At the heart of the Northwestern community is a passion and desire to learn both in the classroom and through extracurricular opportunities. ASG must support this inherent value by creating physical, virtual and experiential spaces for students to learn.

Student Enrichment Fund

There is no shortage of interesting, engaging opportunities for learning across the country. Unfortunately, often attending conferences, taking trips or buying tickets to a speaker can be extremely costly. ASG must work to expand existing programs to allow more students these enrichment opportunities. The Student Enrichment Fund aims to solve this problem by allowing students to apply each quarter for micro-grants to attend enrichment opportunities. After attending the opportunity using a grant from the fund, students would then be required to return to campus and use what they learned in a constructive way to benefit the campus.

Advising and Mentoring

A major academic concern for students is the quality of advising. Often cited are a high student-to-adviser ratio, freshmen advising problems, a discrepancy in advising after freshman year, and lack of major-specific guidance. ASG must work to improve the system to ensure that students receive the attention deserved.

Additionally, ASG must push for more and better peer mentoring initiatives. These programs are valuable assets for new students in getting acclimated to Northwestern. Mentoring also allows upperclassmen to develop valuable leadership experience while giving back to the community.

Social Inequality and Cultural Diversity Curriculum

Education is a great place to have an impact on how students think of diversity and inclusion. The expansion of cultural studies programs has been a great step, but more could be done to educate students to be culturally aware. Peer institutions have successfully integrated a great deal of cultural learning and immersion into their academic curriculum.

ASG’s lobbying power in academics should be used to promote dialogue and education on social inequality and cultural diversity that both challenges students and also makes them comfortable to engage in these critical discussions. Though major academic changes take time, ASG must actively push faculty and administrators with well-research proposals to achieve results.