SVAAC Meeting Minutes 9-25-08

Want to know what went down at the first Student Voice Association Academic Affairs Council meeting?  Read this!

SVA Meeting Minutes: 9-25-08

Introductions

Meghann Harris, president leads meeting with agenda and sign-in sheets.  Representatives introduce themselves as well as faculty and staff in the room.  Megan Miller, Jan Stinchcomb, & Christopher Whittey all introduce themselves as advisers to SVA, and Regina DeLuise introduces herself as the Student Affairs Committee faculty representative.

Description of SVA

Meghann Harris and Megan Miller share guiding documents and flow chart of SVA structure with members and discuss briefly.  Expectations of representatives are covered, meeting with chair and students within the department regularly as to serve as the communication between students and administration.

Elections for Co-Chair & Secretary

Explanation of positions; elections held at October meeting.

Campus-wide Committees 

Megan Miller explains the campus-wide committees, Budget and Finance & Exhibitions.  Members from SVA Academic Council serve on these committees.  Andy Mangold, Graphic Design major, will continue to serve this year on Budget & Finance.  Elections were held for the vacant position on Exhibitions Committee.  Kat Buckley, Art History major, was selected for the position.

Goals for the Year & Publicity for SVA

Meghann Harris passed out information sheets asking representatives to list things they are most excited about and things that are of the greatest concern to them for their department.  These will be compiled for the next meeting where goals will be set for the upcoming year.  

Meghann also emphasized the importance of staying positive rather than having this serve as a forum for whining.  SVA should be taking action steps toward improving problems, not just complaining about them.  We can take up broad concerns, but recognizing that we will not likely fix the tuition problem.  Instead we can spread information about Financial Aid, taking little steps toward fixing a big problem.  Spreading the word about information like faculty hire sessions, publicity is the key to getting the word out about things happening on campus where we can share our voice/concerns.  Request went out with sign-up for any students interested in doing marketing & publicity for SVA.

Self Study Review

Jan Stinchcomb & Chris Whittey reviewed the overall Self Study Process.  Document created is 300 pages covering every facet of MICA.  Two accreditation bodies will be working with us, NASAD & Middle States, and will be visiting the campus in March.  They stressed the important role of SVA representative in reviewing the Self Study document for your department and providing feedback to your chair.  October 30^th is the deadline for comments. 

Art Market – Sarah Barnes

Sarah Barnes from Ceramics discussed the sale on December 10-13^th from 10 am – 6pm.  All departments are welcome.  15% commission fee goes back to competitive scholarships.   HYPERLINK "http://www.mica.edu/artmarket" www.mica.edu/artmarket 

Upcoming Meetings

Thursday, October 16^th, 12 pm, Main 160

Thursday, November 20^th, 12 pm, Main 160

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

Rock the Vote!

Okay, okay, okay, so you may not have been able to go to Rock The Vote tonight, BUT you should watch this video, because it's AWESOME!

Check it out.

Click here

Language Courses at MICA?

I have come upon a new issue to research.

Lately, in my web browsing, I've noticed that a number of colleges in the area who offer art history or fine art as a major or minor recommend that the students take at least 1 to 2 years of another language. As many of you all know, we do not offer such classes at MICA.

Thus, this might be something for the Student Voice Association to look into this year.

For now, I have emailed Jan Stinchcomb and Megan Miller about the matter. Jan has forwarded to my email to Kerr Houston, the head of the Art History Department, and told me that they have considered these classes before.

I will keep you all updated with my findings!
Meghann Harris
SVAAC President

Make a Few Bucks?

Hey guys!

I just received an email from Karol Martinez and Megan Miller in Student Activities that might be of interest to whichever students are in Baltimore over the summer.  Here's the post, and if you're interested, just pop a message over to the email address provided.  Thanks!

"The Office of Technology Systems and Services (TSS) is conducting a focus group on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 on MICA's e-mail system. This focus group will take place at 4:00 pm in the Art Tech Center conference room and snacks and beverages will be provided. TSS is attempting to determine what policies are most effective for use of the e-mail system and wants to investigate what needs students have that may or may not currently being met by MICA's current e-mail infrastructure. This focus group is limited to a maximum of twelve students on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve your spot in the focus group, please e-mail studentaffairs@mica.edu with your name and phone number. You will receive a confirmation of your spot in the focus group upon receipt of your e-mail.

This focus group is limited to current MICA students and recent May 2008 graduates. All participants will receive a $10 gift certificate to the College store as a thank you for your time."

Meghann Harris

SVAAC President

New year and a fresh start

Hey everyone!  This is Meghann, this year's current SVA president, writing the first blog post ever on the new SVA blog!!!  Exciting, eh?  I hope everyone is enjoying their summer break and are being sufficiently lazy.  

I have a few bits of info that I would like everyone to keep in mind:

1.) Position are available for the SVAAC - both Vice President and Secretary.  Please let me know if you are interested.  You can contact me by email at mharris01@mica.edu.  We will be holding elections for these two positions at the first fall meeting.

2.) Thanks so much to Douglas Hucker for our cool new logo!

3.) There is a new forum on facebook in the SVA group for people to post ideas/concerns for the new school year and I would love to hear from everyone! We will try to address/answer anything that is brought up.  If you do not have a facebook, feel free to contact me via email, at, again, mharris01@mica.edu.

4.) If you would like to become a representative for your department, please contact your department head, or you can email me and I will give you more information.

Thanks!

Meghann Harris

SVAAC President