Cassie Fuller
IVCC Student Trustee
Welcome back! I hope that everyone is as excited as I am
to start this new year. Let me explain my job as the Student Trustee; when it
comes down to it, I am your liaison to the Board of Trustees.
What does this mean? It means that if you have any problems,
concerns, comments, questions or anything of the like just tell me and I can
report that to the Board and help you solve the problem. I am on campus all of
the time! I have office hours in the Student Government Association office (in
the cafeteria) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon, Tuesdays
and Thursdays from 12:15 p.m. -1 p.m., and Tuesdays from 5 -5:30 p.m. You can
also contact me via email (which I check daily) at
ivccstudenttrustee@yahoo.com.
I also have a page on the IVCC Web site so check it out!
This summer has been packed with board meetings, special
board meetings Illinois Community College Board- Student Advisory Committee (ICCB-SAC)
meetings, and Illinois Board of Higher Education- Student Advisory Committee (IBHE-SAC)
meetings. In early June, I had the chance to attend my first ICCB-SAC meeting in
Springfield with fellow community college representatives from around the state.
At this Student Leadership Conference, I basically learned
what it meant to be a Student Trustee and how to properly do my job. I will go
back to Springfield for another ICCB-SAC meeting on Sept. 12 and 13; this
meeting will be an election meeting so we will vote on who will lead the SAC.
Aug. 9 and 10 marked the first meetings for IBHE-SAC at Robert Morris College.
Here, we discussed the basic issues that we wanted to tackle for the year.
Prevalent topics included textbook fees, capital funding and
budgets, transferability, financial aid and scholarships and student
involvement.
There were a number of board meetings held this year. To sum
everything up, the administration is finalizing the fiscal year 2009 budget,
which shows a few increases.
There was an update on the E2C program (this is the Early
Entry Credit which gives high school students a chance to earn college credit),
and it is becoming a great success. E2C is now offered at 15 high schools in the
district and will soon add DePue and Putnam County within the next year. There
was also a presentation to the board about the strategic plan for information
technology, which you can see a lot of the improvements already around campus
(such as the computer monitors in the biology lab), and will include a new
switchboard and phone system and also an expanded wireless network.
We have also approved a few major projects that will greatly
affect student life at IVCC. There will be a new Truck Driver Training facility
on campus, which will be a huge project. It will be on East Campus and will be a
spacious building for Truck Driver Training students and will also be the
building for students to use while on East Campus during an emergency. This will
also include a skills path for the TDT students.
Although this project is quite more expensive than initially
projected, it is one thing that needs to be done to provide the best
opportunities for TDT students and would only cost the college more in the
future. A new parking lot is going to be paved along with general improvements
around the parking lots. This lot will be much closer than the current lots and
is projected to hold 600 cars.
The cost of the new parking lot, too, was projected to be
much less expensive than the bids, but much like the TDT facility, it is one
project that shouldn’t wait any longer and will only cost more in the future.
There will also be accessibility improvements to the
Courtyard and Main Entrance, which includes ramps and other improvements.
Along with this, there is a long list of potential capital
improvement projects that we hope to accomplish in the future. One of these
projects that is getting a lot of attention is improvements to the information
desk so that it is easier for students to find and use. It will also make the
area more attractive. Other projects include upgrading the restrooms, making
security improvements (such as more cameras, and replacing door exit lever bar
handles with a push bar handle), lighting improvements, and some energy saving
studies.
In other news, Student Government had its first meeting on
Aug. 28 to establish our general goals for the year. Anyone is welcome to attend
SGA meetings. Freshman petitions for SGA will be available from Sept. 2 to Sept.
10; I highly encourage freshmen to look into campaigning.
Also, Spirit Day will be on Sept. 10 to give students a fun
break during the day and encourage student involvement in campus activities. I
wish that the year to come will be a great one for everybody; good luck this
year!
Students may contact IVCC Student Trustee Cassie Fuller by
e-mail at
ivccstudenttrustee@yahoo.com.
She also is available during office hours in the Student
Government Association office (in the cafeteria) on Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:15 p.m. -1 p.m.,
and Tuesdays from 5 -5:30 p.m.