Facultaire Studentenraad Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen

🙋‍♀️ Say hi to Merel and Elin - two Psychology students at the UvA and the initiators of All Ears 👂

All Ears is an initiative for all UvA students. It’s a telephone line that you can call whenever you’re in need of a listening ear or when you just want to have a nice chat with a fellow student. This was made possible because of the funding they received via Keep in Touch, an initiative of the Executive Board to improve student wellbeing.

Together with 35 other UvA Psychology students, Merel and Elin are literally all ears. Feel absolutely free to call them via +31 (0)20 808 58 38 📞 Or visit their website via the link in bio.

UvA hoogste Nederlandse universiteit op internationale ranglijst De Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) staat dit jaar op plaats 55 van de toonaangevende wereldwijde universiteitsranglijst QS World University Rankin...

As per last night, the voter turnout at our faculty was as follows:

Social Sciences: 11.11%
Communication Science: 4.15%
Psychology: 6.15%
Child Development and Education: 4.29%

Evidently, the numbers are incredibly low. Voting is of great value because it gives you an opportunity to influence the sorts of changes that will be made at the UvA through the student councils. These changes range from lowering of BSAs to even fun things like the May-break which we had this year.

The voting period is open until tomorrow at midnight so I encourage everyone to vote if they haven’t done so already. Voting takes under one minute and can be done using this link: https://bit.ly/3vCRBGv

Not sure who to vote for and why to vote? Check out this handy resource made by the central student council: https://linktr.ee/uvacentraal

DEBATE! This upcoming Monday (31st of May) at 18:00 we (the faculty student council of social and behavioral sciences) are organizing a debate between 5 different parties that are running for the election this year at our faculty! We will discuss five different topics: proctoring, online education, numerus fixus, the buddy system and diversity! Join us via the link below, and look out for the next post about the give away we will do for those attending the debate! And lastly, don’t forget to vote (31st of May to 4th of June)!

https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/82393255046

Dm us if you have any questions 🦦

Today on the agenda: seat distribution! Our faculty is the largest in the UvA. With approximately 9,000 students, it was important to create sub-domains within the faculty across 4 districts. They are Comminication Science, Social Sciences, Psychology and Child Deveopment and Education. A certain number of seats is proportionally allocated to each domain based on their sizes in order to prevent over representation of certain studies in comparison to the rest. You can see the exact seat distribution on the picture! Do you have any questions about this? DM us 🦦 Ah, and don’t forget to vote!!!

We are back with another cheat sheet! Now that we told you what student elections are, it’s time to explain who you can vote for.

At our faculty of social and behavioral sciences we have candidates running for election from different programs but also from different student parties. The student parties participating in this year’s elections are @020.nl .uva and !

You can learn more about them from their Instagram pages or websites. Feel free to shoot us a message if you have any questions! :)

So you see all these people trying to get your vote, but what for? Here is the answer.

Next week student council elections will be held and, as a student, you have two votes: for a CSR candidate and for an FSR candidate.

Now what are these? CSR (centrale studentenraad) aka University of Amsterdam Central Student Council is the highest representative body of UvA students. They usually talk to the Executive Board of the uni and deal with UvA-wide matters, such as housing, diversity or sustainability. On the other hand, FSR (facultaire studentenraad) aka the faculty student council aka us usually liaises with the Dean of respective faculty and deal with only faculty-wide issues (of course they also work closely with CSR via their CSR delegate).

They are both here to represent you and your needs so choose wisely and follow us for more explanations! It’s not that scary and if you still have some questions about who we are and what we do, feel free to send us a DM! 🦦

Another one from our dictionary! What are these elections after all? 🤔

DM is with any questions you may have!

Student council elections are around the corner so we prepared a small series of posts explaining what student election are, who can you vote for and more! Stay tuned and don’t forget to vote!

The mentorship program, also known as the buddy system or peer coaching, is an onboarding and knowledge-sharing method used to orient first-year students. Over the past 2 months, we extensively studied the efficacy of this program in collaboration with the Fv-FMG.

One of our key findings was that the expectations of buddies and mentors were not satisfactorily met. In spite of this, the faculty continued to encourage and invest in the program on a yearly basis.

Another key finding was the direct correlation between incentives for mentors and their engagement in the system. Mentors who were highly incentivized for fulfilling their roles were a lot more active in the program than those who received relatively little-to-no incentives.

Finally, approximately 40% of the mentors who filled the survey claimed to have not been sufficiently briefed about their duties, tasks and responsibilities. They also received little to no guidance over the course of the year.

Recognizing these shortcomings, we proposed the following to the dean and faculty office by extension: