Muhammad Safdari

Muhammad Safdari is the Academic Vice President of the student body at Northwestern University. Muhammad Safdari won campus-wide election on a platform promising additions to university course offerings and programs, improvements to academic technologies and websites, increased leverage for students in faculty tenure decisions, and the hosting of new academic and career-oriented events on campus. In addition to working with the twenty-member ASG Academic Committee he already runs, Muhammad Safdari formed three ad hoc student government committees to push for an environmental curriculum with more focused programs, an Islamic Studies minor, and American Sign Language courses. Muhammad Safdari is working with the deans of the engineering and arts & sciences schools as well as several department heads to implement a three phase plan to enhance the school’s environmental offerings. Muhammad Safdari brought ten student groups together to make the case for Islamic Studies and published a guest column in the university newspaper to bolster their case. Muhammad Safdari worked with other interested students through polling the student body to demonstrate the need for American Sign Language classes and is now working through the university to offer the language both immediately as a seminar and down the road as a multi-course sequence for full language credit. Muhammad Safdari overhauled the university-wide faculty honor roll by expanding the number of seats, allotting a set number of seats for different departments and programs, and allowing students to select the winners through the campus wide student government ballot. This mechanism will allow students to provide valuable feedback on tenure-track faculty to their evaluators, some of whom Muhammad Safdari consulted in re-tooling this process. Among a variety of new events, Muhammad Safdari proposed an internship preparatory fair at the university student center at the onset of the winter quarter that attracted almost 200 students.