The Academic Senate revealed an objective to help improve student life on campus during their first meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
Taking place at the David L. Eisler Center Ballrooms with an attendance exceeding 50 members, the Senate discussed three objectives that were identified at the Senate Symposium. One of the objectives was about the student experience, where its goal was to craft a statement about support services that could be used by faculty. The metric of their objective is to present a statement for Academic Senate support during the 2024-25 academic year. The Senate is teaming up with Student Life in an effort to complete the objective.
Associate Professor and President of the Academic Senate Emmanuel Jadhav described the importance of the university knowing about the Academic Senate working on the objective.
“The student experience objective is for the Academic Senate to meet for this year,” Jadhav said. “We are going to be looking at the student experience from a standpoint of what are the sources that students need. Within the statement, we’re going to highlight the different mental health resources, housing resources, pantry resources and the different options on campus.”
The Academic Senate’s partnership with Student Life began when Jadhav called Dean of Student Life Lina Blair during the summer. Blair stated that Jadhav reached out to them with an offer. The offer was that the Academic Senate would like to prioritize Student Life and the student experience and asked them if they would like to participate. Blair was honored and excited to be able to work with the Senate during their summer retreat and throughout the 2024-25 academic year.
“The idea was to improve the student experience,” Blair said. “And I could bring forward basically anything that the Senate could assist with and support. I want to prevent students from feeling like they have to piece together support and resources for themselves. The goal is to help centralize and provide case management for students. And that we can help plug them into resources and support that work for them.”
It has been confirmed by Blair that the statement is currently being worked on with the Academic Senate. In terms of where the statement will go, Blair stated that the hope is to get on the common syllabus, Ferris360 or somewhere accessible where the students can be reminded of it consistently.
Professor of Music and the Chair in the Department of Humanities Dr. Richard Scott Cohen explained that the statement can’t just be something that’s written and that it has to do its part of accomplishing the goal in order for it to come out.
“The downside is if we don’t come up with a statement,” Cohen said. “It’s just whether we’re successful in building more bridges across campus to help students. A statement itself isn’t going to do that, but if it’s a statement that we take to heart, then we use that moving forward to help achieve that broader goal. The hope is that the statement will provide some guidance for people to work collaboratively on behalf of students.”
The Academic Senate will have its second meeting of the 2024-25 academic year on Oct. 1, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.