By MARIA WINGERT/Murphy News Service
The student board of the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) has been expanding steadily since the 2015 student elections last April — and a primary focus of the expanding group appears to be improvement of buildings on the St. Paul campus.
U junior Brandon Roiger is one of the CFANS student board members looking to find the things students want updated most throughout St. Paul. Through his position on the board as student senator, he represents CFANS during MSA meetings.
His role on the board gave him the opportunity to put together a survey for CFANS students that will help MSA and the CFANS student board identify places that should be addressed or updated. While CFANS has tried to gather feedback about campus amenities through the CFANS Student Thoughts Forum, getting many students in one place has proved to be difficult. Although participation in board meetings and forums has increased, Roiger has been implementing the survey to get concrete feedback from students.
Large amounts of student feedback (Roiger has about 300 responses through mid December) could lead to improvements of the St. Paul Student Center, among other buildings on campus. Results are expected to be released within the school year.
Director of CFANS Student Services Bill Ganzlin, has seen quite a few changes since his first year as a student board advisor seven years ago. There have been changes regarding funding, events, and outreach during his time with the board, many of them happening within recent years.
To increase knowledge about the student board and recognize faculty and outstanding students, the student board hosts a large event every spring, the CFANS Borealis Night of excellence. While it is only one of the many steps they have taken to increase student participation, it has also helped honor outstanding members of CFANS.
“The student board recognizes the contributions of a faculty member who has demonstrated a really excellent advising experience,” Ganzlin said. That event has led to other outreach projects held by the student board like the grants program and inclusion of more on-campus student groups.
The student board’s small grants program has paid for hundreds of CFANS student groups throughout the past few years, turning student fees back into funds students can use.
“All CFANS student fees go to the board, which amounts to $7,000 every year; $4,000 of that goes to small grants,” Ganzlin said. The remaining money is used to fund other projects put on by the board puts, such as the Borealis night of excellence.
Some of these grants benefit St. Paul campus fraternity and sorority projects that apply with other student groups to fund group events. Including the houses is a change new to this year. Sororities and fraternities now have a seat on the student board along with other CFANS student groups.
“We recently included fraternity and sorority leaders and that’s been a nice addition this year. We’ve had students who lived in a fraternity or sorority serve on the board before, but we formalized it this year. They’re an important part of our college. As long as the fraternity or sorority has at least 50 perfect CFANS student members, that is our guideline,” Ganzlin said.
U junior Trey O’Bryan has seen the fruits of these efforts in an increase in participation in the club during his eight months as the vice president of the board.
“We’ve had pretty good engagement this year,” O’Bryan said. “We are trying to have office hours with members of the student board so students can sit down and let the board know what they are thinking. We are trying to be more engaging.”
The board isalso looking to the U as a whole to back up the small St. Paul campus on the other side of the transit way.
Since the board’s inception seven years ago, the CFANS student board has worked with the U’s Minnesota Student Association (MSA) to relay ideas from students from the college of CFANS to the University’s student government. One idea includes updates on campus that improves campus amenities and makes it easier for students to adjust to college.
Reporter Maria Wingert is studying agriculture education and journalism at the University of Minnesota.