Student Senate Focus Group
October 28^th, 1999
6:00 p.m.

Facilitator: Nathan Davis

Notetaker: Judy Strong

The best act we can take is to improve communication at this school in terms of informing students of decisions coming up. A third of this student body would not recognize President Barden if they saw him and the same proportion would not know about the name change. It is the job of administration and faculty to communicate what is going on at MSU. .

Communication is major part of being responsive to environment. We need to be responsive to what is going on in our own environment first. Communication it should run throughout goal number three. We all understand communication is a problem, but we need to come up ideas on how it can be improved.

As a first objective, we can?t win the admissions battle if we don?t know who our opponents are. We (MSU) don?t understand our role and we don?t give more money to admissions. We need to understand our regional environment. In the past, we just tried to take on NDSU directly, or Morris, without really understanding our role. Institutional identity is important here. We need to concentrate on our competition, but we are pretty well defined in the RR Valley. We need to think outside of that box. MSU is a huge suitcase campus. There are ways to attract students that include what?s in the community e.g. dance clubs, sports. This area is not as great as the cities, so MSU is a suitcase campus. How do we improve? We need to work with local industries to provide more entertainment to keep the student here. We could look at how advertising is misused. There may be a meeting at the CMU and there will be advertising all over the CMU but nowhere else, but most of our students are off-campus students. Then there are community activities that are not publicized at the CMU. Advertising is not done productively.

One solution to lack of communications is to have more peer advising. I transferred in last spring. I got no tour of campus, no mail, and I didn?t know what the CMU was. It would have been nice to have more peer contact. Someone to take a more active role in helping new students - peer orientation.

I get frustrated at simple things. I think students need to hear during orientation that they should pay attention. You should only have to tell students once that the union is where they should go or else you just waste time. If they need to be told more often, that? s too much. Student Orientation Counselors are great about that when you first come to college, but maybe we need to meet with them sometimes during the first year to help induce involvement. I transferred in during the summer. In the fall, I didn?t know who my advisor was until half a month ago. Nobody sent anything saying welcome to MSU or let me know about things. I didn?t get information on who was to be my advisor. I didn?t have peer advisor- I had nobody. Most of that stuff is handled during orientation. If you don?t attend it, you will be left out.

MSU needs to emphasize admissions fiscally more- they don?t have the resources they need to do outreach. Need admissions counselors in the high schools. For transfers, we have the transfer club and if you go, they lead you to different places. That?s what that is set up for, but you have to take the initiative. There comes a point when a student needs to take an initiative ? don?t need hand holding for everything.

We need to see the TV?s being used that are mounted throughout the campus ? a lot could be done with that. To improve internal communication, we need to use the media we have. To reach out ? need to send someone to high schools outside of this region. I?m from Wisconsin and learned of MSU because a Concordia representative mentioned it. I couldn?t afford Concordia, so they mentioned MSU.

Every campus needs a campus TV station. We need to get mass communications and public relations people to go with them to the schools. Maybe there could be internships to do this. One student noted he didn?t understand the problem with MSU?s admissions and asked if enrollment has dropped. ND explained what happened in the 90s. When mass communication people go to the schools, they should bring people from that geographical area with them to help testify.

We should look at how we are reaching people ? marketing ? we need to get information out so people know what is going on. The four objectives on the green sheet are very broad. I would like to see number two as the most important one. Before we can do anything else, we need to see what we have to offer already and get that out there.

The group was asked if more goals were needed. It was noted that communication is the important thing. All goals need to be inter-locked with communication.

Objective 1 ? 7 votes

Objective 2 ? 15 votes

Objective 3 ? 14 votes

Objective 4 ? 2 votes

Ways to Meet Objective 2

Use the TVs. Use the web with a feedback box to see what people want to do. Use the Internet for dialog. Use the speech communications and mass communications department students, and art students, for advertising and marketing purposes.

Most students sit in front of computer ? at Concordia, they use a weekly calendar of events as wallpaper for the computers. It could be a monthly calendar. We need to advertise more effectively ?more broadly on campus. For example, cover all buildings when you put up notices of a meeting. Put a calendar on the web mail as a background. Our radio station is very ineffective ? needs wider range. It was noted that there is a new antenna ready to go up. One student wanted to hear speakers playing all around campus. We need to get the radio to off campus people. Hofstra College has a large billboard that everyone sees. There is a running list that passes by. You could put it where Neumeier was. Put the flashing sign right underneath the dragon breathing fire. Public display of event announcements.

Classweb needs more and more interactive use. It could be used with discussion sections. Under distance learning, we can increase use of instruction through the web. We need to develop conduits for distance learning to take place. One person expressed a caution to look at how much is done by web, because web is not convenient for everyone. Professors are one of our greatest resources and not all professors are accessible. It is sometimes hard to get registered and a lot of professors are not schooled on how to advise. Students end up senior year with more classes to take. How about being able to talk over the web. Promote more ways that faculty and students can consult with each other. Use data ports more in the classroom and have faculty more computer literate ? use live stuff in class. We need increased use of computer technology in the classroom.

Also we need to use what we learn more often. We need to evaluate what is being taught and why ? to evaluate the curriculum. One student noted that in classes where she was using computers, they would use something once and never again. She doubts that she will remember how to use it in the future if there is no chance to keep working with it. Provide "outside of the university" experiences -- off campus educational experiences. We need monetary resources for field trips and similar off-campus activities. We need to learn to apply what has been learned. This is an example of service learning.

Everyone who is enrolled should be required to do volunteer time to graduate. Maybe offer a credit for it. Evidence of more credits generated.

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