At the sixth Associated Students of the University of California Riverside (ASUCR) Senate meeting, Executive Director (ED) Asha Nettle gave her winter quarter report and two senate legislations were passed.
ED Nettle began her report detailing new student leader initiatives. During this upcoming summer, she plans to unveil student development outcomes to the next generation of ASUCR student staff.
For the upcoming academic year, ED Nettles seeks to include a variation in the summer training by hosting a retreat and online and in-person training. Additionally, she plans to obtain badges for students to use on LinkedIn after completing various trainings, such as the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Peer Educator Training and Leadership Circle.
She then moves on to the operations report. Going forward, ASUCR will transition to utilizing JotForm rather than DocuSign and Google Form to keep a seamless single platform. They will be testing this out internally during this winter quarter, then to expand further by using it with some select student groups in the spring quarter of 2025. Finally, she hopes to expand it to have upcoming ASUCR student staff be fully trained on it during the summer.
Following this, ED Nettles moved to the finances portion of the report. Previously, there had been two requests for special reserve funds, however, the professional staff were able to retract the second request and be under budget with the first request.
This fund will be utilized for refurbishing the ASUCR office. With a focus on accessibility and student use, the new components of the office will be the Senate lounge, Student Conference table, the front desk and Accounting suite. ED Nettles is still awaiting the delivery schedule.
A previous reserve request that has now been completed is the purchase of a new ASUCR golf cart.
Looking to the future, ED Nettles hopes to increase the use of special reserve funds and announces that student organizations have the highest allocations and expenses thus far.
Her final segment of the report focused on strategic planning and assessment. Her first goal is to elevate the student experience, specifically by “develop[ing] and refin[ing] opportunities for campus-wide student engagement through ASUCR programs and services.”
She hopes to accomplish this by focusing the planning for a diverse community and increasing the sense of belonging, promoting student engagement, having an inclusive recruitment method for getting students involved and “promot[ing] civic and democratic engagement and social responsibility.”
Another goal for the upcoming terms is to increase and strengthen the ASUCR brand. She believes that by doing this, there can be increased strength in the role of student government on campus, help build relationships with campus partners that could lead to collaborations, build overall brand awareness and sustain organizational sustainability and longevity.
Along with this report, a Senate Resolution and Senate Bill were both approved. The Senate Resolution, SR-W25-002, addresses the inauguration. The resolution entails various new policies and ideas of the Trump Administration and explains how these policies impact the UCR community.
The Senate Bill, SB-F24-002, was from the previous quarter and is about making the Executive Fellowship Director (EFD) position a stipend position. This motion was approved by the Senate 15-0-0, so now EFD Ian Tjan will be provided a stipend of $90 a month.
The following Senators were excused from attending: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Senator Keaton Bunker, School of Business Senator Dhruv Patel and School of Public Policy Senator Sofia Jimenez.
