Hello Eagles!

I spent the first weekend of November in Springfield with other community college’s student trustees. We spent countless hours learning and discussing issues that occur on our respective campuses.

During this meeting we became more educated on the topic of undocumented students. These students who are not citizens of the U.S. and therefore cannot receive any federal student aid.

There is no federal or state law that prohibits colleges and universities from offering admission to these specific students or students who have parents that are undocumented. This group of documented students often refer to themselves as “Dreamers.”

The next speaker we heard from was the Director for Special Projects on the Illinois Community a College Board about E-Textbooks. He really emphasized how important it is that every school should do their best to serve students and our changing needs. We learned that E-Textbooks can reduce the cost by up to 50% per year. I expressed how lucky our college is to have such a fantastic rental program.

I serve on the Outreach Subcommittee and our theme for the year is “Student Success, College Preparedness.” We are asking all community colleges to have a day of service on Feb. 24, 2015. The specific service can vary to whatever is appropriate to each college. I am hoping to work with my fellow Student Government members to host a high school preview night where we can invite all high school juniors and seniors to the college with all the college’s clubs and organizations on display.

Most high school students have no idea how much this small school has to offer. After reading a previous IV Leader article that discussed this issue with our freshmen not knowing our variety of offerings, I thought this day of service would be highly appropriate and extremely successful.

I love attending our Illinois Community College Board-Student Advisory Committee meetings with fellow trustees. I am extremely proud to represent IVCC and love being able to share our successes with others. These meetings have also made me realize that there are always going to be problems that arise. There are countless different issues throughout our state and we can’t fix them all right now.

On student advocacy day in April, thousands of community college students will travel to Springfield to talk to our legislatures. Our main focus this year is college affordability. This is an issue that affects each and every student throughout the state.

The ICCB-SAC group is hoping to get a piece of legislation passed that gets this topic out into the open and hopefully has a tremendous positive impact for all students.