ASGA Scholarships

Many Student Governments want to join the American Student Government Association because they want to improve. But some have very limited budgets and just can’t fund the annual ASGA membership, even though ASGA dues are low.

ASGA now offers “scholarships” to Student Governments that demonstrate a desire to improve, but are limited by their finances.

Your Student Government could receive a scholarship to participate in ASGA and improve your Student Government this year!

Click on Scholarships to apply for your institution!

Change Is Good!

ASGA is coming up quick on our 10th anniversary in 2013. We designed the "infrastructure" of ASGA's web resources in 2003 with technology and programs that were available a decade ago.

Needless to say, the ability to search our databases and find information across the entire ASGA web site is a bit limited by our 10-year-old software.

The good news? We're finally biting the bullet and will, over the next three or four months, be doing some serious upgrading. We'll be updating our "server" to a faster machine with more memory. That will make ASGA's site faster right away.

Secondly, we're upgrading our "database software" so that our members can search more easily and quickly. Now, when you search for constitutions, it pulls up thousands of documents. Soon, you'll be able to seach for constitutions among any type or size of institution in any state. That will make the SG Database at www.asgaonline.com far more valuable.

We're also updating the way we categorize documents. This will allow you to search more more specifically for exactly what you need.

ASGA has VAST resources that get deeper by the day. In January, we hired three more researchers to help us with updating the information we store on every college and university in the nation. Now, we just need for our software to catch up with our data!

We're projecting that this update will be completed within three to four months. Certainly, it will be done by the start of the fall semester.

Please let me know if you'd like to review our proposed enhancements for our "categories" in the SG Documents section at www.asgaonline.com. You can reach me at butch@asgaonline.com

A Facelift for ASGA

The ASGA team spent most of December updating and enhancing the "look" of the home pages for each of our 10 conference web sites. Just finished the National Student Government Summit yesterday.

The new designs are unique to each conference, using typefaces, colors, and images that represent each city.

We're in the midst of updating all of the rest of the pages at each conference web site, which probably will take close to another month.

Design changes are mentally tiring and time-consuming. But our sites haven't been visually updated since 2005. So we're way past due for a new look!

New focus on research

ASGA is about to announce a brand-new section of our resources at www.asgaonline.com. The new section will be "Research."

We've always done research for our members when asked. If they need help looking into trends on an issue nationwide, we have helped out by surveying similar schools by e-mail, phone, and fax.

Now, it's an official part of our resources. There will be a form that lets members make a research request. And there will be links to past research ASGA has conducted, such as on voting turnout totals nationwide, smoking policies, student discount cards, and student activity fees.

ASGA helps our members most by saving them time. This is just another way ASGA accomplishes that goal.

Two down, two to go

We're halfway through the fall ASGA conference schedule. DC and Chicago are done, with Dallas and Los Angeles coming up.

So far, our attendance numbers for all events are up over last year, which was our best year ever.

It's obvious that ASGA's reputation is growing and the "word-of-mouth" is spreading.

It's an exciting time for ASGA, as we're nearing 1,100 member institutions.

As executive director, my ultimate goal for membership has been 1,500. I predict that we'll pass that in two more years!

600 & Counting!

With seven days to go, ASGA just passed 600 registrants for the National Student Government Summit next Thursday through Sunday in Washington, D.C.

Last year's record turnout was 628 and that is definitely attainable with a week to go.

The National Student Government Summit is the largest and most helpful student government training conference in the nation. Students and advisors from all types and sizes of institutions attend-- about one third are private schools, one third community colleges, and another third public institutions. More than 110 institutions are registered, which is a record.

ASGA Invited to Campus Police National Summit

The John Hopkins University Division of Public Safety Leadership is working in a cooperative agreement with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to explore the feasibility of developing a certification program for campus public safety officers.

JHU is holding a summit on September 26-28, 2011 with the project advisory panel and key educational officials to gain a broader perspective and insight on the feasibility of establishing a certification program for campus public safety officers.

Michael Johnson, Senate Speaker at Marist College, will be representing ASGA at the summit. Johnson is studying criminal justice and paralegal studies and has served as Chair of the Safety and Security Committee for the past year and one-half.

ASGA represented at Reagan Awards

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and GE invited ASGA to send a representative to the 2011 GE-Reagan Foundation Scholarship Program awards ceremony and dinner on Saturday, July 30 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif...ornia.

The Program honors students who exemplify the foremost characteristics modeled by our nation’s 40th President: leadership, drive, integrity, and citizenship.

ASGA selected SGA President Chris Harris of Southern Arkansas University to represent us this weekend. Thanks to all of those who applied to be ASGA's representative.

We get invitations like this fairly frequently and will continue to pass along those opportunities to student leaders.

A New Coat of Paint

I've been doing a lot of painting around the ASGA office lately. A fresh, new coat of paint really makes things look great. All of the old blemishes are covered and everything looks unified when it's colored the same.

All of the touchup made me think of the tarnished images of many student governments around the country. Perhaps yours is one of them. Students think you're a joke and administrators don't take you seriously.

By putting a new coat of paint on your "image" you can start changing how students and administrators see you. ASGA has a ton of resources on how to use public relations techniques to improve your image and ability to reach out to your constituents.

If you're not a member institution, join now at www.asgaonline.com.

ASGA in the news

ASGA was contacted by the Los Angeles Times to get student leaders' reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden. ASGA reached out to our members and instantly the Times reporter got calls from 15 students leaders. He interviewed nine of them for his article, which was published. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bin-laden-generation-20110504,0,1617733.story

ASGA is frequently called on by members of the press nationwide. If you're interested in being contacted by the press, please let ASGA know by writing info@asgaonline.com.

What is the average turnout in SG elections?

For years, ASGA has referred to a figure of 2 percent nationwide in Student Government elections. This accounts for all types of institutions, but is lower because so many community and technical colleges either don't have elections or have very poor turnout. However, we have been seeing evidence that turnout has been increasing. So we recently surveyed the nation to see what the current figure is. We've received nearly 400 completed surveys and are aiming for 500. This would be 10 percent of the institutions participating. So far, the turnout is much higher than 2%. About 43% of the respondents have turnout under 10 percent and 70 percent have turnout under 20 percent. The survey so far has higher participation among private institutions and lower participation among community colleges. We're concerned that those with higher turnout are more likely to participate as well. ASGA also gathers data from our own internal research. So in the next few months, we're going to reviewing all of this and producing a report on what the turnout is now nationwide among all types of institutions.

How many women are serving in college student governments?

The Washington Post recently asked ASGA about the percentage of women serving in student governments across the nation. So our team pulled data from our research since we founded ASGA in 2003.

Please note that our data gets deeper and more accurate and thorough each
year. We have hired full-time researchers each year to help us augment the
data. We now have five full-time researchers who spend 13,000 hours a year
gathering data on collegiate student governments.

Here is what we can tell you:

2003

SGA President
women-- 39.43%

Vice President
women-- 53.36%

Secretary
women-- 82.45%

Senator/Representative
women--50.97%

Overall
women-- 51.86%



2007

SGA President
women-- 40.59%

Vice President
women-- 54.72%

Secretary
women-- 77.60%

Senator/Representative
women--54.61%

Overall
women-- 54.15%


2010

SGA President
women-- 39.04%

Vice President
women-- 50.50%

Secretary
women-- 75.24%

Senator/Representative
women--52.01%

Overall
women-- 51.32%

RHA vs. SGA

An ASGA member asked us to research the relationship between the Residence Hall Association and Student Government across the country. Of the roughly 2,000 residential institutions nationwide, 350 returned the ASGA survey. This may be the deepest research in history on this subject.

ASGA now offers this research to all members in our SG Database at www.asgaonline.com.

Mr. Research Here

I feel like my name ought to be Mr. Research. I just completed a project for one of our ASGA members in Pennsylvania. It was more than 30 hours interviewing 34 students, administrators, and staff, plus another 30 researching, writing, and editing a 17,000 word Consultant Report.

It's a whale of a lot of work and time invested. But I'm confident that the Report will give this ASGA member the Action Plan it needs to completely revamp its Student Government Association and make improvements that will last for years.

1,000 Members!

ASGA now has 1,001 member institutions! We passed the 1,000 "barrier" on Friday afternoon. Our Lady of the Holy Cross College in Louisiana was member #1000!

When ASGA was founded in 2001, we always had a goal of recruiting 1,000 member institutions. The more members ASGA has, the more resources we have to conduct research, support our members, and serve Student Governments everywhere.

Our eventual goal is to reach 1,500 member institutions. We're averaging about 125 new members a year, we'll reach 1,500 in about four more years.

It's exciting time at ASGA!

We're thankful!

ASGA is thankful to all of our 995 member institutions and the 2,000 students and advisors who attend our conferences each year.

We are thankful for your participation and willingness to let us serve and support you. It is truly an honor and privilege to have earned your trust.

I can assure you that ASGA will do everything possible to continue improving and growing so that we can better serve you in 2011.

May this year be one of success and happiness for each and every one of you!

Research City

Of ASGA's nearly 1,000 member schools nationwide, a great many send representatives to one of our 10 training conferences.

But not nearly as many members take advantage of one of ASGA's biggest member benefits: free research!

ASGA will conduct research on any topic for our members at no charge. We're in the midst of projects for 10 different institutions on subjects ranging from SG mottos to book lending libraries to student activity fees.

All our members have to do is write us with a list of up to 10 questions they want answered, a list of the schools they want us to contact, and some contact information. Then we'll get to work.

The best part is when we're done, we include all of the research in our SG Database so any member can benefit!

Thankful for ASGA's growth

Wow. The last few weeks have been a wonderfully rewarding time for ASGA's team. First, we just published our largest-ever conference in DC, with 628 registrants from 110 in 35 states. Second, our upcoming Chicago conference is approaching its highest turnout ever. And third, ASGA's total membership is nearing 1,000 schools (now at 986).

In just six years, ASGA has become by far the largest-ever professional association for student governments. Attendance at all 10 of our conferences is higher than ever before. We're doing more private consulting and research for our members than ever.

It's really exciting to see that student leaders and administrators are taking advantage of ASGA's wealth of resources and services. All of our thousands and thousands of hours of work are paying off in our service to our members, cutting-edge research, and practicial training and knowledge we share at our conferences.

Eight days until ASGA's 50th conference!

Just eight days remain until ASGA produces our National Student Government Summit in Washington, D.C. We've already surpassed last year's total attendance and are now over 600.

We fully expect 650 students and advisors to be there next Thursday.

This is a special conference, not just because it will be our largest attendance ever (and maybe the largest student government conference in American history-- not sure on that, though).
It will be very special because it will be ASGA's 50th Student Government training conference since we started the conference series in 2005.

ASGA now produces 10 conferences a year that are attended by thousands of students and advisors.

Our objective and mission remains helping student governments grow and improve. And our 10 training conferences are one of the key ways we teach and train our student government officers, members, and advisors across the nation.

Growing and Growing

August 1 marks the start of our fall schedule, as we start getting ready in earnest for our National Student Government Summit and the other fall ASGA conferences.

We have more registrants already signed up than ever before. Every one of our 10 conferences is growing in numbers.

We're also continuing to improve the content, bring in new speakers, and add new workshops.

ASGA's conferences are getting better and better. And attendance numbers are growing and growing.