By Cassie Fuller
IVCC Student Trustee
The Board of Trustees met at the monthly meeting on Aug.
27 to review the nursing program with a presentation by Gloria Bouxsein, to
adopt the FY09 budget, to appoint new staff and acknowledge resignations, to
ratify the service employees contract and to approve past closed session
minutes.
Just as a reminder, all meeting minutes and agendas can be
found on the IVCC Web site.
As you may have heard, faculty negotiations have reached a
tentative agreement. It has been hard starting the school year without a
contract, but hopefully all will be resolved at the board meeting on Wednesday,
Sept. 24 (which will be after this issue has gone to press).
Anyone is welcome to come to the open session of the board
meeting, which will start at 7 p.m. in the boardroom.
I recently attended an Illinois Community College Board
Student Advisory Committee meeting, which consisted of community college
students from around the state. It was an election meeting and it was the first
ICCB-SAC meeting since the Leadership Orientation in June. Many topics came up
over the weekend I spent in Springfield at the SAC meeting including access and
diversity (including veteran services), college readiness, funding (both capital
and operational) and textbooks. ICCB-SAC has also decided to support a
fundraiser for Autism where community colleges statewide will raise money for
the cause.
We will spend the year working towards improving these
situations so that life is easier for community college students.
The next ICCB-SAC meeting will be in November in Chicago. The
Public Agenda was also recently announced. Basically, the Public Agenda is a
study done on Illinois colleges to see what needs to be improved upon. NCHEMS,
the company that conducted the study, came up with four goals for each college.
The goals include:
• Increasing “educational attainment to match best-performing
U.S. states and world countries”
• Colleges need to “ensure college affordability for
students, families and taxpayers”
• Increasing “production of quality postsecondary credentials
to meet demands of economy”
• “Better integrate Illinois’ educational, research and
innovation assets to meet economic needs of the state and its regions”
More information can be found about the Public Agenda, its
goals and possible solutions at
http://www.ibhe.state.il.us.
Student Government has been busy so far this year. Spirit Day
was a great success and we plan to do more events for students this year.
Intramurals has also started the year off well with a number
of teams involved in flag football and more intramural sports to come.
SGA has had two meetings since the semester has started; we
have discussed a Student of the Year and Advisor of the Year awards. These
awards will be given to one student that is heavily involved in any
extracurricular activity and one advisor that has gone the extra mile to make an
organization successful.
SGA has also approved two new student organizations: the
Honors Club and the IVCC Running Club, along with setting the new budget for
existing clubs. October will be a big month for SGA, bringing in new members,
beginning new fundraisers and attending an Illinois Community College Student
Activities Association conference at the end of the month.
Also in October, I will be attending an Association of
Community College Trustees conference in New York City where I will be able to
communicate with other student leaders from across the country and gain
knowledge about my trusteeship.
The next SGA meeting will be on Thursday, Sept. 25 at 7:15
a.m. in the SGA room in the cafeteria.
SGA will be holding a Candidate Forum on Oct. 8 from 10-11
a.m. in the Cultural Centre. Candidates attending will be running for Congress
and include Debbie Halvorsen, Marty Ozinga and Jason Wallace. This was organized
for the students, so feel free to stop by and ask the candidates any questions
you have about the election or about their campaign.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, etc., please
do not hesitate to contact myself or other members of Student Government via
e-mail or stop by the SGA office.