With four different majors and origins across the country and globe, the backgrounds of the four candidates vying for Duke Student Government vice president of academic affairs are about as different as their platforms.
And the candidates-juniors Gina Ireland and Joshua Kazdin and sophomores Natalie Barber and Samson Mesele-said they hope to capitalize on their individual campaign issues in order to win the April 3 election.
Ireland, who has served as a research assistant in the Office of the Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, said her main goal if elected vice president of academic affairs would be to focus on the smaller issues.
"At Duke we all have a lot of big ideas," she said. "Sometimes it is really just execution that is lacking, so I want to attend to those details and keep the stapler full of staples."
Ireland said she would like to improve students' overall academic experiences, particularly regarding the advising system. She said she thinks the peer advising system should be a part of pre-major advising, so incoming freshmen would be immediately paired with upperclassmen with similar interests.
She also would like to start a discussion about the relationship between diversity and academics. "I think we're talking right now, especially with the [Campus Culture Initiative], about issues in social and living spaces, but I want to talk about diversity in the classroom," Ireland said.
Kazdin said he decided to run for vice president of academic affairs because many of his friends have had lackluster experiences at the University trying to get funding to do research or get internships abroad.
"My main platform is increasing coordination between departments concerning research funding, increasing financial accountability for research grants," Kazdin said.
He said students with fellowships have various opportunities for traveling, research and study, but others do not.
"The academic opportunity presented to average undergraduate students does not exactly match what we're paying for it," Kazdin added.
He also would like to raise the financial incentives for professors to do research with students, which he said would accomplish another goal of added student-faculty interaction.
"The main issue if you want to increase the richness of academic life is to increase the funding for professors to get involved with it, to increase students voice," he said.
Barber is currently a senator on the DSG academic affairs committee. She said her platform has no overarching theme because academics has so many components.
She noted, however, that a major part of her platform is having reading period extended next year.
"I think the University would benefit from having much better prepared students," she said.
Barber said she would focus on academic integrity, particularly unauthorized collaboration and falsified lab data. She also stressed faculty accountability and further collaborations with Duke's peer institutions.
"The lacrosse situation... brought light to the fact that faculty don't always have as much oversight as they should," she said.
Barber added that she found inspiration for her platform by looking at other universities. "Innovation is invaluable in education, but we can still learn a lot from our institutional peers," she said.
Mesele is the current academic affairs chair of the Black Student Alliance and was a senator on the DSG academic affairs committee during his freshman year.
He said he has been calling his campaign "Optimize Your Learning Experience."
"I'm going to be working with the Academic Resource Center and the Career Center on various issues," Mesele said.
He said he would like to provide streaming video in large lectures and look at opportunities for increased funding in undergraduate research.
Mesele said he would also like "in-house" funding to be available specifically for undergraduates, as well as for students who serve as peer tutors.
He said he would work to make changes so that the Academic Resource Center would allow students to obtain more than one tutor per semester, as well as find ways to couple work study with academic pursuits.
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