You have elected Mahrukh Akhtar and Olga Kosjakova to represent you in the FHML Council for the academic year 2023-2024. Cheers to a year of improving student welfare!
Read the manifesto of our elected candidates for the 2023-2024!
Housing:
- A high priority issue that needs to be addressed is the housing crisis that affects every major university town in the Netherlands, Maastricht including. To that end, Maastricht and the UM has many university affiliated or independent entities to help make legal and financial decisions. However, due to these being hard to find or reach, many students don’t receive the advice they need. To solve this requires the contact information of these help desks and organisations to be brought in front and centre on to the websites students often use and visit, like canvas. This would help many students receive legal or financial help with their current or future housing situation.
Education:
- We learned a lot from the COVID-19 pandemic: our education was fully online and we learned to be flexible. We saw that for some types of contact hours (lectures) a recording was actually helpful, while other types (tutorials and practicals) did not benefit from the online setting. Also keeping in mind the mental health of both students and staff, we should focus on the quality of the contact hours and not the quantity. Lectures can be pre-recorded and “recycled” over the years and should be the guideline for coursework. Furthermore, more use should be made from guest lecturers who are pioneers in their own field. FHML should also provide more opportunities for practicals and workshops that are interactive and valuable for future careers and internships.
Sustainability:
- Food waste is a major issue on our campus, as it is in many other communities. Despite our best efforts to reduce food waste, the cafeteria still generates a significant amount of leftover food every day. Reducing food waste is an essential part of creating a sustainable and equitable food system, which can be done through improving the communication between the student body and the cafeteria. This will result in concrete evidence of what the students want and will definitely consume, whereas the cafeteria gets to decrease their food waste and also increase the demand for their produce. We believe that this would result in an overall better inclusivity of diets and also would tremendously improve UM’s sustainability.
Internationalism:
- To further promote the international character of UM, we want to focus on increasing diversity within FHML. Specifically within the bachelor and master Medicine where developing communication skills is of essence, we want to ensure that students get adequate training on how to diagnose and treat people with different backgrounds, religions, sexuality and cultures. We want to implement extra classes within CORE and skills training sessions which are given in the bachelor to increase awareness at an early stage. Furthermore, within the bachelor biomedical sciences we want the workshop on ‘cultural diversity’ to take on a different format. One that runs on the longer term and stimulates discussion on a variety of topics related to conducting ethical research and global health.