Individual colleges unite to form service committee
Members of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHaSS) council sought for a means of providing service to students and giving back to the university, so they took to the Utah State University Student Association (USUSA) academic senate.
“We just started to see others with a lot of need on campus, and we were really passionate about so many different projects that we had a hard time narrowing it down,” Haas said. “So then we decided that it would be really cool if we could, like, once a month, do a different service project, and that we could spread our bases.”
After discussion between senators, with scheduling concerns from College of Business USUSA Senator Cody Davis, USUSA Executive Vice President Blake Harms, who chairs the academic senate, formed a subcommittee charged with the responsibility of planning monthly service projects.
College of Agriculture and Applied Science USUSA Senator Heather Lieber and College of Engineering USUSA Senator Erik Olson will join Caine College of the Arts USUSA Senator Sierra Wise, who will chair the committee.
“All our councils have a service element, so I think it’s just good to try and accomplish bigger tasks,” Olson said.
Each academic council will pair up with another council and complete a service project each month.
“I think that there are a lot of different benefits, both as being able to offer service, also being able to have collaborative opportunities between the colleges,” Wise said. “Sometimes it’s hard to juggle organizing and creating a different service project per month if we were doing it by ourselves, but with the system that Allie come up with, we’ll rotate through, which will be great because it will give us the opportunity to participate in one another’s service projects, but we’ll only be heading it up once.”
While concrete decisions had not been made as of Tuesday, Wise said the committee hopes to dedicate their first project to a food drive for the Student Nutrition Access Center (SNAC.)
“We know there’s a real need on campus with food insecurity and the SNAC office,” Wise said. “I know there’s always a need, so we’re organizing a food drive this month and the College of Arts and the Chass will be working together on that project.”
Other ideas Wise and Haas discussed included a hygiene and clothing drive, as well as relief efforts for countries affected by natural disasters, although Haas said the goal is to ensure USU students, faculty and staff are directly affected.
“The idea is to serve in a way that represents your student body population,” Haas said. “We say we have the opportunity to serve in these positions, so really applying that and making a project that gives back to the students we represent.”
While these projects will be led by academic councils, all students are invited to join. If students have suggestions or questions about projects, Wise said the academic senate encourages them to fill out a MyVoice request on the MyUSU homepage.
Students wanting to share suggestions can also reach their senators at their respective emails or during their office hours, which can be found at https://ususa.usu.edu/contact/directory/academic-senate.
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