Arizona Board of Regents Meeting

President Eileen Klein

I am a member of the Undergraduate Student Government Downtown (USGD) Policy Team. The position is an appointed position and must be approved by the USGD Senate. On September 24th and 25th, we attended the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) meeting at Northern Arizona University (NAU). I've previously met Regent President Eileen Klein, but I was not expecting her to remember me. We met at school when I was taking PAF 494: Lessons from Contemporary Leaders in Fall 2013. She was a guest speaker for that class session and her experiences in the public sector awed me. She was previously chief of staff to Governor Brewer and worked with United Health care. I was really happy to see her again and listen to her ideas about how to improve public higher education in Arizona.


The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) governs the public institutions of Arizona and all positions are appointed by the governor. Every year, the board meets about three times and each Arizona public university hosts the meeting at least once. I really learned how influential student leaders are when I attended the meeting. We met with all the student government representatives from NAU, UofA, ASU West, and ASU Poly. Many student government presidents updated the board about their current projects and successes from last year. The most interesting part of the meeting was when the board was discussing college access to students from minority groups and low-income families. I am really passionate this topic because I am a member of TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) and the program is a federally funded program that promotes academic achievement among first generation, low-income, and student with disabilities. The discussion was lively and the questions asked by the regents were thoughtful. I am really honored to have attended this meeting and the only thing I would like to change is the number of students in the audience. Here is a link to the ABOR website: http://www.azregents.edu/default.aspx