State of the University Address

Mariah Stepp

Chief of Staff

Undergraduate Student Government

State of the University Address

February 9, 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to the Undergraduate Student Government’s State of the University Address. I’m Mariah Stepp, the Chief of Staff of Undergraduate Student Government for the 2015-2016 school year. I would like to thank each of you for coming tonight and for your collaboration and involvement with USG. Each year, I am excited to hear USG’s address because I see it as a clear reflection of the shared governance model we have at this exceptional university. I never imagined I would have the opportunity to speak at a State of the university address myself and discuss shared governance with you. My role as Chief of Staff for the Undergraduate student government has been an extraordinary experience thus far. I have been afforded the opportunity to work with student leaders and leaders within our organization, the administration, and the faculty. Tonight, I want to present the groundwork that has given our administration the ability to achieve great accomplishments and discuss the internal successes we’ve experienced thus far in the organization this academic year

Intro

Abby and Abby came into office with big dreams and a new vision for USG. In my position, one of the things I was tasked with was helping them restructure our organization. Immediately, we went to work. Those first few weeks, we spent countless hours in the office hashing out plans, brainstorming, and building the foundation of our administration. I am proud to say that we put those dreams into action and our vision into reality. Starting off, we focused a lot of our attention on the structure of communication, in order to keep higher leadership in USG informed of everything happening in the organization. Overseeing Cabinet and Senior Staff, the Deputy Chief of Staff Gerard Basalla, and I have many productive people directly reporting to us, which makes it difficult for he and I to disperse the large amount of information we’re given to the necessary people each week. As organizational communication is key to success, we were able to overcome this with the help of Ben Schulman, Senior Counselor to the President and Jamie Haas, Senior Administrative Coordinator, who were key team members in helping Gerard and I implement a productive reporting structure. . Each week we receive reports from various leaders within our organization about their accomplishments of the week and what is to come in the following weeks. The well thought out plan has not only improved our internal communication within USG, but has also promoted transparency and collaboration.

Interns Program

One of our achievements in our structure has been our re-shaping of the interns program, a first year leadership development program that educates the interns on university governance and structure, and prepares the first year USG members for their future involvement with the organization. Up until this year, this program was only available to a small group of first years that applied and were selected. While the program was a great experience for those who were selected as interns, other first year members of the organization still wanted to have the personal development experience and educational opportunity. Before taking office, Abby and Abby knew the interns program needed revamped and we did just that. The Senior Director of Internal Affairs, Amelia Gulick, and the rest of Internal Affairs worked heavily with us to help shape the program to what it is now. Instead of having just a handful of the first years participate in the interns program, we have extended the program to all first year members. In doing so, we have had great success in involvement and retention and have improved the experience of many first year members of the organization to encourage their future involvement in student government. For that, I would love to give a round of applause to all of internal affairs, and our Interns Directors: Alys Brown, Ben Hodges, Bridgette Jacober, and Craig Berning.

University Governance

USG’s involvement with University Government, or as we like to call it, UGov, which encompasses University Senate and a variety of University Committees are a true example of the shared governance model at OSU. Before this year, USG’s attendance at UGov commitments were lacking with minimal accountability. This year, our work with the Senate has reached a new high with the creation of a Senior Delegate to the University Senate position. Through this role, we have been able to increase accountability and maximize potential success within the shared governance system. All of the credit for USG’s successful collaborative year with UGov goes to our current Senior Delegate to the University Senate, Sam Whipple, for personally holding each university senator and committee representative accountable and creating a reporting structure within UGov. He not only made essential structural changes to UGov, but he created the first Student Caucus, a policy incubator for University Senate legislation. By doing so, we have fully utilized these opportunities afforded to USG by the university and collaborated more with university leadership at a broader level.

USG Demographic Report

Through our internal restructuring process, Abby and Abby decided to encompass much more than just the configuration of our organization. Towards the end of last semester, we began shifting our focus of roles within USG, to the members that fill those positions and make up our body. We began reflecting on the representation and diversity of our members and how we can improve moving forward. To improve a system you are operating under, you must fully understand its content to the best of your ability. To do this, we created a comprehensive, internal demographics report to better understand our members, our strengths of representation, and our areas that demand improvement. In the coming weeks, our demographics report will be completed, and we will disperse the information collected to improve our membership transparency. We will also use the data to improve our recruitment strategy and general outreach efforts. I would be remiss if I did not thank the members of USG who have been working for weeks and weeks on the Demographics report: the Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Tony Buss and Senior Counselor to the President, Ben Schulman.

Cabinet

Most of what I have touched on tonight has shown the ways we are working to improve our organization internally, so that we can continue to improve our external work with student groups and university leadership. Making small and large-scale improvements with our system has opened up opportunities for us in a variety of ways.

In closing, I would like to share with you a few cabinet projects we have scheduled in the near future and recognize those who deserve thanks.

This month, we have the wonderful and exciting opportunity of hosting the NAACP President, CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS. I welcome everyone to come and attend this unique event occurring Monday, February 22nd. We are still in the planning process of this event and will provide more details in the very near future. Our administration believes it is extremely important to use this event as a stimulus for conversation and as an opportunity to collaborate with other student organizations.

Secondly, the committee on Sustainability is planning on hosting their second Sustainability fair later this year. The Sustainability Fair will include 20 plus sustainability organizations and a multitude of Sustainability companies across Columbus. The event will be taking place April 6th of this year.

Also, The Health and Safety committee has been working very hard to provide consent and bystander training to student organizations. Similar to cleanup Columbus, we are incentivizing student organizations to participate in this training to better the Columbus community.

Finally, I would like to thank each and every cabinet member, director, and senior staff member that I have not already mentioned. Thank you for your involvement with USG and your service to the student body. It has been so humbling to work with and learn from each of you.

Also, a very big thanks to our USG advisor, Matt Couch for readily making himself available to all USG members to discuss issues, good or bad. Matt- thank you for your continuous help and for always bringing endless wisdom and insight in each out our conversations.

After the groundwork of USG was laid for this school year, it was time to get to work. I’m excited to introduce our Vice President, Abby Waidelich, to talk about the immense strides we made in our Legislative Branch.