Student Governmnet 

So What?

 

As a Senator, I worked on a committee collaborating with the library to increase the adoption of open-education textbooks through the Open Education Network (OEN). This involved raising awareness about open educational resources (OERs) and incentivizing faculty review of OER textbook options to consider for integration into high-enrollment courses. My journey with the Open Education Network (OEN) textbook affordability committee began when I was brainstorming potential student senator projects with the Academic Affairs committee. I had recently spoken to a learning community leader who shared that one of her students could not afford to purchase a required textbook. Shocked to learn this I immediately wanted to take action.

 

I requested a meeting with the Dean of the College of Business to discuss textbook affordability issues. The Dean validated my concerns and suggested investigating open educational resources (OERs) and speaking with faculty about potentially adopting free, customizable online textbook alternatives for high-enrollment courses. During my next Student Senate committee meeting I brought up textbook costs again. I learned there was already a cross-campus affordability committee through the library collaborating on an initiative called the Open Education Network (OEN). The OEN committee’s goals aligned perfectly with my hopes to incentivize faculty OER textbook review and adoption. 

 

Eager to contribute student perspectives to the effort, I asked to join the existing OEN committee. As another student representative, I began working closely with librarians and instructional design administrators to build awareness and adoption programs grounded in access, quality, and academic innovation pillars. Leading this collaborative initiative gave me invaluable real-world experience acting on identified student needs by influencing systemic academic change.

 

Additionally, being in Student Government has required me to reflect on my leadership strengths and weaknesses. As someone with strengths in big-picture thinking and uniting people behind a vision, I tend to thrive when generating ideas and rallying support for change initiatives. For example, when discussing initiatives around improving some budgeting changes and how we delegate student fees I tend to focus on the student perspective and make sure that we look at the student's perspective, and the questions that I raise bring conversations and I find that very important.

 

However, my weaknesses in coordination mean following through on execution is more challenging for me. Recognizing this has shown me areas where I need to improve as well as where I can lean on team members' complementary strengths. While I contribute actively during Senate discussions, I have struggled with documentation and communication tasks between meetings. Recently, when I was responsible for recording my constituent outreach hours, I kept forgetting to add the information after each of my sessions. Unlike speaking up in lively strategy debates, sharing progress updates falls outside my natural comfort zone. Moving forward, I need to improve on administrative follow-through and find ways to match my energetic in-person collaboration with disciplined communication between meetings.

 

I also noticed I tend to start a lot of projects without following through on details. In my excitement, I would overcommit my time and other students' time. To improve, I had to limit my ideas to what the group could reasonably take on based on skills, time, and priorities. This helped me match responsibilities to members' availability and talents. I also became aware I need to focus more instead of multitasking too much. When working on several projects, I lost track of the next steps and had to reset priorities. I realized the importance of limiting commitments, using organizational tools, and delegating better. My approach has evolved to include more perspectives, as different viewpoints have sparked innovative solutions I wouldn't have come up with alone. By listening to different groups of students, our group designed more equal textbook options helping all budgets and learning needs. This showed me how leaders can accomplish shared goals when they understand and address group members’ priorities.

 

There were also times when not everyone would agree on a decision and we would go back and forth multiple times to come to a consensus. In situations like this, I learned the importance of listening to all perspectives but also realized that endlessly debating slows progress. In these cases, I would summarize the various viewpoints and suggestions that had been raised, identify areas of common ground, and propose a path forward incorporating elements that addressed the major concerns. This helped move the discussion and decision along when an agreement wasn't unanimous right away.

 

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