Courtesy: Nikhil Purwaha
Hello T-Birds
As Finals week commences, I want to wish all students good luck on your exams, assignments, and presentations.
So as this term is coming to an end and it gives me immense pleasure to announce the new leadership for the Summer 2014 leadership, Giacomo Paccione and Casey Sutton. I am sure the two of them will do an amazing job in leading the TSG.
This trimester has been rather interesting for the TSG. We started of this trimester with a lot of energy. I was a little apprehensive that somewhere we may lose momentum as we were doing a lot of things right from the beginning. What ended up happening was the team just kept going stronger and stronger! One thing was clear to the entire TSG team was that we were here to do whatever it takes to uplift and enhance the Thunderbird student experience. We realized that there were some key areas of issues that we needed to tackle. That is when Pia Oestlien, Barbara Noseda and Michael Reardon stepped in and suggested we have a series of student led forums. These forums were great in multiple fronts. But what I really liked about these forums was the fact that the students didn’t come up with the problem only, they came with viable solutions and that made the job of the TSG a lot easier. The TSG exactly knew what the students were looking for and we guided our efforts in order to get those results. I would like to take this chance to thank the student body for being so supportive of this TSG initiative.
As we progressed further in the trimester, there were some really unexpected turn of events that took place on campus. After the spring break, the sentiment in the student body had changed drastically. There was an information overload for the students on campus and the overall morale of the student body was definitely not the same. This situation was definitely a challenging situation for the entire team. But through this challenging time, the TSG was supported immensely by the faculty. I personally would like to thank Prof. Finney, Prof. Ramaswamy, Prof. Ram, Prof. Fong and Prof. Rankine for being extremely supportive, not only to me personally, but to the entire student body.
As we moved further, new and new initiatives kept pouring in. In March, I was contacted by two students from Georgetown University. They offered the TSG an online portal that can be used by the Thunderbird Students to evaluate and rate the courses that they take on campus. There are times when many students are looking to register for courses but there is no way available on campus that can provide them a way to review the course before taking a decision. Both Michael and I discussed the implications of having such a system and we identified the potential areas where having such a system can be misconstrued. After a thorough discussion, we knew the system needed to be updated and Michael worked with the CampusBolt team to get the system customized for the Thunderbird Students. It gives me immense pleasure to launch the tsg.campusbolt.com for the thunderbird student community. The system is live and running.
Lastly, this time for the graduating class, we have two amazing memorabilia items. First, we have the graduating class yearbook that is available for $15 for fulltime students and $30 for others. Additionally, we now have a Graduating Class T-shirt as well. Both are a perfect gift for the graduating class. As I bid adieu to Thunderbird as a student, these memorabilia will definitely be the part of the wonderful memories that I have had in the past two years. Thunderbird has a mystique and is truly a unique place.
Here, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the TSG Vice President, Santiago ‘IronMan’ Peralta. You have been an amazing support to me and your energy is simply unmatched. I would also like to thank my entire TSG team for being simply awesome. You guys are simply amazing and it was truly an honor and a privilege to have had a chance to lead such an amazing team. Finally, I would like to thank the entire student body again. You guys have been amazing and the amount of support that the TSG has seen from the students this trimester has been simply amazing.
With that it’s a wrap from me. As usual, please feel free to reach out to me at nikhilpurwaha@global.t-bird.edu for any suggestions, recommendations, concerns, queries etc.
Thanks
Nikhil Purwaha
President – TSG Spring 2014