CSU-Pueblo Student Engagement and Leadership hosted a spring summit on campus for student organizations on Wednesday Jan. 21. The event, which took place from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., was hosted in the Occhiato University Center.
Student organizations were required to attend the summit, and each was expected to send one representative from their organization. Though it was preferred that representative be an executive elected officer, a registered representative was acceptable.
CSU-Pueblo currently has 51 registered student organizations.
“Not a lot of people realize how many student organizations there are,” said Freddy Correamanrique, an intern with Student Engagement and Leadership.
“Student organizations range from biology club, political science club to engineering. There is a club for every major on campus except mass communications,” Correamanrique said.
At the summit there were three training sessions for organizations to participate in. The first and last of the three sessions were hosted by members of Student Engagement and Leadership. The second session was hosted by the CSU-Pueblo Grant Accounting Coordinator, Valerie Pfingston.
The first session, “approved chalking,” was to discuss campus chalking policies. This covered all the approved and appropriate places on campus that organizations could promote using chalk.
The second session, “organization bank account practices,” hosted by Pfingston was designed to teach organizations how to be fiscally responsible with their organization accounts. This session provided student organizations an opportunity to get updated account information.
The third session, “student affair fees,” was “the most important session,” Correamanrique said. This session provided information about organizational grant for student organizations.
“Each year $40,000 in student fees are allocated for student organizations,” Correamanrique said. There are specific guidelines for how the funding can be used within the organization. This session gave a breakdown of “what organizations can and can’t do with money.”
The organizations that failed to attend faced a penalty. Those that didn’t attend lost good standing with Student Engagement and Leadership, which came in the form of a demotion to either a silver or bronze standing.
Standing placement has a significant impact on an organization’s involvement on campus. It limits the funding an organization can access, which in turn affects their ability to participate in campus activities and stay active on campus.
Currently there are three standing positions an organization can be placed in: gold, silver and bronze. Each standing coordinates with a percentage of grants and funding an organization has access to.
Organizations in the bronze standing, which is the lowest possible standing, cannot access any of the grant funding allocated for student organizations.
Information about Student Engagement and Leadership standings and other guidelines are provided to all campus organizations in the student organization handbook. Additional information about student organizations on campus and the Student Organization Handbook is also available to the public through the CSU-Pueblo website.
Student organization summits are held at the beginning of the spring and fall semesters.
