ASUW’s initial meeting of the semester began with guest appearances from UW President Richard McGinity and Vice President for Student Affairs Sarah Axelson, and included the announcement of WyoVocal, a new component of WyoCourses that will allow students to communicate directly with ASUW.
McGinity said that the university is going to have three goals as long as he is president.
“I’m going to name three, the first one is that a student graduating is capable of competing and succeeding anywhere in the world, in any profession that you choose.”
The other two long-term plans include the engineering initiative, which aims to make the College of Engineering one of the best in the U.S and the world. The third goal is the Science Initiative that seeks to update all the science labs on campus.
Graduates, McGinity said, need to be prepared to reinvent themselves during their careers, and he hopes the university will facilitate this preparation.
“When I say reinvent I do not mean become a different person, I mean retrain yourselves or do something that upgrades your skills you leave this university with when you graduate,” McGinity said.
Following the guest addresses, ASUW announced a new way for students to talk to their student government: WyoVocal.
WyoVocal, in conjunction with WyoWeb, will allow students to send comments directly to ASUW.
“We want to open an avenue of open feedback, you know every student can not come to the office and I know I can’t stop by every student on campus.” ASUW President Ahmed Balogun said. “We want to create this platform to WyoWeb where students can complain about anything on campus and give them feedback.”
The expense of the new system is already apparent to Balogun.
“The cost for the platform itself was a cost of about $2000 plus, that was just the licensing, then there’s marketing and other things,” Balogun said. “It is an ongoing process, we have the base cost for which is $2300ish I want to say”
WyoVocal should be available for use as soon as next month.
“It is going to be available for students on October 6, as I said in senate, everything is ready.” Balogun said.
Besides the implementation of WyoVocal, finding storage for RSOs is also a goal for ASUW in the upcoming semester.
“We’re looking for a place where [RSOs] can store the stuff they use,” Balogun said. “We are looking at two possibilities, the basement of Knight Hall, we are also looking at the lower level of the union.”
