Student officers ‘jump right in’

Camille Kalmey, Vice President
New Albany High School

Never have I seen such a productive group of student officers. For the first time ever, the student officers – Whitney Allen (Plainfield), Bekah Chapman (Columbus North), Nick Dugan (North Central), Ashley Graves (Greenwood Community) and Jennifer Locke (Connersville) – joined the adult board for a day at the annual retreat. It was on this day, the students jumped right in developing goals for the upcoming year. They wanted to do more to get other students involved in the IHSPA.

Despite losing Bekah early-on to an out-of-country move, the four remaining officers set out to meet their goals. The first was to establish a student area on the Web site. The idea was to provide resources to students, just as the site has served as a resource to advisers. At the next meetings, the students worked to incorporate their ideas into a design for the site. Finally, during the summer workshop, the students worked to get the area up and running. While it is still a work in progress, the site will hopefully serve to reach out to more students.

The student officers also took on additional responsibilities by serving on various task teams. Each officer attended task team meetings, in addition to their regular officer meetings, and worked with task team members to meet their various goals.

After all their hard work, convention planning came easy for them. Their efforts have really made my job enjoyable. It has been such a motivated group of students this year. I will sadly hand over the job to the next vice president and hope that he gets as great a group of officers as I have had.