SCUE elects new leadership

The men are stepping down and the women are taking over -- at least in the case of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education. Yesterday, College junior Lindsey Mathews was elected chair of SCUE, succeeding College senior Josh Wilkenfeld. Four of the six newly elected board members are female, in contrast to the predominantly male composition of several previous SCUE executive boards. College junior Adam Michaels was elected as vice chair. College freshman Jacob Cytryn will be the new secretary, and College junior Kathryn Whitfield will assume the position of secretary. College junior Amy Simmerman and College junior Allyson Bohensky were tapped for the positions of steering members-at-large. Mathews served as a steering member-at-large for SCUE last year, devoting much of her time to revamping New Student Orientation for the class of 2004. She said she has high hopes for the new board's upcoming year leading the committee. In addition to her involvement with SCUE, Mathews, a Philosophy, Politics and Economics major, is a Jewish Renaissance Project fellow. She also works with Alliance and Understanding and PACE -- Programs for Awareness in Cultural Education -- and is active in the Greek system. The most pressing item on Mathews' agenda at the moment is the impending release of the 2000 White Paper, which will evaluate education at Penn over the past five years and provide recommendations for improving the undergraduate experience. "We'll be doing a lot of work implementing those ideas," Mathews said of White Paper, to be released in two weeks. One of Mathews' objectives during the coming year is to improve the visibility and accessibility of SCUE to Penn students. "Another major goal for us is to really become a strong liaison between the students and the administration," Mathews said. In addition, since the majority of SCUE members are currently College students, Mathews plans to focus her efforts on recruiting future SCUE members from the other three undergraduate schools at the university. SCUE contributed to the initiation of the pilot curriculum last semester, and part of Mathews' job as chair this year will be to sit on a pilot curriculum evaluation committee. Wilkenfield said that he was optimistic about the future of the new board. "They are a bunch of very talented people," said Wilkenfeld of the incoming board, expressing his confidence in the six new leaders. Both Wilkenfeld and Mathews said they felt assured that the new board will do well in the year ahead, despite the fact that Mathews is the only member of the new board with steering experience. "They've been on SCUE for a long time but they haven't been on steering before," said Mathews. "I think that's really a sort of gift to us... it's really time to think out of the box."