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Say 'Hi!' Back: Michelle & Lizz 2015 AMA

That All-Natural, Fresh, Organic Grassroots Campaign

posted over 9 years ago

Hi, UMBC! This is Michelle Seu and I am running for SGA President with Lizz Chen, my running mate, for Vice President. Our primary concerns are student health, satisfaction with the UMBC campus, and improvements to the structure and transparency of SGA. The initiatives outlined below are based on these overarching principles. If anyone would like to comment, question, or improve upon any of the proposed initiatives, we will be more than willing to work and communicate with you. As our slogan says, we promise to say ‘Hi’ back!


Our Campaign Platform

Student Health

  • Creating a student-run emergency medical response service

Based on the GERMS model implemented at Georgetown University in DC, we want to create a student-run emergency medical response service. This would provide students with 24-hour security with regard to a wide variety of medical issues and emergencies. Additionally, a large number of students that seek to enter professions in medicine, physical therapy, and crisis counseling would then have an opportunity to gain practical, hands-on experience in treatment and patient care.

  • Highlighting the relationship between mental health and academic performance

There is an undeniable link between mental/emotional health and academic performance. We want to provide struggling students who may be suffering from underlying issues related to mental or emotional health with the resources they need to help overcome them. We would identify these cases by cross-referencing students' attendance with their academic performance in the classes they are registered in.


Campus Environment

  • Providing more aesthetically pleasing social and study spaces
Building off the model of popular SGA-sponsored projects of the past, including the RLC and the remodeled student orgs space, we want to designate more spaces across campus for study and play, with the additional perks of functional and elegant design.
  • Designation of storage space for organizations
It has come to our attention that an issue that many engineering, computer-oriented, gaming, and musical performance groups have grappled with in the past is the availability of space for their equipment. We seek to define a space specifically for the purpose of storing equipment in an organized and logical manner, most likely with a person or group of people in charge of keeping inventory of this space.

  • Academic sustainability through online assignment submission
We seek to promote environmental sustainability in UMBC classrooms by pushing for the practice of online assignment submission. We plan to work with the Course Evaluation and Implementation Committee, a group that has already made electronic submission of end-of-semester student course evaluations a reality, as well as professors themselves to facilitate this transition.


Student Organizations

  • Making the SGA more transparent to the community at large
SGA does not want to be seen as mysterious, intimidating, or apathetic to the concerns of students and smaller organizations on campus. We seek to increase the transparency of SGA and its departmental work by more efficiently organizing and centralizing our social media and myUMBC presence.
  • Connecting SGA departments to other organizations on campus
Many of the SGA Departments perform functions that other organizations on campus also focus their efforts on (e.g. connecting SGA Department of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs with the numerous cultural and LGBTQIA orgs on campus). Creating specific positions within SGA designed to increase outreach to smaller, related organizations on campus would build upon the transparency initiative, while also fostering a culture of teamwork across student organizations.
  • Creating shared e-mails for student organizations
We want to create official umbc.edu emails for every student organization on campus. This will simplify communication within, between, and among student organizations.



Personal (But Not Too Personal) Statements

Presidential Candidate Michelle Seu

Hi - My name is Michelle Seu, and I am a junior majoring in Biology and Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Human Aesthetics. I am running for SGA President.

My involvement with SGA dates back to the summer before the beginning of my Freshman year. On a whim, I submitted an application to the UMBC SGA. I was then placed into the SGA Office of Academic Affairs, where I served as staff member and Academic Conduct Committee liaison. I was pleasantly surprised to find that over the course of working with this small and tight-knit department, I had fostered a sense of community, accountability, and drive that would motivate me to continue my involvement with SGA throughout the rest of my college career. Sophomore year, after the dramatic restructuring of SGA under new leadership, I served as a staff member for Community and Institutional Affairs. During this time, I realized the sheer importance of intrinsically motivated leadership within SGA, as well as logical structure and division of labor within the departments. Then, last summer, I was appointed to the position of Director for the SGA Department of Academic Affairs. This past year as Director was particularly enriching, for I was able to gain experience in effectively allocating duties to others, developing departmental initiatives, and facilitating direct communication between students, faculty, and administration.

Outside of SGA, I was able to gain multiple perspectives on the undergraduate student experience at UMBC. My roles as Art Editor for Bartleby Creative Arts Journal, Illustrator for the Retriever Weekly Features Section, Research Assistant in Dr. Michael F. Summers' HHMI Lab, Staff Member for the Student Health Advisory Committee (University Health Services), Debate Judge for the B-Ethical Bioethics Debate Committee, and former Alto Vocalist for the Cleftomaniacs a cappella group have all contributed to my interdisciplinary understanding of the issues that concern students and student orgs of all kinds across campus.

I believe that the progression of my past three years in SGA, the sum total of my extra-curricular experiences outside of SGA, as well as my own personal struggles and triumphs as a student at UMBC, have shaped me into a leader capable of molding the future of SGA.


Vice Presidential Candidate Lizz Chen

Hi! My name is Lizz Chen and I'm running for Vice President of SGA. I'm an English Literature major who also follows the Pre-Dental track. I was the Health and Wellness Chair for my sorority Delta Phi Epsilon last spring. It was the first real leadership role I ever took on and it wasn't necessarily a very demanding one: I gave one formal presentation to our chapter regarding eating disorders, worked with a committee to raise money for our national philanthropy that seeks to treat such disorders, and stressed the importance of mental health among sisters. After that, I became the secretary for UMBC's first Global Dental Brigade. Being a leader of a blossoming student org gave me a great sense of not only what it meant to be a leader, but also a group member and a team builder. We started in the summer: I attended weekly leadership meetings at UMBC, drove to grocery stores all across Maryland to hold fundraisers, and promoted our cause on Facebook. It was the nitty gritty footwork that comes with being small and new and not knowing where to start but knowing you have to start nonetheless. It paid off eventually and we made it to Panamá with 20 student volunteers, numerous suitcases of dental supplies and medication, and 2 dentists. My main point in relaying all of this is to stress that I am by no means a leader of SGA or another huge organization like (seb), or even the president of my Greek organization. I'm a student who tends to work behind the scenes, hoping the SGA will make decisions in the best interest of the student population because the orgs I am involved in are very much affected by those decisions. I have seen the SGA from the average, semi-involved student perspective and know how it needs to change in order to become better. I want an SGA that says 'Hi!' back to the students it represents, that is not too proud to admit its mistakes, and that sets realistic goals that actually have a chance of coming to fruition.

(edited over 9 years ago)
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