by Mark Petrovic (G4)
Over the last several years, the MSTP Student Advisory Committee (SAC) has developed into an important vehicle for change in the MSTP community. Elected representatives serve as liaisons between each class, the SAC Chair-elect and Chair, and the MSTP Leadership team, as well as with other important bodies including the VUSM Council of Class Officers (CCO) and the VU Graduate Student Council (GSC). Every year, ideas, feedback, and concerns of the MSTP students are distilled into some of the best improvements to our program.
A yearly tradition of SAC is to select a theme to foster the development of ideas and frame discussions about the topics being discussed at the monthly meeting. This year the theme was Catalyst, chosen with the goal of identifying and implementing changes that would facilitate engagement with the MSTP community. I would like \ to specifically highlight two important and developing initiatives with respect to engagement across our program.
- We identified challenges with scheduling events across the MSTP, whether interclass meetings, happy hours, CAB events or otherwise, specifically related to conflicting schedules. In order to remedy this, the program (Bryn) has implemented an Outlook calendar that incorporates elements of the previously existing Vanderbilt MSTP Google Calendar. If you haven’t already, make sure this is added to your Outlook, and hopefully this will serve as one small step towards reducing the activation energy for interclass MSTP events.
- We received numerous pieces of feedback about areas for improvement for the annual interclass meetings. In conjunction with the Wellness committee, we began revamping the interclass meeting system and hope to see improvements with organization, scheduling, and standardization of topics to be addressed (as applicable). I’m looking forward for Emma to continue leading this initiative and how these changes play out in the next academic year.
Emma and I are grateful to all of the SAC representatives for their willingness to contribute to the MSTP community and especially to the MSTP students who volunteered their time in small group meetings to develop the initiatives mentioned above. Thank you to the LT for the opportunity to serve on SAC, and I encourage everyone to continuously practice making your voice heard, since nothing changes until someone advocates for it.
Mark
Outgoing MSTP SAC Chair