Aggie Advocated lobby legislation
Alumni from across the state of Utah are coming together, representing every county, to assist and provide to the students here at Utah State University, through the organization known as Aggie Advocates.
Shortly after George H. Emert became president of USU in 1992, he acknowledged the need for elected officials to hear from the people about the accomplishments and funding needs of USU and higher education. Since then, Aggie Advocates has been organized in every county in the state of Utah, according to an informational packet from Lee Burke, assistant to the president for government relations.
Burke is the head of Aggie Advocates.
Burke said, “The program used to be called County Aggies” until it was just recently changed to Aggie Advocates.
According to an Aggie Advocates hand-out, their goals are well-studied and typed out for each member to reflect on. Those goals listed include expressing appreciation for elected officials.
They also include providing an opportunity to report on USU’s uniqueness and its broad presence throughout the state, building recognition from USU alumni and inform alumni concerning key issues affecting them and the university.
Aggie Advocates also strive to establish long-range relationships which will be beneficial to the university and enhance channels of communication with key decision-makers at all levels of government.
According to a goals sheet for the advocates, they also feel the need to create opportunities for grassroots support and feedback to the institution and to build good will between the university and elected officials across the state of Utah.
“The alumni contacted are very anxious and enthusiastic about getting involved,” Burke said. “There are currently a little over 200 members now.”
The alumni involved receive training on how to properly contact their local legislatures in a professional approach. As far as the issues the Aggie advocates feel are most important, Burke has an executive committee and they get together and discuss the issues. They narrow the list down to the most important issues and start researching those topics in depth. This year ASUSU took part in the voting process.
“This year we narrowed it down to five items that we felt were most important,” Burke said.
ASUSU voted on making the Merrill Library more functional, safe and secure as one of their top priorities this year.
Also voted as one of the most important issues is to add new faculty positions at USU because of the growth in student numbers, initiate a distance education doctorate (Ed.D) program to accommodate public school and community college faculty and administrators and provide funding to enable Extension to make Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) available to citizens, organizations and government agencies to enhance analysis and planning.
The committee also identified the need for an Agricultural Experiment Station as well as new base funding in Cooperative Extension, which is an organization whose task has been to help residents of Utah help themselves, because it has not received any new base funding in at least two decades.
Celestial Starr Bybee, ASUSU executive vice president, said she is the representative for Cache County . She meets with Burke often to discuss these central issues, and plays an important role in the process because of her active leadership position which allows her to communicate and correspond to many of the students here at the university.
“Being a student in Aggie Advocates is important because we know what we need because we are the students,” Bybee said.
The current alumni involved in Aggie Advocates were contacted by phone. However, any alumni who are interested in taking part in this organization can contact the Government Relations Office located in Old Main 109 if they are interested in becoming involved.