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the collegian
monday, february 25, 2013
S&U | Candidates hope to enhance student mobility, create K-State mobile app Continued from page 1 difference at K-State, enact a real change that makes student life at K-State better,” Unruh said. Unruh said that his early experience in the Student Governing Association gave him a working knowledge of its functions. “I got involved in SGA in a number of different ways. I interned for a year as a freshman, now I work as the local relations director,” Unruh said. “I’m also president of the Union Governing Board.” Schooley also had SGA experience from the beginning of his time at K-State, serving as an intern his freshman year and eventually becoming the SGA chief of staff for current president Nate Spriggs.
“I was the person in charge of enacting the platforms that the past president was elected on,” Schooley said. “Now I want to pursue the role that I worked so closely with and make more of those tangible impacts.” A background in SGA is one of the qualities that brought Schooley and Unruh together. “I was excited when Eli approached me for his running mate,” Unruh said. “I’d seen his leadership qualities in a number of different areas, and he’s got a good background in SGA. I think we make a great team.” Schooley and Unruh’s team platform centers entirely around students. Their threepoint system for benefitting K-State encompasses technol-
ogy and reformation of current standards. “Our platform is essentially three pieces,” Unruh said. “We want to empower relationships, enrich student experience and enhance our mobility.” The first point in Schooley and Unruh’s plan involves the school-wide implementation of a system that one branch of K-State already uses. “Right now the College of Business has a really successful program,” Unruh said. “They partner students with professionals in their field that have at least 10 years of experience. We think it’s a great program and it should be extended to everyone at K-State, whether you’re in agriculture or advertising.” Schooley and Unruh also
plan to restructure the TEVAL system, so more accurate information is sent from students to faculty. “TEVALs don’t seem to have a lot of impact on the students or the teachers,” Schooley said. “We want to break down that communication gap between students and faculty in the classroom.” To harness current technology, Schooley and Unruh are proposing the creation of a K-State app for smartphones and tablets, giving students access to webmail, iSIS and K-State Online in a mobile form, in addition to sending notifications when grades are updated or when the parking lots are full, among other functions. “We want to be mobile, because we are in a mobile
time,” Unruh said. As president and vice president, Schooley and Unruh said they would be focused on increasing funding for events and groups that contribute educational value to students. “We’d like to see student dollars go to things students want and need,” Unruh said. “Finding programs that will serve as many students as possible and making sure they have funds is our priority.” Schooley said that he wished to ensure that the entire funding allocation process was objective and representative not only of traditional students, but also of minority and non-traditional student interests. “The most important thing that comes to allocating SGA money is that those commit-
tees looking at funding requests look at each proposal with fresh eyes,” Schooley said. “If we focus on committees full of objective people, the allocation process will continue going smoothly.” Schooley and Unruh’s campaign is fueled by a desire to make change, Schooley said, and the two candidates have worked to make sure that change is what would happen if they were elected. “We put a lot of time in last semester meeting with administrators on campus and making sure that what we’re running on is measurable and can be enacted,” Schooley said. “It was important to use to make sure that what we’re proposing can actually happen. It’s more than just words.”
P&W | Duo uses business experience SGA | Policy could aid in enrollment Continued from page 1 “We are not greek, but we can definitely bring fresh, new perspectives to an organization that needs change,” said Blair Wilen, SGA presidential candidate and junior in marketing. Wilen and his running mate, Brandon Painter, junior in marketing and entrepreneurship, have been involved in various organizations on campus, and said that their experiences will allow them to run SGA more efficiently. Between the two, experiences range from raising $10,000 for K-State telefund, serving as Internet chairperson for Alpha Kappa Psi professional business fraternity and founding a sole proprietorship. Painter owns a social media site called JubeoSocial, which provides social media branding services to businesses looking to reach online audiences. Wilen is Painter’s new business director and is involved with the marketing aspect of the company. “Running a business definitely has given both of us a lot of relevant experience that we would use if we were elected,”
Painter said. “It’s not just about money though. It’s about learning how to lead and work with people, which definitely is part of being a student body president and VP.” Wilen and Painter said their platform includes various propositions for improvement in and outside the classroom, including raising standards for GTAs new to teaching, bringing a farmer’s market to Bosco Student Plaza and increasing the “feeling of family” at K-State. “As president and VP, we want to make sure that students are involved with making the decisions that they feel affect them,” Wilen said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re greek, non-greek, in certain majors or whatever. You deserve to have a voice at this university, and we can make sure that happens.” us far, Wilen and Painter have taken advantage of their knowledge of social media and have released a campaign video called “Be the Difference.” e video, which as of 9 p.m. Sunday night had 1,185 views, includes student testimony and endorsements from various students, the most no-
table being football players Ty Zimmerman, Tre Walker and Tyler Lockett. “We just released the video on [Feb. 12] and its gotten a lot of views already,” Painter said. “We just want students to know what we’re about, and that’s enhancing the Wildcat experience. One of the best ways to reach people is through social media, and we feel like the video is doing a good job helping people understand what we can contribute to SGA and K-State.” One major area Wilen and Painter said they would like to improve on is funding allocations. ough they acknowledged that the current administration has limited tuition and privilege fee increases, the duo said that some details needed to be revised. “We don’t want to restrict any organizations from acquiring the money that they need to go above and beyond,” Wilen said. “Instead, we want to make sure that we reduce, and eventually eliminate wasteful spending. e more waste we can reduce, the more we can actually allocate to things that really matter to the students.”
N&M | Team hopes to update Union Continued from page 1 Student Governing Association,” said Nuss, who serves as speaker pro tempore of the Student Senate, making him the fourth-highest ranking officer in SGA. Nuss, in his third term as a senator for the engineering department, has been involved with the executive branch of SGA for three years. He is the chair of the Student Affairs Committee and the Diversity Programming Committee, and has previously chaired the College Council Allocations Committee. Mendiola, who serves on the Student Review Board, offers experience in the judicial branch. He has also been involved with the K-State Student Foundation, working for Wildcat Warm-Up, New Student Services and K-State Proud. Nuss and Mendiola say their campaign focuses on three distinct areas: enhancing the experience of the K-State Student Union, updating smaller, general-purpose classrooms and increasing funding opportunities for student organizations. “e Union is one of the main buildings on campus where students spend time, and it could use a lot of updates,” Nuss said. “We’d like to make it more energy efficient, bring in more retail options and create a better study environment.” According to Mendiola, if the study environment in the Union were enhanced with more space, computers and books, it would give students
another major location to work, relieving the congestion often found in Hale Library. He also mentioned that the two would like to bring a post office and Redbox consoles to the Union. “e university has also done a great job renovating large lecture halls, like Umberger, but most students spend a majority of their time in smaller classrooms,” Nuss said, adding that many of these rooms are old and technologically outdated. “We’d like to reprioritize some of the money going to lecture halls to renovate general-purpose classrooms.” e student body president is in charge of about $15 million per year in student privilege fees. Nuss said that, although much of this money is already allocated by privilege fee committees, he intends to increase funding opportunities for SGA. “We’re looking to clear a lot of money into the [university] President’s budget and other places, giving us more flexibility,” Nuss said. Nuss and Mendiola also want to establish a General Programming Committee to cater to non-multicultural student groups in the same way the Diversity Programming Committee serves multicultural groups. “SGA has the DPC as an avenue for diversity groups to hold big-time events,” Nuss said. “We’d like to establish the GPC to allow groups from more traditional backgrounds to have their own events.” Another focus of Nuss’ and Mendiola’s campaign is ensuring that SGA accurately rep-
resents the entire student body. “As an organization, we don’t necessarily represent the student body as well as we could,” Nuss said. “We’re working to see how we can reach out to groups that are underrepresented.” Nuss and Mendiola both mentioned their diversity as running mates. Along with his extensive SGA experience, Nuss said he is not affiliated with a fraternity, which makes him a minority in the greek-dominated SGA. On the other hand, Mendiola, a member of Delta Sigma Phi, has the chance to be the first Hispanic to hold the office of vice president or president. “ere’s never been a Hispanic or Latino in the office, and I’d definitely love to be the first,” Mendiola said. “e last multicultural student to hold the office was in 1986.” Mendiola added that he and Nuss want to show how diverse K-State is, as they see it as a top choice for multicultural students in the state of Kansas. A long-term goal of the campaign is to relocate the Multicultural Student Center from its cramped location in the Union to Holtz Hall, which will be vacated when Career and Employment Services moves to the new Welcome Center that will be built as part of the university’s 2025 plan. “All in all, we’re a diverse set of candidates willing to work with underrepresented students,” Nuss said. “We’re not willing to sit with the status quo, and we intend to be true representatives of the student body.”
RODEO | Student proposes at event Continued from page 1 and other animals. “We added an intermission, which is something we never do, to accommodate our animal athletes,” McQuade said. “We did it to help them warm up and make sure they were comfortable.” Muller and McQuade said
that the event was a success largely due to the student work effort, but even the students had a surprise in store for them. In addition to winning 6th place in her event, Elli Ouellette also roped herself a man. “Elli was proposed to by her boyfriend Saturday night at the event,” McQuade said. “Her now-fiance, Daniel Unruh, is a
bullfighter on our team.” e K-State Rodeo Club plans to participate in several more events in the season. Despite the initial stress, McQuade said the weekend was a reminder of what a strong community that rodeo can build. “Rodeo is not just a sport, it’s a family,” McQuade said.
Continued from page 1 discussed the topic of having syllabi readily available to students prior to enrollment. “We were looking out for freshmen and transfer students that don’t really know anyone on campus,” Hill said. “A syllabus provided before the class can give a student an insight and a snapshot of what a course entails for next semester.” SGA hopes, by implementing this measure, to help students determine which classes they will have the most success in. Hill said students learn and excel in many different ways and styles; with this measure students would be able to evaluate classes based on differences in teaching style or philosophy, for example, or whether grades are based more on papers or exams. Having more information available prior to enrolling could save students the hassle of realizing they may not do well with the class format after the semester has begun, dropping the class and scurrying to find another to fit their schedule. “We’re still brainstorming on what avenue we would want to go through,” Hill said. “We’ve pitched our ideas to the professors and the Faculty Senate, so it’s still in the works.”
Implementing this measure could potentially give students a bit of an edge when considering classes for their next term. “It would definitely help manage the course load just because you don’t really know what you’re getting into,” said Jayne Westhead, junior in kinesiology. “It also helps with planning out what your semester will look like.” Eli Schooley, senior in political science and candidate for student body president, believes this approach would help professors early in the semester, but could give them a challenge as well. “There’s a whole bunch of flux in and out of classes, and there’s a lot of shifting going on which is crazy for the professors that have to deal with it,” Schooley said. “The downside is that professors would have to prepare for their classes a couple months in advance, and it would be hard to know what their classes would look like in a couple months.” Professors such as Mike Finnegan, instructor in the School of Leadership Studies, support the idea, but realize the challenges that may come with this notion. “The syllabus is pre-determined for the 16-week semester, and it doesn’t factor in space for student
learning,” Finnegan said. “If the students aren’t ready to move from module to module, then the syllabus pressures the professor to keep going in the class, even though the students might need more time with the content.” One of the worries professors may have with this approach is that if students are able to access the syllabus while enrolling, they end up taking the class because of what they see in the syllabus. That would leave no room for the professor to improvise lessons, and could end up causing them to feel pressured to follow the schedule of the syllabus as much as possible. “Absolutely I’d support it,” Finnegan said. “Yet if we move in this direction, there can’t be any student backlash about the content of the syllabus.” If this motion passes and syllabi were available for student access at the time of enrollment, Hill envisions that the documents would either be available through iSIS or on the specific department’s website. Either way, Hill and Schooley both believe this approach would benefit future students. “The positives would definitely outweigh the negatives,” Schooley said. “I would absolutely support it for sure.”
Cody Handrick, senior, Niles, Michigan, snuggles up to “Flynn” to keep warm during the Equestrian Team’s meet with Baylor in October. Photo by Allen Eyestone • Collegian Media Group
Explore the campus as you’ve never seen it before. Dozens of student and alumni photographers recorded life at K-State in October. Visit wearekstate.com to see their visions for yourself.