Senator of the College of Arts and Sciences Candidates 

Q: What is your platform?

A: “I have three bullet points and one of them is expanding the resources. So, with that expanding advising within the college. It is the largest college within Kent State University and there’s so many majors that all go to one building, particularly for advising, so it’s difficult for all of them to meet with their regular advisor. Even for pre-med majors, they have one main advisor that they all have to go see so it’s difficult with that. I want to see if it’s possible to expand advising, so hire more people within the department to become advisors for more specific majors and less throughout the whole entire college. My other thing is to create new opportunities, so with that, studying abroad, giving students a chance to study abroad. Kind of with that, creating scholarships, to see if that’s possible to create scholarships for full-time scholarships that will pay for the whole entire trip for a few amount of students. So, I go back to pre-med students, they have a really strict course where it’s difficult for them to study abroad over the semester and their only opportunity is for them to go to study abroad in the summer. So, that’s kind of where the idea of creating the study abroad opportunity came from but it would be available for all majors within the arts and sciences to apply for but that’s kind of where my idea came from. My last is creating a group, a committee of student leaders within the college itself to help me achieve these goals and to reach out to other students to see what they want to see and what else can be expanded within the college. New and old. New and current students. So, that’s kind of what my platform is and that’s kind of what I want to do.”

Q: Why should people vote for you?

A: “I feel like people should vote for me because I am a dedicated student leader. By that I mean I have had many positions within the campus to grow myself as a leader. I started off my freshman year in the living-learning community for arts and sciences and I was involved with that for two years. Then my sophomore year, I became the student success leader for the first-year experience class within the living-learning community for those students. I was also an RA and then I taught the Peer Leadership Training Class and I’m still an RA this semester. I am currently an executive board member within Kent Interhall Council, so student leadership is my passion. That’s what I want to go into after I graduate. I want to go into student affairs in higher education and continue working with students to help them find themselves because when I came in I was a premed student but once I found out about student leadership and got involved in that, that kind of grew my passion for it. That’s the course I’m in now: finding my pathway to helping others. That’s why I really want this because I feel like this would be a great opportunity to help students really grow. Not just within my committee but students overall by giving them more opportunities within the college.”

Q: What changes are you looking to enact?

A: “Changes would go back to advising. Changing, I don’t want to say the procedure but the overview of how advising is done. I go back to the pre-med students as they only have one main advisor. So seeing if another advisor can become a main advisor so students are more likely to meet with a main advisor that is specific to their major. I mentioned earlier, going to see if I can change the layout of it by having advisors be for certain majors so not all majors see the one advisor. I know in the psychology building, Kent Hall, there’s advising over there for just psych majors. I want to see if it’s possible to have specific advisors for specific majors for the other majors that aren’t as popular. See if they can have an advisor that’s just for them so they can feel more within the community and more involved within the college.”