Although the Student Center Theater sat mostly empty, the questions posed the panelists for the second round of GT Talks filled the enture hour and a half session.
Organized by Finding Common Ground, the GT Talks series intended to give students the opportunity to have a dialogue with administrators.
The second round of talks was held on Wednesday at 12 p.m. in the Student Center Theater.
On the panel sat Sally Hammock, associate director of the Student Center, Bob Fox, associate director for Library Administration, Andy Smith, senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, Nick Wellkamp, undergraduate student body president and Director of Athletics Dan Radakovich.
“The forum you have today is the result of a… campaign that we started at the end of last fall where we asked students from across the campus, ‘If you could talk about one thing, what would it be,’” said Kaitlyn Fraizer, undergraduate executive vice president and moderator of the panel discussion. The GT Talks panelists responded to questions from an online survey.
The second round of GT Talks was sparsely attended, with just over a dozen in attendence, half of whom were students. The questions posed to the panelists were a combination of the ones asked by the audience and ones previously submitted online.
The questions asked during the panel discussion covered a wide breadth of topics, ranging from concerns over the graduate thesis formatting to how the Athletic Association would capitalize on the success of last year’s football team.
Questions from the audience and from the online submissions were normally directed to a single member of the panel.
The online questions usually covered broad topics, like the future rennovations for the library and ways to make the SGA’s actions more transparent to the student community. The questions from audience tended to be more involved.
Of the questions brought up by the students present at GT Talks, the ones that received most play were efforts of the Institute to improve student and faculty diversity in the face of budget cuts and the ways to ensure that Tech hires professors who can teach more effectively.
Last week, the first round of GT Talks took place. On that panel were representatives from Housing, Dining, Parking and Auxiliary Services.