OCA’s NYU Global team had the pleasure of catching up with sophomore Kenny Song, who was the Global Vice President for the 2014-2015 NYU Shanghai Student Government to discuss how the Global Action Committee (GAC) had accomplished the tasks they set out to do this semester in attempting to increase NYU Shanghai’s global presence in the NYU ecosystem. To have seamless cooperation between the different NYU portal campuses, and the numerous NYU study-away sites it is essential to have a system of governance that transcends the geographical locations of these sites so that there is not only, easy transfer of communications through relevant channels but also still providing an ease in understanding of the way these different sites coordinate within leadership roles. Despite the fact that New York, unlike Shanghai or Abu Dhabi, runs on the Chair system of student governance, the NYU Shanghai Student Government has been constantly trying to have roles that might correspond with NY or AD to have similar structures as the other two campuses. It is with this in mind, that Kenny and his dedicated GAC members made it a priority to have the shared programmes they were running in Shanghai to mirror exactly what was happening on the other campuses. (Think: ‪#‎NYUGlobalStory‬, Global Day of Service, HackNYU) Similarly, Kenny confirmed that the NYU Shanghai system for global site ambassadors would run exactly parallel to the New York and Abu Dhabi one, albeit NYU Shanghai having only one ambassador per site. The Global Site Ambassador will primarily be NYU Shanghai’s main student representative and contact person at each study away site. They will be liaisons between the NYU Shanghai student government, the support staff available at the site and all the other NYU Shanghai students at their sites. As the semester comes to a close, these individuals have already been identified by the GAC and have received necessary briefings and training for their upcoming roles based on established models from New York and Abu Dhabi. The GAC is confident in their capabilities and cannot wait to see how the first semester of NYU Shanghai students studying away will be like. Kenny is proud of what the GAC has managed to achieve since its conception and he is even more confident in the incoming Student Government’s Global Director’s capabilities of taking the helm from him as the person that coordinates NYU Shanghai’s global initiatives. With the groundwork that’s been put in this year, the system will be a lot more structured next year, and the initiatives and activities with global sites will be a lot better coordinated with the presence of the site ambassadors at all the sites. The Global Director will have a lot of freedom to start up new initiatives with their fellow newly-elected colleagues at the other portal campuses. A huge priority as of right now, is the idea of globalizing some of NYU Shanghai’s clubs to fit in with the Global Club Networks. This would be for clubs that are potentially easily mobile within the global sites and can attract a diverse membership. Along the same thread, there are strong initiatives to globalize NYU Student Senators’ Council (SSC) to include a lot more representation for NYU Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. This article was written by Mercy Angela Nantongo. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons