You have elected Maike Hinrichs to represent you in the FPN Council for the academic year 2022-2023. Cheers to a year of improving student welfare!
Read the manifesto of our elected candidate for the 2022-2023
Wellbeing
With all the changes that have happened these last couple of years and continue to happen, student wellbeing is more important than ever. It will be the first time of actual on-site education for many of us, and even for the others, it has been a long time. To ensure that the anxiety about all of this will be kept to a minimum, the first exams at the MECC should be pass/fail so that the students can get used to the different type of learning and assessment again without worrying about it negatively affecting their GPA. Furthermore, there needs to be more awareness of mental health issues faced by students as they will not disappear with the end of the measurements but rather become more visible or even more prominent. Of course, there are the UM psychologists, but where to go if you do not want/ feel like you need a psychologist? For that reason, we want to make sure detailed information on where to get help or where to find and talk to like-minded peers is provided.
Employability
One of the most important things for future employers or even to get into a master’s program are first experiences in the field of work. To achieve this, FPN needs to create more internship opportunities through cooperation with other institutions and make it easier to incorporate internships into their degree. , For example, by allowing students to get more than six credits for an internship, it is easier to incorporate internships. Furthermore, summer/ voluntary courses on learning new skills like programming, how to talk to someone who is suicidal, organizational psychology or self-marketing.
Education
The skills courses are an essential part of our education, but there is a lack of good guidance; therefore, we want to achieve clear guidance in the skills courses on how to perform the skill in question correctly. There should not be courses without tutors, especially when there is no standardized literature. Lastly, in a pre-discussion, the problem description should include bullet points about the theme of the problem, as the problem page sometimes can be ambiguous.
Housing
The housing situation is very difficult still and will potentially worsen now that students need to be in Maastricht again. For students that are not in Maastricht at the moment, it can be challenging to find something because you do not know where exactly to look. At the same time, search engines like Maastrichthousing vary greatly in the standards of living from property to property. This needs to be solved by improving the quality of Maastricht Housing’s website. Furthermore, there are very few places for students to rent and the prices of those that do exist are incredibly high. UM needs to collaborate with the city of Maastricht to lower renting costs and create affordable student residencies in Randwyck. As FPN we want to support this and make sure that it will be a topic in the university council. It needs to be ensured that students who cannot find accommodation in Maastricht can still follow their studies. Those students may form tutorials consisting only of students not present in Maastricht. For the same reason, lectures should always be recorded.