Lauren Urban

Candidate for Senator, College of Arts and Sciences

What is your platform?

“My platform summed up is ‘by you, for you.’ If you (as a student voter) give me (your candidate) the honor of your vote, I will give that loyalty right back to you. The College of Arts and Sciences is one of the biggest colleges at Kent State University with a high variety of majors within it, so this makes it challenging to know how to improve life for every single member of the college. While I believe that getting students involved is always most important and intend on incorporating that into my platform, I also need to know from students how I can best serve them. I want to raise a sense of pride in the college amongst its members and make Kent State feel like a home for all those who haven’t found their place yet. My number one goal if elected is going to be getting students voices heard and making these four years as valuable as possible for them.”

Why should people vote for you?

“Since Elementary school, friends, family, and teachers have always said that I was incredibly responsible and driven. Flash forward to my college years, these traits have enabled me to take on leadership roles on campus (serving as president of Hall Councils for two years straight), become a member of multiple student organizations (a pre-professional fraternity, greek life, the Letter Project, and more), take on an incredibly challenging and competitive major and volunteer weekly in a Psychology lab. I believe if given the honor to serve you, the student body, as a member of USG I would never slack or settle for second best in anything I do or achieve for you. In addition, having a major that is more in the STEM field (Biology/Pre-Med) and a minor that is more humanities-based (Political Science) I think my scope of what life in the College of Arts and Sciences is like is much broader than most.”

What changes are you looking to enact?

“I personally think that the first place to start to make students feel involved is in their freshman year here at Kent. Learning more about the college in First Year Experience courses and having a clear understanding of what resources are available through the college could, in my opinion, drastically improve the lives of students new to campus life. If students could have some sort of a network (Facebook group, phone tree, CAS based organization or club, etc) I think that would go a long way in improving the lives of students. I would love to see changes made to the requirements for double majors within the college such as removing the foreign language requirement (unless directly applicable to the students’ major) for those seeking to double major, and other such changes would encourage students to broaden their scope without fearing the burden of having to stay in school for longer amounts of time to finish courses that aren’t necessarily applicable to their major(s). Additionally, meeting with advisors more suited to one’s major or field could help students gain focus on their respective career paths in and out of college.”