Executive Meeting Minutes – November 18, 2020

Logo: ASWSU Global.

Executive Meeting Minutes

Date: November 18, 2020
Time: 4:30 p.m. PST
Location: Zoom
Note: These meeting minutes were reviewed and approved on December 2.

Roll Call

  • President: Gina Vasquez (Present)
  • Vice President: Heather Leasure (Present)
  • Director of Academic Affairs: Nigeria Tyler-Williams (Present)
  • Director of Communications and Compliance: Altessia Endencia (Present)
  • Director of Finance: Laud Williams (Present)
  • Director of Legislative Affairs: Samantha Fakharzadeh (Present)
  • Director of Diversity: Andrea Ashmore (Present)
  • Director of Resources: Alexis Edwards (Present)
  • Director of Student Events & Promotion: Chelsea Rollins (Present)

  • Advisor: Andria Donneworth (Present)

Items Discussed

Introductions

Alexis Edwards joined as Director of Resources, and excited to get involved with WSU community! Small business owner and lives in Issiquah.

Andrea Ashmore is the new Director of Diversity, and is excited to be a part of the team. Also works with Heather at Clark College (and is also used to Zoom oddities). Pursuing psychology, and this is her first semester at Washington State University.

Reports

President’s Report

We’re not doing reports for the rest of the meetings. We’re in the process of getting closed captions. Have not heard from Wendy, but wheels are turning.

Recently spoke about research grant to encourage students do independent research to be more competitive applicants for grade school. Also eligible to speak at CIRCA (spelling?). Just been prepping things for spring and thinking of ideas for how we want to run meetings.

Vice President’s Report

Working aggressively on food voucher. Sent email to Angela to get students’ cities and states (but not names). Focusing heavily on Krueger. Also been working on student reimbursements, and all will be paid out with the next two weeks. Transitioning to Alexis.

Will also start creating an email to go out when reimbursements approved.

Director of Legislative Affairs Report

Finished legislative agenda, which is what they will be lobbying for in the next year. Have been starting to work on organizing Coug Day at the Capital, which will be virtual and using AirMe as platform. Finishing SGC’s legislative agenda.

Director of Academic Affairs Report

Working on Cougar Pledge for Spring 2021, similar to Green River College. Helps stu-dents with financial gap. Working with Gina looking for research grant and to help WSU add more Master’s Programs to WSU Global.

Director of Finance Report

This week has been crazy. Finally finished putting together department heads to get research grants going. Meeting Leslie to use research grants already established, and to have ASWSU Global help fund additional grants. Books are all up to date.

Current challenge is that we don’t actually use a lot of money, though ASWSU Global can change that quickly. Will need Honor society descriptions.

Director of Events and Promotion

Tomorrow night is Bingo Night at 7 PM PST! Hosted by ASWSU Global. We are hosting a thank you to the veterans, hosted by Andria and Andrea. Giving away veteran’s coins. Next week, we will be hosting a quarter of the virtual game day, which is Apple Cup. Games, scrambles, what do you know about football, etc. Day after Thanksgiving, and hosted in Pullman this year.

Needs study tips by end of the week. Study tips will be from November 30th to December 4th. Anything related to how you better yourself for school, and how you get yourself in a mindset to be successful at school. We’re hosting another virtual game night on December 12th, right before Finals Week. Start hosting Diversity Expo things and collaborating for Spring semester.

Director of Communication and Compliance Report

Working on pitching initiatives to administration and researching resources that are available. Focuses include making more students aware of resources that are available.

Director of Resources (Introduction)

Some ideas include sending emails with confirmation about reimbursements, tagging them with information about opportunities for involvement. Ideas include expanding national honor societies to include professional organizations.

Director of Diversity (Introduction)

Today is her third day. Would like to collaborate on diversity event. Would also like to collaborate with chairman of Diversity Committee. When thinking about impact of COVID-19, first thought is employment. We do have career center that does advising sessions.

Vice President Report

Working on reimbursements in the absence of Director of Resources. Gina and Heather discussing more focus on reimbursements. Having faculty announce resources every week (“Resources of the Week”).

Meeting Minutes — 11/4

Motion to approve meeting minutes by Heather.

Motion seconded by Tessa.

Votes:

  • Yes by Samantha
  • Yes by Laud
  • Yes by Chelsea
  • Yes by Nigeria
  • Yes by Heather
  • Yes by Tessa.

Abstained from voting: Alexis and Andrea.

2020/2021 Legislative Agenda

Focusing on state legislation first with WSA. Protect Washington college grant to continue efforts from 2020 legislative session. Maintaining Obama-era Title 9 policies, which supports survivors of sexual assault. Also lobbying student reproductive health with student health insurance. Also would like to eliminate ACT/SAT requirements. Working child connections care, to substitute work hours with learning hours so that students can receive child care. Abolish and reform edTPA. Would also like to regulate tuition and extend financial aid for graduate students. Ban school from hiring police officers with disciplinary records. Mandatory diversity inclusion training. Lobby for lecture capture to make mandatory in classes. Increase transparency with Cares and Gears funds so that schools have to report to students what they are spending funds on.

At university level, aims to implement initiatives that will help breakdown barriers for higher education regarding race, differently abeled, and LGBTQI+ diversity efforts. Make commonplace the stating of preferred pronouns. Encourage WSU Global to include more educational material from non-white American perspectives, including educational materials from countries outside of Europe. Making mandatory the sharing of a written statement about ableist language in class syllabi. The 2020/2021 ASWSU Global is first in Global Campus history to make use of live and closed captioning at WSU Global for years to come.

Zeroing In

We talked about spring semester, we’re going to start doing weekly meetings to get the ball rolling on things – as it’s going to be very busy (all hands on deck). Coug Day at the Capital in January, budget for 2021/2022 school year in February, March/April we will be coming up with ideas for recruitment for new members. We hope to have them onboarded May 15th. Those already on ASWSU Global can reapply.

Focuses

  • Grocery voucher program — Heather taking lead on grocery voucher program.
  • Global student research and mentoring
    • Will be working with Angela about mentoring program and see if what she’s working on will be in line with what ASWSU Global envisioning.
  • Spring Virtual Event Planning
    • Will take a lot of time and will have a lot of resources devoted to it. Theme, presentations, etc. Andria forwarded list of speakers.
    • Diversity Fair may still happen including racism, sexism, and having hard conversations about disparities that marginalized populations face.
    • We haven’t started doing anything yet but it will be a major group project. We talked at the beginning of year of doing Diversity event, collaborating with Spokane. Coug Summit was canceled last year, but we still have a lot of swag from last year’s event.

2020/2021 Diversity Initiatives

During the Diversity committee, we discussed the idea of pitching initiatives to administration. Had a meeting yesterday for initiatives, and this turned into discussion about what resources are currently available but that students are not aware of.

Two initiatives that team got excited about:

  • Making committees eligible for college credit.
  • Transitioning orientation from Blackboard to a live session on Zoom that builds ice breakers and community into orientation.

Motion to adjourn by Samantha.

Seconded by Heather.

Thirded by Laud.

Meeting adjourned at 5:43 PM PST.