written by | State Chair Kayla Shelley
Just like that, we are only three weeks away from the end of the Students United year. For myself, David, and Elijah, that means just three weeks away from the end of our term as Officers. We wrapped up the year of action items on May 26th with our final Board meeting.
The bulk of this meeting was reviewing, and passing, all of the recommendations that were outlined in our Equity Audit. For those of you who don’t know, in our strategic plan it states that one of our overarching goals as an organization is to become a model on how to be a welcoming and inclusive organization. Some of the steps that were outlined included hiring a Director of Equity Inclusion, and another was to utilize that position to dedicate time to analyzing the organizations processes and policies to build a set of increase cultural awareness and build a set of recommendations meant to help implement actual change. We obviously had hired our first Director of Equity and Inclusion, who had been conducting the review outlined in the strategic plan all year, which was named the Equity Audit.
The board reviewed overarching themes of the recommendations that included procedural, structural, and cultural changes that will work towards making us an organization that is a model of being welcoming inclusive. These changes will include things like updated handbooks for employees, more effective transitions for both employees and elected students, changes to the governing documents, and the list goes on. The Board was very excited to play a role in pushing the strategic plan further this year. Speaking for myself, after all the meetings with the Director of Equity and inclusion about the audit this year, and now seeing these changes start to go into effect, I feel confident that this board is leaving the organization in a more successful position than what it was at the beginning of our term, and that’s so exciting. A very special thank you to Abeer, our Director of Equity and Inclusion, who spent the last year assisting students in making these changes possible.
We took time at the end of the Board meeting to reflect on the year, and our experience with Students United. I’m proud of all the work our board was able to accomplish this year. They took every situation, student suggestion, recommendation, and even monthly financial statements, with deliberation and care. This was my third year as a member of the board, and this was a great group of individuals to spend my final year with.
I want to give a special congratulations to the six members of our board who graduated this spring! We are excited to welcome them all as alumni, and celebrate whatever accomplishments come next.
David Shittu, Treasurer, Southwest Minnesota State University
Madie McLeod, Board Member, Saint Cloud State University
Stevie Larson, Board Member, Minnesota State University Moorhead
MeMe Cronin, Board Member, Minnesota State University Mankato
Christina Melecio, Board Member, Winona State University
Connor Newby, Board Member, Bemidji State University
Lastly, this was the last Board meeting for our Director of Communications, Aly Hagglund. Aly has been with Students United since she was a student and committee member at Winona State. We are sad to see you go, excited for this next chapter for you, and grateful for all your years of commitment to student success.
That’s a wrap on this blog, thank you all the students who have worked with the Board this year, none of this happens without you!