The Student Government Association Executive Team plans to continue working on course availability, member representation, the Parking and Transportation Services survey and student incentivization for the Spring 2023 semester.
During the SGA’s last senate meeting on Dec. 2, President Jonathan Dominguez said the executive team met with the deans for the College of Sciences and talked about course availability for the biology major.
In an interview with The Rider, Dominguez said that there was a problem with the Bachelor of Science in Biology, focus in Biological Sciences (Pre-Health Professions) degree plan.
There were four concentrations for the biological sciences focus from which students needed to fulfill one class in each. Dominguez said from the options in the development morphology concentration, only two classes were available every semester, which is a disadvantage to students.
“But what happened is, in the last three years, the people who taught all of these other courses in that concentration retired,” said Kathryn Perez, associate chair for the Biology Department and associate professor. “And so we were down to just these two [classes]. … But, essentially, we couldn’t offer enough seats in this concentration area to satisfy all of our majors.”
Perez clarified that the concentration is now eliminated and that the courses that were available before will be moved to the other concentrations. She said students who started under the older degree plan were notified about the change.
Biology Department Chair and Professor Robert Dearth said the majority of their students are under the old version. Dearth recommends that students update their degree plan to eliminate confusion.
“My goal is to get students through their degree, but also to facilitate what they want within their degree for their future career,” he said.
Dominguez added that the team is planning to meet with the College of Engineering and the College of Computer Science to also talk about course availability on the Brownsville campus. He added that he would like to do the same for environmental and agriculture majors.
When talking about member representation, Dominguez addressed the senator-at-large disbalance from both campuses. There are currently four senators-at-large in Edinburg while there is only one senator-at-large in Brownsville.
Dominguez said it is a work in progress and that it requires a lot of advocacy. Senators-at-large work to advocate for changes and the needs for their respective campus as a whole. He explained one of his ideas to reach out to students.
“One of the things that I want to work on so we can get a number of senators from the Brownsville campus, it’s to have some sort of event in which the student government gets to kind of have, like, a field trip day around the school where they can just … walk to different buildings throughout the campus and be like, ‘This is what’s happening,’” Dominguez said.
Jose Herrera, vice president for External Affairs, said the team is going to check with Parking and Transportation Services to talk about the results of the survey that the department sent out late in the fall semester.
He also added to his idea of promoting the VOLT and the possible need to add other types of transportation.
“We need some sort of, you know, intercampus transportation,” Herrera said. “Maybe some scooters … for students who, of course, have to park at a farther parking lot, and they have to pass to the other side of campus.”
Vice President for Internal Affairs Kimberly Escalante talked about the incentivization for students in the President’s and Dean’s lists. Escalante said the team thinks that a ceremony would be a good idea and that this could take some time.
“We thought, like, a really cool idea would be, like, if [President Guy Bailey] could be there in this ceremony,” she said.
Herrera and Escalante said that students should not be afraid to apply to the association.
“If you’ve never been in a student government or student council in high school, you can give it a shot,” he said. “A lot of the members that are new, you know, they all know that we’re new as well. It’s not like we come from experience.”
Escalante shared a similar sentiment, saying that the colleges that do not have representation need it, and the students’ voices matter.
