Hello everyone. Your new Senate met for the first time last Wednesday, beginning the goal-setting process that will determine what we call our vision for the upcoming semester. I’m extremely enthusiastic about our new senators and am confident that with a good plan we will be able to accomplish quite a bit. In the next few weeks, we will be making a lot of appointments to different bodies on campus and continuing to define our vision by brainstorming issues, prioritizing which ones to tackle, and finally creating an action plan that we will be accountable for.
There are numerous appointments to be made before we break for the summer. If you want to have a voice in the Board of Trustees, our current parking situation, academic issues, or budgetary issues I strongly encourage you to contact me. I am a strong believer that if you want to make change, you must take ownership. I hope that concerned students will contact me and try to get appointed to these boards where you will have a chance to make a real difference. Contact me at gm@rpi.edu or 276-8597.
At our last meeting, after some introductions, senators broke off into groups and brainstormed different issues on campus. Some ideas were old, some were new, but there were lots of them! Following the meeting, a small team and I looked through the brainstormed lists and tried to find common themes. We came up with a list of 13 objectives as follows: increase Senate presence and communication with students, increase student involvement in administrative policy making decisions, improve facility maintenance and renovation, improve the parking situation on campus, improve food services on campus, increase school spirit, improve the advising system, evaluate factors relating to academic performance, improve health services on campus, analyze and improve safety and security on campus, identify and facilitate improvement on issues concerning student rights, improve computing capability, and identify and solve issues relating to graduate housing.
Our next step is to prioritize these objectives down to five or six that we would like to accomplish next semester. While the Senate will get new business as the semester progresses, we will always have a spot on the agenda dedicated to the vision and our progress in achieving it. At the end of the fall semester, we will reevaluate and repeat the process for the spring semester.
We have planned our meetings for the rest of the year to be on Mondays at 9:30 pm in Union 3202. I realize that everyone is extremely busy finishing up projects and getting ready for exams, but I hope you have the opportunity to come to one of our meetings. Again, my door is always open, and I hope that students take advantage.
In closing, I’d like to wish everyone the best of luck in finishing up the semester. Only a few weeks left! Good night everyone.
