The Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board (RSAB) is currently planning its second annual Global Affairs Conference, which is set to be held from Feb. 19-20 in the spring semester. This student-run conference is intended to garner more interest for international and global events and provide students with an opportunity to shed light on an global topic of their choice. The board is now accepting student proposals for conference topics.
“This is all designed by students,” said Tom Yu ’16, a member of the Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board. “Students are completely in charge of this event. No faculty is involved at all, which gives students much more leeway but also a lot more responsibility too.”
The application asks students to explain what the major theme of their conference will be, to give a tentative schedule of events, provide a provisional allocation of funds and describe how they envision the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs supporting the conference.
The RCGA holds its annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference, with a range of guest speakers addressing pertinent international issues.
“They wanted to get students involved in RCGA a little more, though, and they have set aside funds specifically for that goal,” said Frank Wyer ’15, a member of RSAB.
The “do-it-yourself” structure of the conference came about as a result of a desire to increase student involvement with the project. The RCGA faculty and RSAB hope that, by allowing students to come up with their own ideas for this conference, involvement and attendance for the event in February will improve.
“The proposals provide a platform for students to bring in something that they’re really interested in and they think the rest of the student body would be interested in too,” Wyer said.
The winning proposal will be chosen by members of the student board based on the proposal’s global relevance, accessibility to students, and diversity in geographic and disciplinary perspectives.
“Everyone probably has a good idea but then we need to consider the interest of the population here. Would they be interested in the topic and can they pull in more students and inform them about something they actually want to know?” Yu said.
Further, Wyer stresses the importance of making this conference both interesting and applicable to a wide range of students.
“We are trying to make sure that [the conference topic] is interdisciplinary so it’s not just relevant to IGS majors. It’s for everybody,” he said.
The selected student will receive $5,000 towards funding his or her proposed conference. Both Yu and Wyer note that the selection process might be hard.
“We can generally say that if a topic sounds very interesting and if its feasible within the given budget then that’s the one,” Yu said.
Though the deadline for conference proposals was Oct. 17, the board has extended that deadline to the end of the month, Oct. 31, to make sure that students are given ample time to voice their interests. The board has received a number of applications, but encourages students to work with either a group, student organization or even individually to propose a conference topic of their choice. To submit a proposal, students can go to go/diyconference.
Yu, Wyer and the rest of the Student Advisory Board will contact the winner shortly after all applications are submitted, so that students have ample time to plan their event.
