The school’s consultative body has announced several improvements in school facilities and systems which will come into effect starting this semester. 

The consultative body is a co-operative unit comprised of students, school employees and professors. The first consultative body was convened successfully with major changes announced by the School General Association (SGA) at the beginning of this semester. 

These changes affect course registration, campus security, school PR, human rights, smoking area installation, Ewha-POSCO building automatic doors and student cafeteria vegan menus.

One of the principal changes forecasted to affect students the most is the improvement of the course registration system. In the current system, all students are subject to a first-come, first-served system, which has caused major competition for required courses as well as some popular non-mandatory courses. Coupled with this, the school also has a past record of opening fewer than required seats for certain courses needed to graduate, such as Basic Convergence courses which caused an outcry in the school community last semester.

In order to ease the current competition, the Registrar suggested a more specific system for course registration.

Consultative Body brings much change to campus facilities, student services and more

Non-smoking signs are now placed around Ewha campus. Photo by Park Jae-won
Non-smoking signs are now placed around Ewha campus. Photo by Park Jae-won.

For instance, during regular semesters, a waiting-list and a cancellation-delay system will be added to the current first-come first-served basis. Specifically during the sign-up session divided per grade, the registration system will put those students who did not manage to get the course on the waitlist by order of clicking. 

In addition, the cancellation-delay system is expected to alleviate the current inconvenience of having to check the course registration system constantly for new vacant spots. This system would notify students if there are vacancies in a certain course, and announce a certain period afterwards, so that they can compete fairly for the new seat. This same rule will also apply to the course add-drop period, and for summer and winter break courses.

To ensure that this system is a viable option, there will be a testing period during October, and the system will be put into practice starting with the 2019 winter courses.

School security and convenience facilities: Overall campus security and student convenience was also discussed at the consultative body. ECC Exit 2, which is the closest exit in the building to the main gate, is prone to the entry of international tourists and has often been the main target of students’ complaints. To limit the entry of those who are non-school related, speed gates have been installed. This requires students, professors and school employees and staff to use their IDs for entrance.

Other campus-wide convenience projects include the installation of phone-charging stations, automated book-return machines, maintenance of sanitary pad vending machines, and adding credit and debit card payment options to beverage vending machines.

Smoking area designation: Starting from the second semester, the school has designated six smoking areas and four non-smoking areas. The smoking areas include Asan Engineering building machinery room, Hanwoori house sidewalk, the empty lot behind the walls between Hak-gwan and Humanities building, between Art and Design building C and Music Building, the well side before Jinseonmi-gwan, and lastly the corner of front gate school yard.

On the other hand, non-smoking areas are Hak-gwan forest, Student Union forest, Pfeiffer Hall (Main hall), and also the front of Ewha-POSCO building. These places have smoking or non-smoking signs. Furthermore, ashtrays are placed on all smoking areas, which will be regularly emptied. The school has notified that they are willing to discuss for additional smoking area if requested.

School PR: The school homepage is in renovation and will newly open this semester. To understand the needs of homepage users, a student survey was conducted for a week in March. The biggest change will make the interface more interactive to facilitate better mobile experience of the website.

Support for civil service exams: Numerous changes regarding the Career Development Center’s (CDC) support for civil service exams have been announced. For all national civil service exams, candidates who have passed the exams were invited to give information sessions and participate in student coaching programs. Although the exact number of professors, teaching assistants, and administrative staff may vary, the school will assign at least one of each to the six different civil service exam categories for more support. 

However, it has been noted that funding, personnel, and space are all in short supply, all of which are needed to ameliorate the current conditions of civil service exam classes. Moreover, there has not yet been any discussion with respect to the CDC on the creation of civil service exam classes. 

The SGA is looking to build upon these improvements in the upcoming second consultative body which is expected to take place during September.

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