The USG heard a presentation from Career Services Director Pulin Sanghvi at the Sunday night Senate meeting, during which the Senate moved into a brief executive committee session to speak privately with Sanghvi.
During the public session, Sanghvi spoke about his vision for change within Career Services.
“There is a strong alignment to drive change quickly within our organization,” he said.
By deemphasizing career fairs in favor of smaller, more targeted and meaningful programming, Sanghvi said he hopes Career Services can evolve to be more responsive to students. He said two points of emphasis include presenting career and life vision curriculum to students in all years and developing a more fluid, year-long recruiting calendar.
Sanghvi also said Career Services is working on some “interesting partnerships” with the private sector.
U-Council Chair Elan Kugelmass ’14 motioned to move into executive committee session “so Mr. Sanghvi can elaborate.” His motion was seconded and the Senate briefly met privately with Sanghvi.
Additionally, U-Councilor and project leader Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 presented a recap of Mental Health Week, which took place the week before midterms. Members of the Senate had largely positive reactions to the programming, and expressed a desire to ensure thatmental health initiatives reach many students despite the stigma surrounding participation in such eventsin the future.
Presenting an update on the Committee on Background and Opportunity IV Report, U-Councilor Jameil Brown ’16 said the release date goal of the upcoming report is April 10. After that release, Brown said the report will be presented at the May 5 Council of the Princeton University Community meeting as well as to the community at large.
“We want to make our data more accessible,” Brown said.
U-Councilor Sol Taubin ’16 presented a plan and timeline for a collaborative project with the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students entitled “Conversations.” The goal of this project is to increase dialogue surrounding questions about identity and its impact on experiences.
Taubin said she hopes to “lower the barriers of entry to programming that already exists” by bringing together different centers on campus that engage with identity issues, such as the Women’s Center, the LGBT Center, ODUS, Sustained Dialogue, the Fields Center and the Office of Religious Life.
For the upcoming Communiversity event scheduled for April 27, Campus and Community Affairs Committee Chair Paul Riley ’15 made a $7,600 funding request, which the Senate unanimously approved.
Academics Committee Chair James Baase also presented nominations for four existing members and five new members of the Academics Committee. These nominations were also unanimously approved by the 21 present voting members of the Senate.