Southeast Missouri State University student publication

SGA discusses new on-campus event notification system and changes to student evaluations

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Student Government Association (SGA) discussed new ways to inform Southeast students about on-campus events and received an update on Faculty Senate business during its meeting Monday, Oct. 5.

SGA President Logan Phillips and Vice President Annie Martin announced they met with Assistant Vice President of Information Technology Floyd Davenport to brainstorm new ways to engage students. Martin told SGA members she proposed a notification system that could deliver on-campus event reminders to students via text or email.

Southeast currently utilizes SE Alerts, a notification system used to deploy messages via phone or email notification when an emergency or criminal event poses a threat to the campus community.

Unlike SE Alerts, Martin said, “This campus-wide notification system would inform students about positive on-campus events which will lead to more engagement.”

Martin and Phillips said they will continue to work with the Information Technology Department on a notification system capable of increasing student engagement at Southeast.

In other business, Student Representative to the Faculty Senate Xander Goffinet informed SGA members the purpose of student evaluations could change through a proposed bill.

According to Chapter 3, Section C10 of the Southeast Faculty Handbook, student evaluations are currently conducted for four purposes: “to enable individual faculty members to continually improve the quality of their classroom instruction, to provide individual faculty members with a measure of perceived effectiveness of instruction, to enable students to provide input concerning the quality and content of classroom instruction and to acquire institution-wide measures which may be used to compare and contrast Southeast with other universities.”

Proposed Faculty Senate Bill 20-A-X would change this policy to state, “Student evaluations should be conducted to enable individual faculty members to continually improve the quality of their classroom instruction and to enable students to provide feedback.”

This bill awaits a second Faculty Senate vote, Southeast Presidential review and Board of Regents approval before it is finalized in the Southeast Faculty Handbook.

Minutes and agendas for SGA meetings can be found on their webpage. The Arrow streams every SGA meeting, Mondays at 8 p.m. on Facebook Live.

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