Student Union

Full Length Fall Campus State of the Union

Jeff Nelson's State of the Union Address

Dance Marathon and Delta Gamma talk about upcoming events for their student groups.

Vice President of Programming, Nate Ferguson, meets with Mike Post (Senator), Ciara Caprara (Treasury Rep) and Leslie Hustead (Director of the DUC) to talk about a new tailgating initiative. 

The Montana Administration is committed to improving relationships with student groups. Doing so is extremely important. We must actively build coalitions within the student body if we actually plan to improve the daily experience of students. Student groups are instrumental to this effort.

We seek new relationships with student group that are mutually beneficial. Certainly, student groups can help Student Union make a bigger impact. But, Student Union can and should also help student group's make an impact--help them flourish and achieve their particular ends within minimal roadblocks.

We've already started attending student group meetings this year to both share and learn. Today, I visited the Sports Club Board. Later this week, I will visit Campus Y, Ashoka and the Association of Black Students. In the coming weeks, I will visit more  group meetings and look forward to taking part in some great events as the year progresses. We're also planning some special focus groups with student group leaders to get their feedback on various issues. More information on this is coming soon.

If you have any suggestions for ways that we can improve our relationship with student groups, please let me know. I look forward to the coming year and all it has to bring.

Student Union is taking concrete steps to work with student groups and make campus events greener. This objective will be accomplished through three new entities: an Executive Advisor for Sustainability, a Green Events Commission and a Special Executive Task Force for Sustainable Events.

Executive Advisor for Sustainability 
I have nominated Will Fischer to be the Executive Advisor for Sustainability. Will is the former president of Green Action and has a contagious passion for environmentalism. Once confirmed by the Legislature, Will will advise Student Union on the effectiveness of various sustainability initiatives and will provide recommendations for appropriate policy changes. He will also be a leader on the Green Events Commission and will co-chair the Special Executive Task Force for Sustainable Events.

You can contact Will by email at sustinability@su.wustl.edu

Green Events Commission
A Green Events Commission (GEC) now exists in the Student Union executive branch. The GEC will be led by Will Fischer and chairpersons charged with research, consulting and publicity. These four individuals, in addition to other interested students, will offer free consulting services to student groups who want to make their events greener. The GEC will also conduct research on sustainability best practices and will submit reports to the Special Executive Task Force for Sustainable Events.

Special Executive Task Force for Sustainable Events
A Special Executive Task Force for Sustainable Events (SETSE) now exists in the Student Union executive cabinet. The SETSE will be co-chaired by Will Fischer and Vice President of Administration, Trevor Mattea. The rest of the group will consist of a representative from Senate, Treasury, cultural groups, charity groups, the Greek community, Team 31, and the Vice President of Programming.

The SETSE will evaluate research done by the GEC to formulate practical and sound recommendations to form guidelines for green events. These recommendations will be submitted to the Legislature to be passed as Student Union policy.

Please post any questions or comments. If you wish, take a look at the actual executive order that makes all of the above possible.

Over the past couple of days I have issued two executive orders and one memorandum that aim to make Student Union a more open, transparent and accessible organization that effectively works on behalf of students. Please refer to the summaries below or the attached documents for more information.

Presidential Memorandum of August 4, 2009
This memorandum directs all officers in the executive branch to blog about meetings with administrators on the Student Union website or the website of a subsidiary governing body within the executive branch. The memorandum also directs all executive officers and executive advisors to post a message on the Student Union twitter informing the public about upcoming meetings with administrators.

The goal of this memorandum is to make Student Union more transparent in our dealings with administrators. Students will be able to see who we are meeting with and learn more about what we are discussing.

Executive Order 908041 of August 4, 2009
This order directs the President of Student Union to post all Executive Council to the Student Union website no later than one week after meeting has occurred. It also outlines three processes by which constituents may gain access to portions of minutes from Executive Council meetings. 

The goal of this order is to make Student Union more open to the student body. The Student Union Executive Council advises the President in the functioning of Student Union and makes many important decisions that affect the daily lives of students. Traditionally, these meetings are closed, through the President may invite constitutents at his discretion, and the minutes are private to ensure that sensitive items may be discussed and that officers can offer candid counsel. In order to respect these needs, but also make the Executive Council more open and transparent, this order ensures that agendas will be posted online so students will know what business is being discussed, and it outlines a process for students to get more information about what is discussed in the meetings when necessary.

Executive Order 908061 of August 6, 2009
This order directs each executive officer to regularly hold a minimum of 8 officer hours per week in the Student Union office. It also directs the Recruitment and Retention committee in conjunction with the Public Relations committee to develop ways for executive officers to be accessible and interact with constituents outside of the Student Union office.

The goal of this order is to make Student Union more accessible. Officers should have reliable times that students can reach them within the office, but we should also make an attempt to be accessible outside of the Student Union office.

Each of these directives goes into affect on September 1, 2009. Please post comments with you thoughts.

I have been working to bring a comprehensive campus events calendar to our campus since my sophomore year. When I got here, Student Union provided Spark, but that didn't really work for a number of reason. Last year Student Union launched The Link and it wasn't very successful either. There are a lot of factors that prohibited The Link from being the success that we had hoped for, and we have studied all of them intently.

I believe that a campus events calendar is one of the single greatest improvements that can be made to the undergraduate experience. Students have been demanding a calendar for years because they want a central place where they can find out everything that is happening in their community at a given time. Student groups want a central place where they can publicize events and know that the information is reaching a captive audience.

We are committed to making The Link a functional campus events calendar, starting this fall! Here are thee three reasons why I think that we'll be successful.

1. Public Calendar. Anyone will be able to view the calendar without having to log-in. This will make it easier than ever for students, staff, administrators, guests, etc to see what is happening on campus.
2. WUSTL Key Integration. When students want to log into The Link to manage their personal calendar and student group information, they can do so using WUSTL Connect. No need to remember an extra username and password!
3. No Extra Steps. Student Groups will not have to go through any additional steps to get information displayed on The Link. Now, space reservations will be done on The Link instead of on the Event Services website. Therefore, when student groups request a space for an event, the event information will be automatically added to the calendar.  

I just had the opportunity to go to a food tasting event in Ibby's for a new concept that will launch this fall. In order to help reduce line congestion in the DUC, and make eating in Ibby's a faster and more covinient experience during lunch hours, Ibby's will host a themed buffet every day. The buffet will cost less than $10 and be ALL YOU CAN EAT.

Isn't this exciting. Post comments with yout thoughts!

This past weekend, Trevor Mattea led a group of SU reps and student volunteers to clean and pack-up the SU space in Umrath Hall. Here is a photo blog of how much stuff they went through. SU should be moving to the Women's Building soon. Once we do, we will post some pictures.

I am very excited about the Live@Edu pilot program that is set to start this fall! The product has really grown on me in such a short amount of time. Since its feature set meets of exceeds Google Apps in almost every area, my biggest concern was how easy the user interface would be to navigate. I am not a native Outlook user, so I excpted some time to adjust.

After testing Live@Edu for a while, I've learned the user interface. It is definately different from Gmail, but it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Here are some screenshots that show a few of the key features and the user interface of Live@Edu. Click on the images to see them fullsize in a popup window.

1) Live@Edu features a stunning Web 2.0 interface. Users are presented with the classic 3 pane Outlook view. Right now I was unable to reorganize the panes, but this is a feature that is planned for the fall release. The inbox comes with 10 GB of storage space.

2) When composing emails, users can take advantage of auto complete which is generated from a built in global address book of all users and those users whom you have contacted before. This is a feature I am really excited about. You will no longer need to go to the WUSTL Directory to find an email address. Now, you can just start typing the name of your professor and the global address book will do all the work for you.

3) Live@Edu has a conversation view where users can easily access all the messages in an email thread no matter when they were sent. This is very similar if not identical to Gmail's conversation view.

4) Categories in Live@Edu function similar to labels in Gmail. Users can apply multiple categories to an email, and can also sort and search via categories. I really like the labels feature in Gmail so I was very happy to see that Live@Edu had a similar function. You can create custom labels and give them different colors, etc. This will allow fans of labels to organize using the same paradigm, but those who like folders (for whatever reason, lol) will still be able to use those as well.

5) Live@Edu comes with a built in personal calendar that is directly tied to email. For example, when users are sent emails with event invites, they can automatically be added to the Live@Edu calendar.

6) Users can make calendar events, invite other attendees, and book resources from the same window. Autocomplete works with the calendar as well. Making a calendar event is very similar to writing an email, so once you get used to one of them, you're used to the other.

7) The Live@Edu scheduling assistant puts the availability of all invitees and resources in the same window for easy scheduling. The scheduling assistant also shows suggested times along with how many invitees can attend during each time. I think this is a really cool feature. No more emailing back and forth to schedule a meeting. This is even easier than whenisgood.net.

8) Live@Edu allows users to view shared calendars side by side for quick reference.

9) Each Live@Edu user has a profile page that can be seamlessly connected with social networking websites like facebook and twitter. As you can see I have my facebook feed and the SU blog feed connected to my profile. You can also give yourself a status message at the top.

10) Each user has a 25 GB skydrive for file storage and sharing.

11) Live@Edu makes collaboration easy with Office Live workspaces. These workspaces allow users to share documents for various project types seamlessly. I like the different templates that come with the service...it makes collaboration even easier.

Thanks for viewing. If you want to see screenshots of anything that I haven't posted, just let me know and I'll be happy to do so.