The Academic Advisory Group was established this year to connect representatives from the Science, Social Science and Humanities Departments with each other and with ASIC. The AAG is chaired by the Academic Advisor, and two further ASIC members - the Chair and the Vice Chair - are present at the discussions. The other three members of the AAG are one student assistant/representative from each department. This year, these representatives are Anja Srienc (SCI), Thys Hoekman (SSC) and Loes Hoogenboom (HUM).The AAG convenes once every three weeks to discuss academic issues and possible future projects. ASIC uses the expertise of the student assistants to further explore the functioning of the departments and problems that students face within the academic environment of UC. The AAG discusses how different problems could be handled and then solutions are sought through ASIC’s official contact with the Heads of Departments. Furthermore, ASIC sought to connect the assistants to enable communication between them, which -we believe - can be beneficial for the students in many ways. First, assistants can explore ways of communications with the students that work well in other departments. Second, cooperation between the student assistants can lead to projects such as the UC goes China days, which was jointly organized by last year’s HUM and SSC student representatives. ASIC supports such projects because they truly represent the interdisciplinary nature of our university and enable the students to immerse in a topic from the various perspectives of the different departments.

The AAG is still at an experimental stage, but the established group already proved useful in pointing out some shortcomings of our academic system, which are being addressed by ASIC. We hope for further successful and fruitful cooperation within the group in the future! The minutes of the AAG meetings will soon be placed on the website.

If you have any suggestions about what the group should discuss, contact us at asic@ucu.uu.nl or B.B.F.Eidhof@students.uu.nl!