THE STUDENT SENATE OF THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON 72ND SESSION: 2018-2019 SENATE AGENDA Tuesday, March 26, 2019 Azalea Coast Room Call to Order Pledge of Allegiance Opening Roll Call Absent: Bullins Collignon Glover Greason Shepherd Tyson Late: Garcia-Ortega Open Podium Jess Roach Thanks! Some of you have seen me before. Today I am directing more of my speech to candidates. I know a few of you have reached out to talk to me about resources and how to be more sustainable. I’ll be more direct with this. So bear with me. As some of you already know, sustainability & responsible land management practices are of the utmost importance to me, both as a student and a resident here in Wilmington. Some of you are running for executive positions in SGA right now and I would like to personally thank those of you that have decided to include sustainability on your platforms. I think there is no better time than now to focus on this topic, especially with all our new development on campus. With that said, we will hold you accountable to both your words and your actions. Saying that you are a business major and don’t know much about sustainable practices is entirely unacceptable when asked about your sustainable action plan. If you are naming this as an important topic on your platform, you need to be prepared to tell us how you will approach the issue. If there are specific organizations you plan on reaching out to for information and project ideas, please do so and clarify to your supporters which organizations those are. There are many committees, clubs, and departments at UCNW that are involved in sustainable practices. Just to name a few that might be able to work with you: EH&S, The Bee Keeping Club, The Sustainability Committee, The Eco Club, EVS Club, local farms and co-ops, and Marie Davis at Aramark. Marie not only worked to help get Dub’s Café certified as the first green restaurant in New Hanover County but is a farmer, educator, and consultant at Centripetal Farms as well as a part- time employee at the NHC Arboretum. I believe we are all familiar with the phrase “do your homework”. There are many resources nearby, go network and investigate them. THE STUDENT SENATE OF THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON 72ND SESSION: 2018-2019 If you are at a total loss, just go talk a walk through Bluethenthal Wildflower Preserve and I guarantee you’ll be able to find some wonderful sustainability projects to be done in there. Good luck to everyone on campaigning this week. Motion to Approve Last Week’s Minutes Senator Oremeno moves to approve Senator Lanier seconds Voting numbers 36 -0-0 Motion passes Guest Speakers Vice Chancellor Stuart VC for University Advancement My name is Eddie Stuart and I’m Vice Chancellor of Univerity Advancement. Pretty much anything related to bringing resources into UNCW through philanthropic efforts is my domain. Mostly this effort is through alumni, parents, friends, and current employees. We doo work with foundations and businesses though as well. We have over 80,000 alumni here at UNCW. We have a huge Seahawk family that wants to be connected to this community. We always do surveys of alumni and we always ask if you do it all over again, would you chose UNCW? Did you love it? What percentage would you say would choose UNCW again? Various Senators: 70%, 68%,, 80%, 90% Ninety percent of our alumni said they love it and would do it again. Now, what percent gives back anything in a given year? Various Senators: 25%, 26%. Only about 5.8% give back to UNCW each year. So 90% love the Dub but only 6% are giving back. Now in Advancement, we think y’all are worth it and that philanthropy is important on this campus. We don’t rely too much on private giving to make things go at UNCW but we are starting to get there. We believe if we help our students while they are here and get them active in giving now, they are more likely to be an active alumnus. We are trying to engage them in the life of the university. Also, alumni participation is important for rankings to see what the alumni think of the university. For tonight though, I wanted to give you all an overview of what we do, I wanted to answer concerns on anything like commencement, and then I also want some feedback if we have time. I had some great feedback from some of you earlier today. We want to make you more inspired and aware of philanthropy here at UNCW. Senator Shoff: Thanks for coming. We love having you here. I know I had a couple of seniors complain that they felt like graduation was supposed to be a celebration of what we have done over the past couple years and they felt like they were just being treated like another check or just a number in a crowd. I know they wanted to have some more personalization. People were frustrated because their names were being called when they weren’t walking across the stage and things like that. VC Stuart: So we have got a little bit of a new bogie in this whole thing. Our Chancellor is not ashamed at all to ask for money. He is a hard charger. I think some of our subtle messaging is getting overrun a little bit by the Chancellor. His thinking was that if I match their donations 1:1 than that would inspire them. I think your point is well taken though. I think that some of the things we think are subtle are not so subtle. I mean walking across the stage and getting that diploma and then finding out it just has a sign on it that says donate to UNCW is kinda tacky. I heard that complaint a lot and so I checked into that and well, it actually says “Welcome to the Alumni Association.” I think people hear Alumni and think that it THE STUDENT SENATE OF THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON 72ND SESSION: 2018-2019 is always about giving. We have a lot of things we want Alumni to get involved in. In regards to people’s names not being called across stage, definitely bring that up with VCPL because we will want to fix that. Senator Ammons: You mentioned foundations and corporations giving money, can you tell us what that looks like? Where does that go? VC Stuart: If there was one myth I could dispel, it is that people think Advancement decides where money goes. We do not. Pretty much every donation goes directly to a designation they chose. For example, Duke Energy gave to help people get registered in Clinical Nursing. The owner of Blockade Runner wanted to help the Business School. He specifically wanted to help students in accounting. Now they have a paid internship for 5 accounting students that helps companies that might not be able to pay students. We do turn down offers from foundations and companies that don’t align with us as crazy as that sounds. Senator Borja: Has there been any research on what students did give? VC Stuart: They are you. They are the student leaders. They were the people who felt their life was changed by UNCW. People give not just because they loved their alma mater but also because they feel like their school is making a difference. A lot of young alumni don’t feel like their gift can make a difference but it does go a long way. A lot of people don’t realize how much those small gifts add up and how much value they really do have. Senator Shoff: I completely agree. Those gifts do go a long way. I think if students saw that that they might be encouraged more. VC Stuart: It’s mostly about building awareness and communicating. You all might remember the Get to Know Phil event where we wrote thank you notes to donors. We mailed those out to donors and it made them feel appreciated. It also made students think about philanthropy and the impact it can have. Wallace: I think programs like that really influence the student population. The negative side is calls during the school year while I’m paying tuition. I wish we could focus more on calls during the future rather than while we are still at school. Stuart: Yeah, we straddle that line between tacky and tactful. We won’t apologize about asking for money but we will for overstepping. We believe in you and so do the thousands of people that donate every year. Dr. Anderson Director of the University College Good Evening, I am so impressed by this show of Student Government. I am here to speak to you about Student Success initiatives. Who has not seen their academic advisor? Anyone? Not too bad! Anyway, I am here to talk about a couple different things. I have engaged with a couple different committees to talk about working with academic advisor. I’d like to talk about Starfish and academic success. What does academic success mean to students? It means study abroad, internships, and balancing a lot of changes. Sometimes you change majors, sometimes you know exactly what you want to do when you get here. Bio-pre med students, for example, often change their majors as soon as they hit organic chemistry.