Author: Victor Westgeest
January 19, 2022

Hi all, my name is Victor Westgeest and this academic year, I am the Secretary/External Affairs Officer of Asset | Economics. As the Secretary/External Affairs Officer of the board, you have a variety of responsibilities and possibilities. In this article, you can read more about what these are! 

The responsibilities of a Secretary include keeping the website up-to-date, taking care of the year planning, writing and sending the monthly mail of Asset | Economics, writing the minutes of the weekly board meetings, the Department Members Meetings (DMM) and the Board of Advice meetings (BoA), maintaining the administration of both Asset | Economics and Asset Tilburg. These are mostly small tasks, but they have to be done to make sure association runs smoothly. As a Secretary, you have a wide variety of tasks which is something I like. Next to these tasks, the Secretary is the representative of Asset | Economics in the weekly Secretary’s Meetings (SM). It is great to meet with board members of other departments on a weekly basis to be able to discuss problems and to have fun together!

The thing that makes this position great is that it is a double function. Next to the tasks as Secretary you are also the second External Affairs Officer of Asset | Economics. Together with Lisa Meulblok, the other External Affairs Officer, we are responsible for all contact with companies and external parties. As External Affairs Officer, you are ultimately responsible for the acquisition for formal events, maintaining contact with existing partners as well as recruiting new partners. This is the most important revenue stream of our association, so it is important that this keeps going well. Also, you participate together with your fellow External Affairs Officer in the Acquisition Meeting (AM) which takes place every Thursday afternoon.

Apart from these function specific tasks, all board members are responsible for committees, projects and activities. This year, I am the coordinator of the Inside the Business Day, Talent Day, Sports and Charity committees. Organising events with our active members is a fun and nice task to do. The task that I like the most is the task of the so-called webmaster. As webmaster, you take care of everything involving our website. This takes more time than you would expect, but it is really fun to do and satisfying when everything works as it is supposed to. The webmasters have a meeting every week called the Webmaster Meeting (WMM), where we discuss difficulties and improvements for our websites. Also, one of my tasks is to make sure we uphold a high standard of study support, as this is an important function of a study association. From now on we will work together with the other departments and MAK to keep this at a high standard.

Of course, all these tasks are great to do and you get the chance to develop yourself professionally during a board year. However, this has not been the main reason for me to apply for a board year at Asset | Economics. I decided to apply, because I was looking forward to meeting many new people and organising and attending great events. Although COVID-19 has made this a bit more difficult, I know that this board year helped me meet great people and has made me become friends with my fellow board members!

To conclude, being the Secretary/External Affairs Officer is a diverse and challenging function which helps develop your creative, professional and personal skills during the year. 

In the coming weeks, blogs about each of the different board functions will be posted. If you have any questions or want to know more, do not hesitate to contact us via email ([email protected]), my personal phonenumber (06-27290252) or to contact us by filling in the contact form for general questions or more information.