Student Government held its fifth senate meeting of the semester Oct. 22, mainly focusing on project updates from various committees and funding requests for upcoming events. Philosophy senior and SG President Devin Schwartz revealed the complete list of individuals on the Presidential Search Advisory Committee in the first public update since Benson’s resignation announcement.
The committee is tasked with recommending up to 10 candidates for the next UTD president to the UT Board of Regents. The committee is chaired by UT System Chancellor James Milliken and contains three regents from the UT System’s board — Christina Melton Crain, Stuart Stedman and Robert Gauntt — as well as an additional UT System administrator: Archie Holmes, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. Two presidents from other UT System universities — UT Southwestern President Daniel Podolsky and UT El Paso President Heather Wilson — are on the committee as well.
Committee appointments from UTD include JSOM dean Hasan Pirkul; administrative services officer Heather Oltmann; assistant professor of management Sarah Moore; Michael Kesden, physics professor and Academic Senate speaker; Amy Walker, materials science and engineering professor; 2004 UTD alum and entrepreneur John Olajide; and Schwartz as the student representative. The committee also includes three “external community members”: Nextt CEO Arun Agarwal, Bass Foundation president Mike Calhoun and Peter Balyta, 2003 UTD alum and Texas Instruments’ President of Educational Technology.
Schwartz also announced that the first meeting of the Student Media Bylaws ad hoc review committee took place Oct. 15. The committee was formed via a resolution Sept. 30 to “review and rewrite the Student Media bylaws … in accordance with the best student journalism and media practices,” in response to UTD administration terminating former student newspaper The Mercury’s Editor-in-Chief from their position. The committee is scheduled to meet again Oct. 31.
SG heard updates from committee chairs about upcoming events including Party to the Polls and the Texas Congressional Candidate Panel, as well as from Residential Student Affairs chair Abbad Hoda about general university housing updates. SG allocated funding for their campus-wide T-shirt contest’s prizes; refreshments for the Oct. 30 Health Insurance Awareness Drive collaboratively hosted by SG, the UTD Health Center and the Office of Intercultural Programs; and water bottles and handouts for prospective voters on Election Day. The combined cost of all three events is less than $500.