By RAEGAN NEUFELD
Tiger Media Network
The Student Government Association began the 2024-25 session on Thursday with a conversation about student success and collaboration.
Dale Ano, the interim assistant vice president for student affairs and student success, was the guest speaker for the meeting. He emphasized the importance of collaboration between SGA and the student success ‘cluster,’ which is a number of services, including Student Engagement, Career Services and the Learning Communities. Ano’s vision for this year is to grow and enrich the student experience.
“We’re going to continue to improve by building our relationships with y’all,” he said.
While Director of Student Engagement Jaden Rahe will join the group of SGA advisors to accomplish this, Ano also urged the senators and executive staff members to communicate with him and the other student success officials.
“Get us the information, because we can’t make the changes that you want to see and we can’t do the things you want to see without hearing about them,” he said.
Ano also discussed the growth that each student success group has seen since the beginning of the semester. So far, attendance for student engagement programs and career fairs has been the highest it’s been in the last five years, and the Learning Communities filled up three months before usual. Attendance at all of the Welcome Weekend events was up from last year, and the Back to School Picnic had 1,228 attendees this year compared to 805 in 2023.
“There’s a lot of things we’re trying to do, but we need you to help out,” Ano said. “Attend the events; tell us if they’re good or bad.”
SGA Vice President Emma Day asked about the size of this year’s freshman class compared to last year’s. While official enrollment numbers – the ‘20th day’ are not available until next week – Ano said the UNIV 101 Freshman Seminar sections were at capacity prior to the start of classes.
Following the 20th-day enrollment numbers, the freshman and KAMS elections for SGA will take place on September 18 and 19. Day reported that she and President Ella Burrows spoke to freshmen at the Tiger Kick-Off during Welcome Weekend, and they are hopeful for a high level of interest.
The intent-to-run forms for both elections are live on TigerLink.
During the open forum section of the meeting, Sen. Audrey Rymer brought up students’ concerns about a lack of study rooms on campus while the library is closed for construction.
“There aren’t enough places for everyone to study in the Union and the (Fischli-Wills Center for Student Success), and they also close at 10 when the library closed at midnight,” she said. “We were wondering if there’s any other area we have access to.”
Assistant Director of Residential Life Nathan Dozier, who is one of the SGA advisors, noted that there are study spaces in residential halls, but they are only accessible to a handful of students. Sen. Chloe Knipp mentioned that some department chairs have given students access to academic buildings for studying outside of business hours.
Day said she will look into the issue further.
The next SGA meeting will be at 7 p.m. on September 12. The location is to be determined. Updates can be found on the SGA TigerLink page.