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Priorities:Swarthmore College Student Priorities

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Added the updated strategic priorities for the 2024 cohort

There are, of course, issues regarding this aim. For example, depending on who holds access to what has been decided to be a webpage could matter a lot in terms of what gets done and what does not. Also whether this webpage is used at all whether by the faculty or the students in incredibly important. Finally, what sort of responses and engagement this webpage receives is also super important because a bunch of college kids posting unproductive criticism of their school to the administration does not seem conducive towards a healthy, productive environment and I don't want response bias.

So, over these past six weeks, how has my idea developed? Well, in short the answer is extensively. Not only has our team created a prototype that has been tested on students and will continue to be developed in order to properly address the aforementioned issues, but we have also learned a ton more about what it means to socially innovate on a college campus. So in summary, both our ideas and how project has developed, and in the future we plan on continuing this growth by utilizing the design thinking process.

Strategic Priority #8.2 (Trinh Nguyen 2022): Pre-college courses

Methods: Create pre-college level courses. It is challenging to put into place extra courses - most colleges already suffer from the lack of faculty to teach required classes. Therefore, I propose that Swarthmore provide pre-college level courses that students can take remotely. This can be in the form of subscriptions to online courses or in-person evening classes led by upperclassmen. For the online courses, students can opt into taking them over the break before the main course. During the semester, the in-person evening classes help provide additional support for struggling students. A lot of pre-class materials are usually trivial, like navigating a tool, refreshing on learned concepts, etc. Therefore, these pre-college courses will not be too much of a burden on students, and won’t be counted as credits.

Stakeholders: The STEM faculty, Registrar, and students (upperclassmen as teachers, and underclassmen as students). Strategic Priority #8.3 (Ari Mosqueda 2022): Resource Navigation for FLI Students Swarthmore College has a plethora of resources for students ranging from academics to funding to career and life after college. These include Career Services, the Writing Associates Program, Academic Advisers, Student Academic Mentors, as well as more concrete resources such as the Center for Innovation and Leadership summer funding that allows students to find internships of interest to them without worrying about other costs, as well as the Lang Center’s summer funding opportunities. However, with so many resources available to students, it is often difficult to decipher which of these resources are most effective and helpful. Moreover, navigating the large amount of resources available can be more overwhelming and difficult for First-Generation and Low-Income students, and often these resources are hidden behind the multiple pages and tabs of Swarthmore’s website or even in the hundreds of emails that are sent out weekly. A proposed solution could be to create a more centralized resource site based on student experience in order to expand current students’ knowledge on resources available. Additionally, knowing and understanding how students are already able to navigate the resources on campus would be helpful in moving forward on how to make resources more accessible to all students. The stakeholders for this project would include the Swat FLI staff (Dean Karen Henry, Jasmine Owens, and Rosemary Tourish), as well as the head staff from the academic and career support programs such as Career Services and Academic Advising. Student feedback from both those who have felt they have adequately navigated Swarthmore’s resources, as well as those who felt they haven’t, would also be extremely important to this project. A constraint of this project could arise in measuring how well resources are being used, but ultimately qualitative feedback from surveys (about students’ experiences) could help us overcome this obstacle. '''Strategic Priority #8.4 (Hojune Kim 2022): Swarthmore Student-centric Course Scheduler''' I believe that the most fundamental right of students is to learn what they want. But over decades, higher educational institutions have ignored these basic rights by releasing their next semester’s course schedule without listening to their student population. As a result, most students have to drop one or more classes that they originally wanted to take due to the course conflict. This phenomenon applies regardless of country. Our SSCS get surveys from the students on their top 4 courses that they want to take for the next semester. Also, SSCS takes surveys from the faculties about their available time for lectures, and by combining these two, SSCS finds the optimal schedule that both minimizes the course conflict and fits the possible schedule of the faculties. Programming the approximate scheduling algorithm is expected to be the most challenging part of this project, but convincing faculties and administration offices can be possible obstacles as well. '''Strategic Priority #9.1 (Emma Lang, Angie Kwon, Olivia Medeiros-Sakimoto 2023): Non-academic community spaces''' Most of the community spaces on campus are academic based (ie. most of the lounges that exist are for department students). There are not many opportunities/spaces for students to relax and organize student life around. There should a dedicated prominent space just for student life/engagement where students can develop community rapport without the academic pressure. Currently a student center is being built out of the old Sharples building, and we can strive to truly make it a student space and maximize the space's potential. '''Strategic Priority #9.2 (Emma Lang, Angie Kwon, Branley Mmasi 2023): Utilizing our diversity''' Swarthmore has a highly diverse student body, but institutionally and systematically it is still prominently white and upper-middle class. Though this may not be a significant problem on its own, nonetheless it should be rectified and supplemented with other opportunities and offices to ensure true diverse development on campus. There is already the Inclusive Excellence Fellows initiative that works to promote diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, but programs such as this should be advertised to incoming students more publicly and their achievements published to the entire school. The college as a whole should also strive to diversity goals in all departments, including the athletic department, which could benefit from diverse recruitment. The academic departments as well could enhance their programmings for minority students, such as for women in STEM fields, POC in STEM and social science fields, etc. '''Strategic Priority #9.3 (Karina Flores, George Fang, Nana Asante 2023): Increased Community Outreach''' Although Swarthmore is located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, it still has access to Philadelphia and resources from surrounding communities such as Chester PA. Swarthmore has already established connections with different organizations outside of Swarthmore, but this list is limited. In order to help improve this challenge there should be a increase in partnership between swarthmore, neighboring communities, and community organizations. This partnership will help foster closer relationships, help promote events on Swarthmore and neighboring communities, help spread knowledge on certain issues, and promote networking opportunities. In order to do this, there should be more student involvement in community events, and the reach of current community outreach should be broadened with more technical tools such as a website to browse volunteer organizations that you can access with your swarthmore account. '''Strategic Priority #9.4 (Branley Mmasi, Olivia Medeiros-Sakimoto, George Fang 2023): Teaching Entrepreneurship in Academics''' We hope to shift the responsibility of teaching entrepreneurship at Swat from school organizations on campus to a specific department that can act as a catalyst, working with the registrar's office to establish an entrepreneurship minor (gaining academic credit for entrepreneurship-related courses). In order to expose more of our community to design thinking, we will ask students to work with professors to determine what they want to learn about entrepreneurship in academics. Additionally, we could host a guest lecture series inviting local local entrepreneurs to share their experiences, challenges, and advice, even assigning real-world projects where students must identify a market need and develop a business plan. '''Strategic Priority #10.1 (Ye Lin, Ainsley Jane Tambling 2024): Swarthmore Career Little Sibs and Big Sibs''' Having a older mentor could be very helpful for underclassmen coming into college. For class choices, opportunities on/off campus, and general advice throughout college. Having this person you can continuously talk to can be a very valuable relationship throughout their time at Swarthmore. They, then in turn, can become that upperclassmen that help incoming students. This can help bridge the gap of the struggle that many students can't find opportunities can get more hands-on experiences. As this program grows, this will build better connections on campus which will promote campus community and growth for the student body to become better leaders as they are open to more opportunities. ==== '''Strategic Priority #5 (Yeimely, Denyse 2024)''' ====Although students have a variety of resources available to them to improve their work experience, we notice there is a lack of engagement. We aim to empower students in their professional journeys by strengthening connections with career services. For example, holding resume-building workshops and other career development opportunities to increase student participation and engagement.Or finding different methods of outreach content to engage with students and provide them with information regarding the opportunities that are available to them. '''Strategic Priority #6 (Noah, Trisha 2024)''' A significant population of the student body prioritizes exercise as a part of their well-being. However, part of ensuring that exercise produces a positive effect on well-being is by maintaining physical health. Working with the athletics department, our strategic priority is to increase access to recovery resources for exercise. This includes access to nutritious snacks following exercise, a regularly available masseuse, or more equipment in the gym. The hope is that a strengthening of these resources provides more readily available access to optimal recovery, therefore enhancing well-being. '''Cynthia, Kilin (2024)''' Right now, peer mentoring services at Swarthmore exist across multiple systems, which creates unnecessary barriers for students who need support. Each program – Writing Associates, SAMs, LCAs, career advisors, departmental peer tutors – operates independently, making it difficult for students to find the help they need and book appointments. A centralized system that brings all peer-to-peer mentoring options together would allow students to access these resources with ease, reducing confusion and increasing usage. This would not only improve academic performance but also foster a more connected and supportive campus community.

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[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/~~1Q1P9pZCbRlv8-eIaHho2ko6pGe65m2PPV9VVw6Z9znQ~~18LZQiv0uQMnllZj4dww5urJ9p0x37zHRcDh0uV5cNYg/edit?~~usp~~gid=~~sharing 2021~~ 5#gid=5 2024 Swarthmore College Fall Landscape Canvas]

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