Community: a Word from SGA

Smith is known for having a number of organizations on campus, making it hard to keep them all straight.  One organization that you should get familiar with, as it works on your behalf, is the Curriculum Committee.  The SGA Curriculum Committee brings student concerns to different faculty and administration groups, from the Provost to the Committee on Academic Priorities or CAP to the Global Studies Center Student Advisory Committee.  We handle any and all academic concerns at Smith. 

After polling the student body on their frustrations at Smith, as well as the events of last semester, the Curriculum Committee has developed our goals for the school year.  We hope to continue to work on the five college interchange process, examine global education at Smith, and press forward on social justice and the role it plays in the curriculum. 

The Five Colleges are a great resource that many students take advantage of. However, as anyone who’s taken a Five College class can tell you, it is far from a seamless process.  The Committee hopes to tackle some registration problems, specifically who gets priority in registration as well as continuing to push for better transportation for these classes.  We hope to meet with students on the other campuses to better understand the problems of the interchange within the whole consortium.

The Committee also wants to examine global education, specifically study abroad.  We plan to examine where in the world Smith has a strong presence for study abroad, and where we are lacking options for students. We also want to see where students have petitioned to study abroad, learn how to move those programs to the approved program list, and make such information and processes more accessible. 

The biggest issue the committee is hoping to tackle is social justice in the curriculum.  We have discussed a number of options from a requirement, to adding social justice reflection in advisement, to a Latin Honors distribution, and are continuing to look for the best way to integrate the issue into our community in every way possible. We are also are working with Diversity Committee and Smith students to represent the student body’s concerns. In addition, we are working with CAP to develop an inventory of social justice-related classes and hope to be involved with conversations between students and faculty about how to discuss difficult issues on campus in classroom settings. We are starting roundtable discussions on the issue soon and interested students should email smithcurriccomm@gmail.com to get involved. 

Students should also feel free to e-mail any concerns to the committee at any time. Please direct them to Liz Rich, the Chair of the Committee via e-mail at erich@smith.edu or stop by the SGA office during her office hours on Thursdays from 10:30-11a.m. We are your voice to the administration, so please help us help you.