Hi Everyone!
My name is Megan Meckey and I am a senior studying Marketing and Political Science. This year I am serving as the Vice President of ASUP as well as the President of Alpha Kappa Psi. This school year has been off to an exciting start with a positive energy in the student body to be back on campus as well as excitement around welcoming our new University President, Dr. Kelly.
ASUP Initiatives
In ASUP we have been working with students on different initiatives around campus to continue to connect students to resources and uplift the work student groups are doing. In my role I am working with a team of faculty members to engage with the All in Democracy Challenge. We are working to help students register to vote and are kicking this initiative off with a panel event on the midterm elections with Maye Henning, Jeffrey Gauthier, and Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi. ASUP is also set to host a leadership conference in November for other Universities and Colleges in Oregon to talk about student government leadership. This is the second time we have hosted this event, and it is organized by our President, Emma Fuller. It is a great way for students to connect and work across many different campuses to better plan and execute student-led initiatives.
Alpha Kappa Psi has been working on a theme of connectedness this year and we have started to work on different campus wide initiatives to engage a larger group of students. The first is a speaker series we are hosting in collaboration with the Business School. This series is for all students on campus to engage with relevant topics for all types of majors and interests. We have picked keynote speakers to present on a variety of topics ranging from personal branding to financial literacy. Dean Michael DeVaughn was our first speaker in September, talking about financial literacy. This is a topic I think all students benefit from learning about and it was a great start to this series. In October we have Matthew Hilton, a UP and AKPsi alumni, speaking on personal branding for students.
AKPSI Around Campus
Another initiative AKPsi is championing this year is providing accessibility to professional clothes for students on campus. During my time on campus I have seen how having access to nice clothes for interviews or networking events often is an issue of equity. After talking with Dean DeVaughn this summer about this we developed the professional clothing swap. We hosted this event at the end of September and through donations and collections of clothes from family and friends we were able to host a two-day event where students could grab what they needed.
It was a great start in getting attention around this initiative and we are excited to host this event again in the spring in addition to finding a permanent space on campus to host these clothes. We had students grab clothes for upcoming interviews, conferences, and presentations. We are hoping to continue to collect donations of professional clothing in preparation for our next event.
Looking to the rest of the semester I am excited to see the work of students come to fruition as we settle back into learning and growing at UP.
~Contributed by Megan Meckey
Learn more about the Associated Students of the University of Portland (ASUP)
To connect with Megan, email – meckey23@up.edu