Hello, Anteaters! I’m Shreyas, a Computer Science major with a minor in Economics, and it is my honor and privilege to be running to be your next Academic Affairs Vice President!

With an extensive tenure serving as the Student Advocate General within ASUCI for over a year, Internal Student Advocate General, and intern at the SAG office, coupled with my dedicated role as an active undergraduate student researcher, I am confident that I have the experience and the leadership skills necessary to carry out the duties and responsibilities of this position faithfully.  As a long-time executive cabinet member, I completely transformed and improved the Student Advocate General Office by creating our own governing document and passing orders to increase the transparency, and efficiency of our HR Policies. Our actions included passing orders to mandate HR training across ASUCI and working with professional staff to achieve a smooth budget process.

I have had a true passion for promoting advocacy and equity, and I promise to pursue the following goals if I do get elected:

Goals for UCI Academic Senate

• Students need better help. Students go through a lot during their time at UCI. They have trouble with certain academic policies, their professors, or even accessing the right resources for their concerns. This is where my experience as the Student Advocate General proves extremely helpful. I will establish academic caseworkers who will provide the personalized attention and answers that our students need. After receiving a submission from an aggrieved student, the caseworkers shall reach out to them, hear their side of the story, and then directly engage with faculty or the Academic Senate to ensure that the student’s concerns are resolved as soon as possible.

• Our Transfer/International Student Unit Transfer System is broken. International and transfer students come to UCI with vast experiences and knowledge that contribute significantly to the university’s diverse and rich cultural fabric. Yet, we continue to fail them academically. Transfer students are often misadvised about courses they receive credit on or even fail to transfer units for the most bureaucratic reasons. International students struggle with this issue too! Most international students have to repeat introductory courses at UCI simply because their high school certifications are not recognized by the university to receive units. This greatly hinders their ability to progress through their academic career, and immediately puts them at a disadvantage relative to other students. To solve these issues, I will interact with the Academic Senate, as well as the deans of the various schools to ensure that concrete steps are taken to ensure that unit transfer policies are transparent, and regularly published on their websites. I will also take steps to ensure that more international higher education certifications are recognized by the university.

• We need better policies on AI. Given the recent meteoric rise of Artificial Intelligence and large language models like ChatGPT, our universities have been rushing to implement new policies to curb its spread and use in academic integrity violations. We must ensure that these policies have student input and take into consideration the following:

  • Student works should not be used to train Artificial Intelligence Models without their explicit consent.

  • Steps should be taken to ensure that students are not wrongfully accused of academic integrity violations.

  • Valid policy considerations do not disadvantage UCI students in their careers.

Goals For Office Commissions

• We need transparency in our advocacy efforts at the Academic Senate. As an office, we need more town halls and updates from the UCI Academic Senate to reach our student body. We also need to make sure that we publicize the academic advocacy comment box more accessible to all of our students by collaborating with CMTO, KUCI, and The New University newspaper.

• We need to engage students in university opportunities. We need to connect students to university opportunities across our schools, such as UROP and Peer Academic Advising Program, making sure that students know everything that the university has to offer. Using fairs, town halls, and mixers with event organizers we can engage more students and connect them to more opportunities.

• Students need better academic help. Anteaters need more than just free pens and greenbooks. Our students need academic help through some of their hardest classes. So I will collaborate with LARC, and the writing center to enable more accessible, more frequent academic classes, to allow students to excel in all of their classes. We will also organize lectures and talks to allow anteaters to better use large language models like ChatGPT to their advantage and get ahead of the competition.

• Develop more professional workshops for first-year students to learn life skills. The AntLeader Mentorship Program is a great opportunity for first-year, first-gen, low-income students, so I would like to see this program increase the number of applicants, increase the publicity of the program, diversify and increase the workshops to include programs such as resume-building, interview preparations, and exposure to possible professions to equip them with skills that will benefit them for their future careers or goals.

• Higher Education Resources need to be more accessible. We need higher education resources to be more visible around the campus. I would like our Higher Education Resources & Opportunities (HERO) Office to collaborate more with the CMTO, New University, and KUCI to publish more resources and FAQs on higher education, the grants that exist to enable more students to pursue higher education and allow for greater student engagement.

•  More Speakers from more diverse communities. The Speakers Commission at AAVP has brought to UCI some of the most influential speakers and entertainers in the world. Throughout the years, they have inspired us with their life stories, professional accomplishments, and enthusiasm, and we need more! So we will double the number of speakers events and tap into UCI’s incredible faculty and staff to give talks on the world’s most pressing issues, while also inviting renowned celebrities, with a focus on Black, LGBTQ+, and other minority communities to engage all members of the UCI student body and broaden our perspectives.

I am confident that my experience and passion make me the best candidate for this position. I hope to earn your support and trust in the coming weeks. Thank you for considering me as a candidate for student government.

Here is a link to my LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamshreyasvc/) feel free to reach out to me at my email (svchand1@uci.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you so much for your support!

Zot! Zot! Zot!

Warm Regards and with dedication,

Shreyas Vasist Chandramouli