The Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience has one of the smaller Faculty Councils at Maastricht University with just five student representatives. Like every year, those five seats are up for grabs next week, from 16th to 19th May.
Currently, the five spots are divided between the KAN Party, NovUM, and MSRP DOPE, Maastricht’s oldest and biggest student party. The student association SHAPE, based at the Randwyck faculties, did not secure a seat last year. SHAPE is going into dissolution and for that reason is not running in the elections anymore. DOPE, still strong at other faculties, has also not submitted a list for the FPN Faculty Council. This leaves the two remaining lists KAN, this year teaming up with the United Students of Maastricht (USM), and NovUM.
Next to your Faculty Council, as a student you are eligible to vote for the student representatives for the University Council, where four lists are competing for your vote this year. Check out our summary of the University Council elections.
If you want to understand better how your vote counts, our Student Politics 101 will give you a quick introduction to student representation in Maastricht.
Now let’s take a look at what the contenders at FPN stand for. From 16th to 19th May, cast your vote here!
List 1 – KAN & USM
KAN & USM put forward five candidates for the FPN Faculty Council. Two of them, Lilly Schröder and Hannah Finklenburg, have already had a seat on the Council during the past year. They want to continue the work started in the past, in particular building a sustainability platform for the faculty in which students and staff work together on developing a strategy towards decreased emissions and increased awareness.
At FPN, KAN & USM are also concretely working towards one of their main university-wide goals, namely to make the curriculum more sustainable. They are involved, next to other students, in the development of an elective on “International Psychology and Climate Change”. In the long term, KAN & USM want to make this a mandatory course in the psychology bachelor programme. Next to these projects, two candidates cite the improvement of internal communication among their personal priorities for their year on the Faculty Council.
Information on the elections page is sparse, but KAN has an active Instagram page and website where you can find more information.
List 2 – NovUM
NovUM has 4 people on its list, with three new faces at the top of the list and last year's list leader (and incumbent Faculty Counselor) being the fourth. These candidates in order are Maike Hinrichs, Ata Houdaoglu, Lara Weber, and Emma Remacle. NovUM want’s to continue last year's mandate of focusing on the wellbeing of the students and on the quality of education. To this end NovUM have three sections in their Manifesto this year: Wellbeing, Education, and Housing.
Focusing on Wellbeing, NovUM wishes to spread awareness of mental health issues faced by students and also the awareness of the information on where to seek help if needed, beyond UM psychologists. NovUM has one concrete aspect to this plan as it wants to make the first MECC exams pass/fail in order to take the pressure off. NovUM also wants to work with FPN to better incorporate internships into the curriculum by offering more credits for them and adding voluntary extra learning opportunities to the faculty for students who want them. The latter remains vague.
Finally, on housing NovUM’s faculty council wants to support the university council in delivering better accommodation. Doing anything more than voicing support falls outside the purview of the Faculty Council, however NovUM also wants to make it possible to form tutorial groups of students who are not present in Maastricht. They do not specify more, except for the also always having lectures recorded.
GO VOTE!
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