Freshmen- Get Involved!

Hello class of 2013,

For my very first blog post I wanted to tell all of you to be on the lookout for ways you can get involved in UGBC! We have 4 specific programs in UGBC that you can look to join and be a part of the student government.

The Mentoring Leadership Program (MLP) consists of a group of 30-35 first year students who get partnered up with an upperclassmen in the Cabinet and works closely with them throughout the year. Apply here!

Learning to Serve (LTS) is a service group for freshmen who go out into the greater Boston area and volunteer 4-5 hours of their week. First year students are led by upperclassmen council members who serves as a mentor. Apply here!

Senate is the legislative branch of UGBC and consists of 5 elected representatives from each class. Freshman elections should be starting in October and more information will be released in the coming weeks. Check back soon for more information!

The AHANA Leadership Academy (ALA) is the freshmen sector of the AHANA Leadership Council (ALC). ALA works to uplift the BC community socially, politically, and academically and members participate in informative workshops. Applications coming soon so check back for more information!

For more information on all these programs and other ways you can get involved, check out the UGBC site.

Have a great first week and look for UGBC at Student Activities Day this Friday in the Dustbowl!

Alex

Athletics Update

Hi everyone,
Just a quick athletics update. Please see the following dates below that might be of importance. More information to follow.

Athletics Tickets
BC-BU at Fenway park- September 1st, 2009
Notre Dame Ticket Lottery - September 14, 2009
Hockey Season Tickets On Sale - September 28, 2009
Men's Basketball Tickets On Sale - October 19, 2009


Let me know if you have any questions!

-Al

Fall Concert Announcement!

Akon to headline Fall concert!

All,

After working hard all summer I am happy to announce that the 2009 UGBC Fall Concert will be held on Friday September 11th and will headline music and recording artist Akon! Hats off to Jimmy D'Ambra and Maureen Keegan, the Executive and Associate Director of the Campus Entertainment Department of UGBC who have been putting together and planning this event. While an opening act is still in the planning stages we wanted to share this with all of you in advance! Ticketing and additional information will be announced within the next few weeks so check back here and on ugbc.org for additional information. Also, if you're looking for some links, check them out below!

I hope you all are as excited as I am for this. If you have any questions please let me know!

Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS7aULdHo24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrKNYtyT1LA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxvH-tBRwM

-Al

Akon to headline UGBC’s Fall Concert

Chestnut Hill, MA—UGBC’s Campus Entertainment Department is excited to announce the Fall Concert with one the most notable artists to ever come to BC, Akon! UGBC Student Body President, Al Dea CSOM '10; Vice President, Alex Hirs A+S '10; Campus Entertainment Executive Director, Jim D'Ambra A+S '10; and Associate Director, Maureen Keegan, A+S '10, along side other member of UGBC and administrators, have been working through the summer to schedule an act who would appeal to the BC community as a whole and put on a great show. The concert will be September 11 at 8pm in Conte Forum, with doors opening at 7pm. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, September 2nd in the Robsham Box Office, Monday through Friday. Tickets will be $30 each, 4 per BC ID, and will be for general admission seating. An opening act and more specific information regarding concert procedures will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

UGBC is the Undergraduate student government at Boston College. Its mission is to serve and protect the interests of students, enhance the quality of student life and to ensure that the student voice is heard.

President and Vice Presidents' Advisory Committee

Hi Folks,

Hope you are doing well and getting ready for coming back to Boston College. I just wanted to make a quick plug for the Presidents and Vice Presidents' Advisory Committee. This Committee will help Alex and myself make decisions on specific programs, policies and ideas that we work on each and every day. Furthermore, they will be in constant communication with us as to ways we can continue to improve UGBC and the lives of students. If this is something that you are interested please fill out the application below. Questions? Feel free to e-mail me at alexander.dea.1 at bc.edu.

Thanks!

-Al

Application Link Here

Update from Vacation

Hi everyone,

I can't believe that it is August already. The summer has really flown by fast! I'm currently back at home in New York this week on vacation but still plugging away on a number of initiatives. Before we know it people will be moving in and classes will be starting for the 2009-2010 academic year. As I said, this summer is going by fast, but there are still a few good weeks left to get some stuff done as well as to enjoy the time off. Here are some brief updates

Athletics

Cancer Awareness Campaign

I just got the green light today to proceed with a partnership with BC Athletics to implement a year long cancer awareness campaign. The campaign will include a number of fundraisers to support cancer research, a potential "gold out" during a home football game, events, a video as well as other marketing and multimedia types of materials to raise awareness about cancer and the affects it has on our community at Boston College. The hope for this is for everyone to see just to see how much this disease affects all of us but also to join in solidarity with one another to offer support and love to conquer this disease. This will be a huge project which will require a lot of support and help, so if you are interested in helping with this or if you have done events like this before we would love to have your help. E-mail me at alalex2009 at gmail.com or alexander.dea.1 at bc .edu.

Athletics 101

We currently are putting together Athletics 101, a Pep Rally for BC sports which will take place on Friday 9/4 at 6PM in Conte Forum. Come out to show your support for BC Athletics and for free giveaways.

Programming

Fall Concert

We are still shoring up this and hopefully should have an announcement coming within the next few weeks. Keep checking the blog for up to date information!

Event Management Committee

As promised, we are putting together an event management committee of BC students to help us prepare and break down from our large scale events. An email should be going out concerning this in weeks to come but if this is something you might be interested in, especially if you have ever programmed or helped out at a previous school please contact me and we'll try to hook you up.

Quidditch

Yup, that's right! Kathleen Iannone (A&S '11, Director of Campus Outreach) is currently planning a UGBC Quidditch tournament, brooms included. We are slating this to be during one of the Sunday's in October, hopefully on the Bapst lawn to make it as Harry Potter-esque as possible. We will need volunteers, so if you're interested let us know!

Advising

I've spent most of my time this week putting together an action plan for our work to improve advising. Improving advising will be our biggest goal for the year. We will be holding a number of focus groups and meetings to discuss this and we need your help! If you have thoughts or stories about advising at BC then we need to hear from you! Contact me ASAP if you are interested and we can talk!

Social Media

Lastly, if you haven't already, follow us on Twitter!

Our usernames are

@adea11

@ugbc

@ugbc0910

That's all I got. Hope to hear from you soon and enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

-Al

Checking In

Hi Folks,
Just another weekly update of the things that are going on around here.

Save The Date
The Campus Entertainment Department of UGBC which is responsible for many of UGBC's social campus events has finalized a few dates of important events. Please make sure to keep these free so that you will be in attendance!

Athletics 101- Pep Rally- Friday September 4th, 2009 (Conte Forum, 6-8PM)
Student Activities Day- Friday September 11th, 2009 (Dustbowl, 9AM-On)
Fall Concert- Friday September 11th, 2009 - (Performers are TBA)
Homecoming- Saturday October 10th, 2009 - (This is Columbus Day Weekend, so plan to stick around)

More dates to come

Budget
I have put together the 2009-2010 UGBC Budget proposal. This year's budget is $538,000, which represents a 2% increase from last year. The budget will now go to the UGBC Senate who will vote to approve/not approve it in early September.

Transportation


Bike Share- I believed I mentioned this in a previous entry but Parking and Transportation is looking to put together a Bike Share Program for students to use. There would be a semester cost and you could rent the bike when you needed it to run errands, get to class etc. I'm currently working with PJ Capadonna, the Parking and Transportation Manager and hopefully we will have something by the late fall or definitely Spring semester. Keep on the lookout for more information, but I think this is a really cool project and something that was on our platform.

GPS- This has been talked about for awhile now but it looks like this will be live by mid to late August. Keep checking back for more updates and check your email in August for more information. If you want to see how it works check out Harvard's GPS system which utilizes the same company, Transloc.

Zipcar- How many people here use Zipcar? Well thats the million dollar question we are trying to figure out. There is a new competitor to ZipCar- HertzConnect, and they can allow people who are 18 and over to use their cars as opposed to ZipCar which is 21 and over. We are working with Parking and Transportation to solidify a vendor, but if you have any preference or questions please let me know.

That's all I have for now. Let me know if you have any questions

Enjoy your weekend,

-Al

Another Update

Hi Folks

I’m on vacation at home this week about I decided to give an update on what I’ve been working on. There are some cool things in the work that I could use your input from so if you have any suggestions please feel free to e-mail me or contact me.

 

 

Programming

If you haven’t taken the UGBC Programming Survey please do so when you get a moment. This will give us a better indication of the types of programs to put on throughout the course of this year and by filling it out you have the opportunity to win free tickets to Homecoming.

 

Additionally, we are in the process of trying to plan our fall concert. We have a few ideas in mind but any other suggestions would be welcomed with open arms.

 

Dining Services

Boston College Dining Services is one of the most student-friendly organizations on campus. They are always trying to solicit student feedback and ideas and are very receptive to student interests. They are considering a pizza delivery type program that would debut in the fall.  They have spoken to me and are wondering if I had any ideas as to how to setup the program up, what hours would students want, how would they want it to be (delivery, pickup, both, etc) so if you have any suggestions please let me know as I would love to pass them along.

 

Advising

As Alex and I mentioned during our campaign over and over again, one of our big agenda items for this year will be to improve the current advising system at Boston College. Through our conversations with students this seems to be one of the biggest concerns and issues that students want us to address. Currently, I am putting together a report that evaluates the advising program at Boston College, the strengths and weaknesses of it and recommendations that can be done to strengthen the program. This report will rely heavily on student input, so if you have some please feel free to contact me so I can ensure that your voice is heard. I hope to share this report with Administrators and look for ways to improve some of the weaknesses of the advising program here at Boston College.

 

That should be it for now. I have a ton of other small projects on the docket but these are some of the bigger ones worth mentioning. As always, please feel free to contact me with your questions.

 

Cheers,

 

-Al