This week’s SGA General Assembly meeting featured IUP’s Provost and Registrar as guest speakers. The meeting additionally included the approval of a new club, the election of a new Student Co-op Senator, and a visit from the current and future Student Trustees from the IUP Council of Trustees.
New Club
Video Game Club President Jaiden Johns (sophomore, criminology) joined the SGA meeting in Elkin Hall this Tuesday Feb. 25 to propose the plan for prospective student organization.
The goal for the club is to give people who are not interested in the Analog Game Club or the E-Sports Club a place to play games that are not competitive. The Video Game Club seeks to appeal to casual gamers.
“It would be a great honor to foster a big, large community where everyone can gather and play video games, have fun, collaborate and create groups in Minecraft or Stardew Valley,” said Johns.
The club has already created an executive Board with a President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer and has had 37 people sign up to join already.
The club was approved in the final minutes of this week’s SGA meeting.
Guest of the Week
Lara Leutkehans, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Registrar, Mike Powell attended the SGA meeting this week to go over some updates regarding IUP’s Academic Affairs and the switching of banner IDs for the fall semester.
Academic Affairs is what houses all the colleges, deans, faculty, staff and more. Currently, Academic Affairs is still working out the finer details of some restructuring they have done in the past.
“College names have gotten complicated, department names have gotten complicated and that is because we were trying to shrink our infrastructure to make it fit more appropriately with our size,” said Leutkehans.
Last year, the Academic Affairs team also initiated the Program Array Review, where they decided what programs should stay, be modified or discontinued. There were about 11 programs that were discontinued.
Leutkehans and Powell both discussed the switch of the Banner IDs, which is due to the migration from Banner to OneSIS.
OneSIS is a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education project that gathers universities together on the Ellucian Banner Managed Cloud. This will allow students to have availability to more classes and, if classes are filled at IUP, allowing an online version from other universities.
The Guest of the Week segment ended with opening the discussion for SGA members to ask questions.
Executive Board Reports
SGA President, Kaylee Becker-George (senior, history/anthropology) urged the rest of the group to sign up for Student Safety Week training held on Monday, March 3 to 6 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Leonard Hall, Room B02.
“It involves stuff like Narcan training, CPR training and stuff like that,” said Kaylee. “Please go and sign up for those. They are very important, encourage anyone else to sign up for them.”
Registration for the Student Safety Week training sessions are required, and the events are open to all students. All events are listed on Crimson Connect.
Liaison Reports
The current Student Trustee on IUP Council of Trustees, Shagufta Haque (senior, economics/finance), is graduating this semester. Jackson White (sophomore, political science/economics) will be taking her place next semester.
The Student Trustee serves as an ex-officio member of the SGA General Assembly.
“When I first learned about the Student Trustee position, I saw it more than just a title, it’s a responsibility,” said White. “A responsibility to be the voice of my student body to bridge the gap between my peers and university leadership and to advocate for the changes that will make IUP an even better place.”
Open Discussion
Open Discussion started with the group talking about a prospective time change for SGA meetings that was introduced last week. This week’s meeting is a trial run of how future meetings will go after the proposal goes to the Board of Recognition.
The group discussed whether the written report section of the meetings should be longer than the given one minute each.
“Leaning more towards the written reports is not about silencing the voices of senators or E-board members but rather making sure that we have a greater chance at people being able to receive the knowledge,” said SGA Advisor, Donovan Daniel.
Elections
Bayne Marshall (sophomore, general management/human resources management) ran for the Student Co-op Senator position, discussing his previous leadership roles, his interest in the Senator seat and what he plans to do as the Student Co-op Senator.
“I feel like students are kind of lost on where they can go for specific needs they have,” said Marshall. “I just personally found myself dealing with something a little bit ago – I want to make that better for students on that behalf.”
Bayne Marshall was sworn into the Student Co-op Senator seat at the end of the SGA meeting.
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