Dear colleagues,
Both GPSA and ASUNM are honored to give you a warm welcome for the 2013-2014 school year. ¡Bienvenidos!
Having spent the summer planning for the present academic year, it is refreshing and encouraging to be surrounded by our colleagues, mentors and friends as we begin the semester. We appreciate your support and we look forward to your comments and suggestions for improving student life at UNM.
Working together, GPSA and ASUNM firmly believe that the challenges undergraduate and graduate students face can be approached more effectively with a unified voice.
Our predecessors, Marisa Silva and Caroline Muraida, began a culture of collaboration and unity between our organizations, and we pledge to honor this legacy by continuing this relationship. Additionally, we have decided to focus more effort on diversifying and expanding our active membership.
To do so, we plan on extensively revamping our outreach efforts, updating our webpages, increasing our presence across campus and more intensively utilizing other media, such as Facebook, Twitter and the Daily Lobo, to reach out to students on campus. We believe that an active student body can better express themselves and advocate for changes within the University.
Moving forward, both GPSA and ASUNM have joined efforts to develop a shared vision for the future of our University. For example, we are working with administration to better explain tuition and fees through students’ bursar accounts. Furthermore, we are developing more efficient tuition models for all students on campus while preserving support programs such as the Lottery Scholarship.
We thank President Frank and Provost Abdallah for their support in the Tuition and Fees Policy Committee to incorporate student input in this process. Finally, we are grateful to Gene Henley and Richard Holder for their willingness to work, advise and support student-led initiatives across campus.
As our campus moves toward more sustainable efforts, we as students will help this mission by creating a student-led Green Fund during this semester. This board would allow students the opportunity to allocate funds to different initiatives, which would contribute to the reduction of our carbon footprint as a UNM community. Keep your ears open for an opportunity to have your voice heard in these matters.
This summer, UNM celebrated Staff Appreciation Month, and we’d like to reiterate our gratitude to UNM staff for their individual and collective contributions to students and the community throughout the years. We encourage our colleagues to take a moment to thank staff members who work intensely and sincerely to provide us with a top-rated student experience. Your service doesn’t pass unnoticed. Thank you!
To our faculty members, we’d like to thank each one of you for all your service in guiding students to reach their academic, professional and personal goals. Student leaders would also like to extend their heartfelt thanks to faculty members who actively engage in extracurricular service — it is you that make the difference to the overall student experience on campus. We believe community engaged scholarship should be rewarded and we are eager to work with the Faculty Senate towards this well-deserved recognition.
Finally, we encourage students to contact us at any point to express their opinions or concerns. We are here to serve students, and we look forward to the upcoming year,
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Sincerely,
Priscila and Isaac
Priscila Poliana, GPSA president
pri.GPSA@gmail.com
Isaac Romero, ASUNM president
asunmprz@unm.edu
