By Rocio Hernandez
University plans to further promote student emails
Huapei (Pei) Chen, Chief Information Officer of the University of Nevada, Reno, attended the senate meeting to discuss with the senators the possibility of making UNR Gmail accounts mandatory for students.
According to Chen, 6,407 students have signed up for university Gmail accounts. Moving forward, she said that she would like to see more students use the service and proposed several ideas for reaching this goal such as promoting during the upcoming semester’s orientation sessions and requiring students sign up for university Gmail accounts before they can register for classes.
Sen. Thomas Green of the College of Education said he supported making the email accounts mandatory because he said that the university Gmail accounts are beneficial for students. In addition, he said Associated Students of the University of Nevada paid a portion of the $35,000 cost for the email service.
Sen. Zachary Brounstein of the College of Engineering disagreed with Sen. Green’s opinion. Sen. Brounstein said making the university Gmail account a requirement for class registration is drastic.
Speaker of the Senate Caden Fabbi assigned the Committee of University of Affairs the task of drafting a resolution with ASUN’s official opinion. The resolution draft will be discussed in a future meeting.
Undergraduate Research Journal seeks junior editors
Sen. Gabriel Golez of the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources said that the Nevada State Undergraduate Research Journal’s first issue of the semester will be published on Friday, Oct. 25 on the journal’s website. He also wanted to bring attention to a problem that the journal is facing. Sen. Golez reported that currently the journal only has one senior editor, who is graduating in May.
He encouraged his fellow senators to spread the word about the journal’s need for junior editors or interns so the journal can continue to publish students’ work. More information on the journal can be found at nsurj.com.
Teach for America recruits at the senate meeting
Ahmad Naboulsi, the recruitment manager for Teach for America, came to the senate as a public comment to bring awareness to the educational problems he said the United States is facing, and inform Senators of ways that they and their constituents can help. According to Naboulsi, currently there are over 16 million children living in poverty in the United States and the graduation rate for students those students is 8 percent.
Teach for America recruits college graduates from across the nation to teach at low-income communities for two years. Naboulsi said that these graduates are able to make a difference in the lives of the students that they serve.
“We know that in order to end educational inequality, it starts with getting a diverse group of talented people to fight against poverty and racism and the first place to do that is in the classroom,” Naboulsi said.
College graduates that join Teach for America are guaranteed a job for two years. The program also has many partnerships nationwide including graduate schools and employers such as Google that help Teach for America alumni pursue their goals.
Naboulsi let senators know that if they or any of their constituents are interested in the program, they need to email him at ahmad.naboulsi@teachforamerica.org as soon as possible, as the deadline for application is on Friday, Oct. 24.
Rocio Hernandez can be reached at rhernandez@sagebrush.unr.edu.
