April 28th, 2010

With the semester winding down, I am getting a high amount of appeals. I met with two students today regarding appeals, one an emotional appeal, the other a grade. I have developed letters for each student in hopes that there appeal is achieved and that they get what they want. Do to the confidentiality of appeals that is about as much detail as I am allowed to explain.

On the other side, I have prepping for my first AIC meeting taking place tomorrow, at 2pm in the KSA boardroom. This meeting will be interesting. We will be mainly talking about the credit card issue, involving the discontinuing of domestic students in using credit cards while allowing international students to continue. I did however stubble across a website saying that in most credit card "merchant agreements" special policies are not allowed to be put in place to provide special access to credit cards at the institute.

I also sent out an FOIPOP request for the merchant agreement between Kwantlen, and Visa in hopes of finding the one line that will help keep access for all students.

On Friday, I will be working on my weekly report to council, which will include updates from the AIC meeting, as well as an update on my projects for the last few weeks.

Monday April 26, 2010

Today was an interesting day. Today Kwantlen had the privileged of accepting a 2.5 million dollar endowment fund from Irving K. Barber. this money is going toward the development of programs and services to aid in the accessibility of Kwantlen for new and struggling students. These courses and services included potential learning center expansions, transitional program increases, like Lcom 1101, As will as additional online features.

The donation will help the university become a great institute as it already strides itself on the accessibility of its programs to those who may not be able to attend other university's such as UBC, SFU... as there marks may not have been high enough.

April 23, 2010

Hello, this is my first post on this working blog. As an update to what I have accomplished thus far in the position I have attached my report below.

Appeals

So far I have been working on two appeals. The first of which was a grade appeal. The student had not received appropriate mark in the course as the instructor had forgotten to add in a missed exam, and missed class lab. Once the instructor realized this they inputted the grades which ultimately raised the student’s grade.

The second appeal was a transfer credit issue. The student was transferring a 5 credit course from SFU to Kwantlen but was only having 3 credits recognized. These were set by the social science faculty and as Kwantlen does not offer lab classes in the program these two credits were not able to be transferred. While these credits may not be transferable they may not be required to complete graduation.

Projects at Hand

Access to Educational Payment Policy

This policy is currently being drafted to incorporate the KSA opinion on having credit cards available for tuition payments. Kwantlen recently passed a policy prohibiting domestic students from paying tuition using credit cards, while allowing international students the opportunity to continue paying with credit. This is a possible act of discrimination. Feel free to send me your thoughts as to this new Kwantlen Policy and how it would affect you as a student

Completed Academic Concerns, Advocacy and Internal Issues

Committee advertisement has been posted around campus for all executive committees. These are open to students. If you wish to be added to committees please contact me.

Academic Concerns, Advocacy and Internal Issues under Consideration

Library Hours

Kwantlen recently expanded the Library hours till 11 pm on weekdays. How do you feel about this? Do you think the library should be open longer, shorter, more on weekends?

AIC meeting April 29 2010 agenda