MINUTES OF THE STUDENT SENATESOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY EDWARDSVILLE

MUC, Goshen LoungeMonday, November 18, 2019 – 6 p.m.

I. CALL TO ORDER

The Student Senate of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville convened on November 18, 2019, in room Goshen Lounge of the Morris University Center. Vice President Butler called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m.

II. ROLL CALL

Members Present: President Graham, Vice President Butler, Student Trustee Smith, Financial Officer Rachel Bryant, External Affairs Officer Walters, Internal Affairs Officer Gruse, Marketing and Communications Officer Cameron, Organization Relations Officer Dearing, Student Diversity Officer Allen, Senator Akpan, Senator Antos, Senator Beverly III, Senator Chau, Senator Delgato, Senator Ellingsworth, Senator Gilles, Senator Grayson, Senator Haas, Senator Holshouser, Senator Jones, Senator Kyle, Senator Loftus, Senator McKenzie, Senator Miller, Senator Perez, Senator Ploeckelman, Senator Schuneman, and Senator Shiau.Members Absent: Senator Robinson (excused).Quorum was established with 19 voting members present.Others Present: Dr. Jeffrey Waple, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs; Mary Weishaar, Director of International Affairs; Dr. Denise Cobb, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs; Mallory Sidarous, Interim Director of Housing; Kelly Jo Karnes, Director; Sarah Laux, Associate Director; and Student Secretary Magalene Price.

III. GUEST SPEAKERA. Mary Weishaar-Director of International Affairs

Our mission is to build and nurture international education at SIUE. We support and promote international student and scholar success, we open the world to students through study abroad, we enrich the campus through international collaboration, and we advance global perspectives in the academic community. Our vision is to have everyone on campus engage in positive and meaningful interactions with people from other cultures. We advise on immigration for international students and scholars. We guide students and scholars in their different programs. We have about twelve to fifteen exchange students at a given time. We have two programs with Fulbright, GlobalU Grad and the Fulbright program. We administer several different partnerships, including the Istanbul Technical Dual Degree Program in Turkey. We have new partnerships in China with an engineering program and one in India with the college of arts and sciences. We advise and track employment of our students. When international students graduate they have the opportunity to get a job in the U.S. and stay one to three years and that is call Optional Practical Training or OPT. Our office has to track the different aspects of student’s lives through Homeland Security, where the live, where they work, and if they move or travel. Circular Practice Training is where students can engage in off campus work while still in school. We are looking at how students and scholars

come to campus, what interaction we have will them before they arrive, when they arrive, and how well they do when they are here. We also advise on study abroad and faculty led travel study programs. We also have advisement for the Peace Core Prep Program and we have international scholarships such as the Fulbright program. We facilitate development of international partnerships, and hosting of international scholars and visiting delegations. This fall semester we have 378 international students on campus, most of whom are graduate students, but our undergraduate population is increasing every year. Our students are from fifty-seven different countries. We have many active partnerships in fifteen different countries and a little over 200 students study abroad every year. Study abroad occurs in every academic unit, and we help students find study abroad programs that work for them. Our international students are primarily studying engineering but there is a spread of international students throughout most programs. We are trying to close the gap for international students and we want to make sure they have a seamless transition to campus. We have the Global Ambassador program through the Kimmel that pairs domestic students with international students. If you have, international students in your class go out of your way to make them feel welcome here on campus. You can also volunteer with our office to help with international student orientation.

B. Dr. Denise Cobb- Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic AffairsI would like to thank you for inviting me to come speak at this meeting and I would also like to thank those of you who are involved in or helped us with the two dean search committees that are forming right now and the quadrennial reviews of several of our deans. I saw many of you at the town hall on Friday and those of you who showed up at the pricing elasticity study and I am grateful that you all are involved in the discussions on campus. One of the things we have been talking about is making syllabi available for all the courses that are taught here to be able to show students the workload of the course and how it is spread throughout the semester. We are going to run a pilot for compiling all the syllabi for the winter session. Another idea shared with me is a success week policy where the week before finals is designated for there not to be assignments due or new information taught. We are also looking into how we could incorporate a fall break into the fall semester. One problem with this is that the day with the least impact on class meetings would be a Friday, but it would be better for the school of nursing to take a Monday or a Tuesday off. These scheduling problems are being looked into to find the best way to make a fall break for all students. We are also looking into a system that would help students plan out their scheduling in advance. We had a record retention rate this year, we piloted our Summer Success Program with twenty-five students this year, it went really well, and we are piloting it again next summer with fifty students. Dr. Harris developed a program called SCORE, which is being piloted this year; we have had hundreds of students participate in activates. We also spent a great deal of time to develop a program to help the retention of first time African American male students that launches in 2020. We are working on the Quality Initiative; we will be distributing a survey to hear student’s ideas on how we can better the campus.

C. Mallory Sidarous- Interim Director of Housing

University housing is made up of five different housing communities. Our first year housing halls are Bluff, Prairie, and Woodland. We determine the first year students not by credit hour but by when you graduated high school. Our upper graduate housing is Evergreen and Cougar Village, but we do have small upper-classman community in Woodland hall for those who want to continue with that more traditional first year housing community. Our current occupancy is at 83%, which is 2,600 residents, and almost 900 of those students live in the first year residence halls. We do many comparisons of students that live on and off campus and we do see a higher retention rate of those first year students who live on campus. University housing has an operating budget of a little over $19 million and nearly half of that is made of our debt service. University housing employees about eighty staff and one hundred sixty student employees. University housing has its own facilities management, so we are able to fix things and do projects in house which helps save us money. Something we are excited about is that we do have more students in the deluxe private spaces; this is the first semester we have made them more available to first year students. We have nearly 200 first year students take us up on the deluxe private spaces. We are in the middle of our Woodland hall refresh; we are refreshing three wings at a time with new flooring, updated furniture, and replacing some doors. Our process for our current students to come back next year is now open. This year we had a 44% of students return to housing and that was the highest it has been since fall 2014. We are also excited about the e-sports pop-up in Bluff hall and the grand opening of the area is January 16, 2020 at 2 p.m.

D. Dr. Jeffrey Waple- Vice Chancellor for Student AffairsI recogized that last time I was here with you that I let my emotions take control of my reaction and put blame on you guys that was not your fault and I would just like to take this moment to apologize to all of you for my actions. We have updated some verbage in the Student Code of Conduct. We have also updated our weather policy and added a windchill chart to it.

IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTESThe minutes of the November 4, 2019 meeting were approved by general consent.

V. ADDITIONS TO AGENDA

NoneVI. OLD BUSINESS

NoneVII. NEW BUSINESS

A. Organization Name Change Requests1. Marxist Student Association to Socialist Student Association

Senator Gilles moved to approve the organization name change request. Senator Haas seconded. The motion passed by acclimation.

VIII. PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS/PERSONNEL APPOINMENTS:A. Presidential Appointments

NoneB. Personnel Appointments

NoneIX. OPEN FORUM

NoneX. SENATE REPORTS

Senator Holshouser: My report is in the packet. I attended the Student Representative Council meeting at the School of Pharmacy on behalf of Student Government.Senator Shiau: My report is in the packet. I attended the General Education Committee today and there was a lot of discussion over interdisciplinary courses, what they are all about, and what counts as an IS course. The next meeting will be on December 2.Senator Chau: My report is in the packet. Senator Antos and I are having our event on Thursday to meet with our constituencies and we are very excited.Senator Antos: My report is in the packet. I have begun a survey on the conditions in Founder’s Hall due to the construction and I will be reaching out to other senators to get an overall opinion on it.Senator Akpan: My report is in the packet. This past Thursday senator McKenzie, senator Ellingsworth, and I attended the relations panel that Marketing and Communications Officer Cameron spoke at and it provided different information about marketing.Senator Haas: My report is in the packet. I would like to remind everyone to keep posting things going on around campus on photocircle.Senator Miller: My report will be in the packet. I had my fundraising event last Saturday, it was very successful and we were able to raise a little under $8,000 for fallen state trooper Hopkin’s family.Senator Schuneman: My report is in the packet. Senator Perez and I had our event to meet with our constituencies and it went really well. We had twenty-five to thirty people take the survey and we will be forwarding the results to Dr. Schoenecker.Senator Perez: My report is in the packet. I attended the Alestle publishing board meeting today and we are trying to get an idea of how many people pick up a hard copy of the Alestle.Senator Delgato: My report is out of packet. I have reached out to Carey Harvent, who is the Development and Outreach Librarian at the Edwardsville Public Library about possibly doing a partnership to provide SIUE students with library cards to help get them access to supplementary materials that are not available at our campus library.

Senator Loftus: My report is in the packet. Senator McKenzie and I are working on putting together our organization fair that will be happening in the spring.Senator McKenzie: My report is in the packet. I would like to thank everyone who donated and spread the word about my collection drive.Senator Gilles: My report is in the packet. Two Thursdays ago, we had a presentation with Panecrest Electric and about twenty-five to thirty engineering students show up. We also had a tour at the Anheisher Brewing Company last Friday that also had a good turnout.Senator Jones: My report is in the packet. Last week I met with the FIC communities and I suggest that other senators should also meet with their FICs as well.Senator Grayson: My report is in the packet. I am still trying to get a graduate students facebook group going. I am also working with senator Robinson on graduate assistantships and getting a survey out for more clarification.Senator Beverly III: My report is in the packet. The IBHE SAC meeting was this last Saturday and it was very successful. We had twelve other schools attend and I would like to thank senator McKenzie for representing SIUE and Vice President Butler for transporting people.Senator Kyle: My report is in the packet. I am currently working on a survey to send out to my department heads, for them to send out to students, about textbook usage, how they build their syllabus, and how they show what the course objectives are.Senator Ploeckelman: My report is in the packet. I attended the town hall meeting last Friday and saw a lot of Student Government faces there. I think the meeting was very productive and props to GSA who planned and held the event.Senator Ellingsworth: My report is in the packet. I am sending out a survey to freshman to check in as the semester is ending.

XI. EXECUTIVE REPORTSMarketing and Communications Officer Cameron: My report is in the packet. I would like to thank the student organizations who submitted designs for our competition and Student Government will be voting on them.Internal Affairs Officer Gruse: My report is in the packet. This week I will be sending out an email to all the committee chairs and members about moving forward into next semester.Financial Officer Bryant: My report is in the packet. I did attend the University Quality Counsel and if you could fill out the QI survey and send it to your constituencies to fill out because they really want student feedback.President Graham: My report is in the packet. That in the weather policy they did include the metrics for closure but there were many other items we included in our resolution that are not the policy.Vice President Butler: My report is in the packet. I did attend the UPBC meeting last Friday and think it was a very successful meeting.Student Trustee Rogers: My report is in the packet. On December 4th and 5th the Board of Trustees meeting is in Carbondale and Dr. Waple is going so if you would like to ride with him let him know.External Affairs Officers Walters: My report is in the packet. We placed second in our division in the Halloween Parade and I would like to congratulate Student Government and the SIUE Drumline on that.

Student Diversity Officer Allen: My report is in the packet. The diversity counsel will be having a small discussion about the town hall meeting during our meeting on Friday. Organization Relations Officers Dearing: My report is in the packet. SOAB will be deciding which organizations get the Kimmel desk space or lockers on Friday.

XII. ANNOUNCEMENTSSarah Laux: On Wednesday dining services will be having their annual Thanksgiving feast in center court. The graduate celebrations applications are closing next week so if you know anyone graduating this semester remind them about that. The Cougar Cuboard will be closed for winter break, they are hosting the holiday box program and the deadline to apply is on December 2nd. Dance Marathon is holding a profit sharing event on Thursday all day at Sugar Fire, just mention Dance Marathon. RA applications are available online and the next information session is on December 2nd. Leadershape applications will be out after Thanksgiving. CAB is hosting Turkeypalooza on Thursday and on Sunday December 8th is Late Night Breakfast in the MUC. Applications for alternative spring break are still available if you are interested, please stop by the Kimmel if you have any questions.

XIII. ADJOURNMENTSThe meeting was adjourned at 7:43 p.m.