October Updates

Hey everyone! 

It's time for some updates since you haven't heard from me in a while.  

Today the Student Voice Association Academic Affairs Council will be having it's second meeting in the President's Board Room of the Main Building from 12-1pm.  We will be electing a Vice President and a Secretary, as well as doing departmental reports.  Each representative was required to have a dialogue with their department chair, as well as look over their department's section of the MICA self study and will be reporting back to the Council any issues or concerns that they know of in their department.  After that point, they should be emailing their chair again with any new concerns that may be brought up in the meeting.

Now some of you may be thinking "Self Study?  What Self Study?  What's that?"  Only one of the biggest things going on at MICA right now!  Every ten years, colleges have to apply for reaccreditation.  This is done by two different groups in the US (though the names have slipped my mind).  MICA's ten year date is coming up soon, thus, MICA is conducting a Self Study to look at every single little detail of MICA that is or isn't working, or could be improved.  This is incredibly important to our school and an amazing opportunity for students to give their two cents since departments are looking at different elements that need to be changed.  Right now, the MICA self study runs about 400 pages long.  Everyone should have received an invitation just recently to go on the MICA portal and view sections of the MICA self study.  It's quite extensive, but if you want to find out what your department is doing, you can go to the MICA portal, log in, go to "Collaboration" and the "Self Study."  Now, there have been some glitches - i.e. a lot of students haven't been able to log in.  If that is the case and you REALLY want to know what's going on with the self study, you can probably ask a faculty member or your chair to give you access to a copy of your department's section of the report.

Also, in the future, if you would like to know who represents your department, you can contact me on Facebook or via email at mharris01@mica.edu. It's really important to keep in contact with your representative to let them know of any concerns you have regarding your department, registration, financial aid, etc... They are YOUR VOICE on this council. Make it count! Jan Stinchcomb, Chris Whittey, and Megan Miller sit in on all of these meetings and are advisors to myself as well as the council. Most of the things that are said on the council are taken into account by them and they spread it to other members of the MICA community to see what can be done. Already steps have been taken to open up late hour computer labs in Brown Building because of things that were brought up in the Town Hall Meeting. What you say really does count.

OK, and last but not least, I will be posting Meeting Minutes from all of the SVA meetings - that means Student Life and Academic Affairs, so if you want to know what's going on at MICA, READ THIS BLOG! The Fall Town Hall Meeting Minutes will also be up quite soon.

I hope everyone has a wonderful fall break and I will see you at the meeting!

Meghann Harris

SVAAC President

MAT Representative