As Syracuse University’s Fast Forward undergraduate excellence program embarks on its two-day retreat on Thursday and Friday, the group should focus on improving aspects of student life, such as advising, housing and parking

This two-day stint is a step toward addressing issues across all aspects of student life. The group prepared last semester by having weekly meetings and gathering information through university-wide surveys. The goal of this retreat is a list of recommendations for the university.

The undergraduate excellence workgroup is charged with providing, “a consistently excellent and highly distinctive undergraduate experience,” according to Fast Forward’s website. And the group is intended to consider, “all-University elements,” encompassing classroom, extracurricular and student-life experiences.

With such a broad scope of topics to tackle, the group must be careful not to discuss too many issues at once. Members would be well advised to hone in on specific issues of student life, principally the topics that affect the greatest number of students. The Daily Orange editorial board recommends the following topics be considered:

All undergraduate students are required to maintain contact with a faculty adviser throughout their time on campus. Yet, students who are dual majors or those who have minors in schools outside of their home colleges can face frustration when selecting their classes. Often, students find that advisers in different colleges give conflicting or confusing information about requirements. It would be in students’ interests to appoint advisers to work exclusively with dual students.

Another area of concern is on-campus housing; the increase in class size over the past several years has led the university to introduce limitations on students who opt for on-campus housing. As the university has no current plan to expand campus housing, this discussion would be an ideal time to broach the subject.

And as more students will need to move off campus as a result of the decrease of housing availability, it can be expected that more students will need to drive to campus. On campus parking is limited as is, and the university will need to allocate more parking in response to this overflow.

This meeting will need prioritized topics of discussion in order to be effective. Part of the agenda should be dedicated to problems which affect a large portion of SU’s students.

Published on January 15, 2015 at 12:28 am