As the Associated Students of the University of Arizona Senate prepares to wrap up the 2025-2026 school year, the senate held their last of many appropriations meetings and spoke about the senator updates concerning open positions and the search for deans for the 2026-2027 year.
Senate positions for the W.A. Franke Honors College, the College of Nursing and Wyant College of Optical Sciences are still open. With no candidates entering the race for these positions during the formal election, the senate is accepting applications through Handshake.
“If you have a friend and they are interested in student government or just interested in being more involved at the university, without anyone applying, we will not have a full senate,” Executive Vice President Benjamin Huffman said.
At-Large Sen. Katelyn Alvarado shared that recently she has been working on an initiative in collaboration with the dean of Libraries to buy new materials for the summer and upcoming school year, as well as a website to better highlight all the services the library offers.
“The dean does want a student’s perspective,” Alvarado said. “I am also happy to share that with you guys if you want to look over that and give any feedback.”
W.A. Franke Honors Sen. Aparna Chandrasekar shared that the Honors College is receiving over 120 pins for first generation students available for pickup at the Honors Village front desk to be worn at honors convocation.
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Sen. Victoria Gallardo shared that the final admitted students day will take place on April 24. Gallardo also shared that the College of Agriculture and Life Science is in the process of choosing a new dean.
“CALES students can go and meet their potential new dean and get to vote on who we would like,” Gallardo said. “I thought it was pretty great that they took into account the students of our college.”
Ken Coit College of Pharmacy Sen. Riley Haveman shared that the College of Pharmacy is also finalizing their dean selection for the upcoming 2026-2027 school year.
The College of Medicine Sen. Alexander Jauregui Galarza shared that a new partnership between the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and an internship in the Navajo Nation is underway. This partnership includes College of Medicine students from the Navajo nation to collaborate and meet with the dean of the College of Medicine soon.
Jauregui Galarza additionally shared that in collaboration with the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health Sen. Mariam Rana, they met with the executive director of operations and the campus landscape architect to discuss the possible site of the new health sciences park.
“Realistically we are going to do it in phases, because we really want to transform it,” Galarza said. “It might be a 20-year project but we can at least get started with phase one, so we reached out to sustainability program managers and are looking at grants for that.”
Huffman shared that the senators will have an opportunity to have conversations with the dean of their college and the incoming senator at the final Deans and Provosts event of the semester.
“A lot of those conversations may be about efforts you made in your term, areas we’re pushing on and areas that maybe will go unresolved,” Huffman said. “That would be a nice setting to hand the baton off but also build that rapport with that senator and dean as well.”
Huffman also shared an update about the Cap and Gown Program, which established donation bins for graduation attire throughout campus in collaboration with Campus Closet. Huffman is working to reach out to deans to allow these bins to be placed on campus from the start of commencement week.
Huffman hopes this program will not only be helpful to students graduating this semester, but that extra donations can be carried over to use for next semester, saving students the cost of buying a new cap and gown.
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