Team Red - Making IE great!
The Student Government elections are just around the corner and The Stork went out to interview all teams about their concrete ideas and proposals for our university and student life. Thomas Stenger met up with Umberto Greco, president of the Red Team, to find out what he and his team have been up to and how they are planning to transform our experience at IE.
What is your Team name?
Team Red
What inspired you and your team to run for student government?
I’m very involved in everything concerning the University as a class delegate, participating in the mentor & mentee program, and being part of different clubs and therefore have prior experience with the whole University governance structure. Also I’m a very proactive person and together with my team of very passionate members we want to make a change in IE that is actually possible and feasible. Most of my team members are 2ndyear students with one 1styear student and all of them are very socially active, strong academic performers and involved in clubs. Alicia Fernandez for example is in charge of the Law Society Club, showing her commitment to improving IE University Life.
If you could summarize your objectives for your time in office in 3 words what would they be?
Make IE great!
What are some main areas of improvement in the university that you seek to tackle?
We have 4 main objectives. The first is focusing on “Entrepreneurship”. I’m an upcoming entrepreneur myself and have to say that I’m a bit disappointed by our university regarding the expectations vs. reality. It’s supposed to be one of their main strength, but they could really do better. The second is increasing standards of quality regarding teaching and learning experience. Thirdly, we want to establish the “IE Cup”, which is a friendly competition and social gathering to increase student engagement and school spirit. Lastly, we want to introduce a student bar. Most unis around Europe have that and IE is missing out on the campus vibe and the enhanced opportunity to bring people together.
What are some institutional, grass roots or individual efforts you seek to implement to address these issues?
Regarding the quality of the teaching and learning experience we want to work together with campus live and the administrative departments and aim at trying to make it harder to get into IE. This really makes a difference in the quality of the student body and will help to boost IE’s reputation. For Entrepreneurship we want to work together with academics officers to bring in guest speakers for weekly or biweekly speeches, have a start-up incubator, and pushing the administration to provide a room or two for social meet-ups.
The IE Cup could be organized in bimonthly leagues, i.e. football tournaments between friends, and just in general to have IE events at Retiro. This will make IE life more fun and our community development officer will take care of organizing these happening.
For the Student Bar we will try to get the administration to provide a space, though we admit that this might be difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, we will push for it.
How will you ensure a steady line of communication between the student body and the university?
We will establish a Help Center that you can access through a link on our Instagram page with a template survey to fill in. Based on the question and issues we then channel it to one of our officers or directly to the university departments.
In what ways would you maintain the student body informed of your progress in certain areas (Videos, instagram etc)?
We want to use Instagram and Campus Online to give out announcements every two month or so to demonstrate “Hey this is our plan and this is what we are doing”. This will keep the students informed without spamming them. Our Instagram will focus on community activities, current events, and being informative about the impact of our team.
Summarize your main policy objectives: What do you want to do, How and Why?
Entrepreneurship, Student Bar, Academic Quality, IE Cup. We focus on these because there is a discrepancy between what IE says it is doing about about, i.e. entrepreneurship, and what it’s actually doing. Also, students don’t feel connected to each other between the two campuses and we need to foster more pride in our university. Regarding academic quality, IEU has dropped in some rankings lately and we need to live up to the expectations set by the IE Business School.
Obviously we can’t change all of this by ourselves, but working together with the government and student body will help to achieve these objectives. For example, we could remove bias and increase fairness in the grading system by making students write their student number instead of their name on their exam. Also, making entrance requirements harder for potential students and having higher language requirements for our teachers will make us more competitive.
We want to push for more language class options and a trip with your language class at the end of the semester to improve learning results. As mentioned, a permanent space for entrepreneurial events like the Launch Pad in the Masters building is important to support our students with their aspirations.
How will you ensure that the team (both in Madrid and Segovia) are on the same page when it comes to objectives and initiatives?
This is not a problem with team red as we always stay informed about everything. We have constant meetings and a steady communication with our team members. We want to take care of both campuses and our proposals are valid for Madrid and Segovia. As the president I’ll make sure that both teams work efficiently through evaluation methods as to keep each other accountable and to make sure both campuses benefit. This will be done through Community Development indicators such as the number of events, in academia by the number of guest speakers invited and actual changes enacted, and the tangible actions our individual team members have taken.
How will you seek to breach the Madrid-Segovia divide?
Our Community development officers are in charge of this and will focus on such things like the Weekend leagues and the possibility to hang out and do sports together. We need to create events where people get together and get to know each other between the two campuses. Once you are friends, you will travel back and forth more often with more social events for both campuses taking place. For us it’s all about the social aspect in bridging the divide.
How will you build upon the initiatives of the current administration, Is there anything you would modify/improve? How and why?
The current Student Government has done well in defining what it actually is with the result of finally doing more and promoting this institution, while also increasing the power in what they do and can do. We want to do more of this, kind of like a “Student Government on steroids”.
Also such events like “Panas for Venezuela” are great but this particular one only happened in Segovia. We want more of these events and for both campus.
Also, the Student Government should be a party organizer. Our student life is a lot about the social aspect and helping students have fun will bring them closer together.
Specifically with regards to academics, how will you ensure that all degrees (especially those in the school of architecture and design) will feel represented and benefit from your proposals?
That is the advantage of team red. We are very social and have a good network. By talking to delegates/representatives of different classes we can use them as third channel for representation. The Student Government could also accompany delegate meetings of the different departments. Our Help Center will also contribute to effective communication and is a tool to voice your opinion or raise specific issues.
One year from now, how do you think the university will evolve as a result of your proposals (In terms of academics, community building, clubs etc.)?
It is important to be realistic. It is just not possible that everything will change, this is not how it works. But we will focus on incremental improvements and step by step changes to achieve successes. Through our work people will be happier at IE and in the end that’s the whole point of the Student Government. More specifically, I think that we will see the Student Bar and the Entrepreneur Incubator being kicked off as these are our priority areas. Other structural academic changes will have started like using the student number in exams and the de-coupling of the attendance from your participation grade.