in contact with them, Jitske and Mimi can be approached in person, as well as via e-mail or Facebook (see below!).

Email Jitske Louise: j.l.veenhoven.2@umail.leidenuniv.nl

Email Mimi Hu: n.d.hu@umail.leidenuniv.nl

Walk In hours:

Where?
Wijnhaven, Room 2.62

When?
Wednesday, 28 of November: 11:00-13:00
Wednesday, 5  December: 11:00-13:00

Contact us
If you are not able to visit us during our walk in hour do not hesitate to send us an email.

Jitske Louise Veenhoven: 
j.l.veenhoven.2@umail.leidenuniv.nl

Mimi Hu: 
n.d.hu@umail.leidenuniv.nl