An Interview with UNR College of Education Senator Sarah Keller
For this assignment, I interviewed Sarah Keller, who is the Senator for the College of Education running unopposed for reelection. Keller is currently a member of the College of Education’s PackTeach program, majoring in Secondary Education and English.
Q. What position are you running for?
A. I am running for College of Education senator. There are currently two open positions. I’m running unopposed, but it’s the same position I’m in currently; I’m just running again. It’s just composed of 25 senators for ASUN to compose the Senate body collected from different colleges around campus. Last year, I was running unopposed but hopefully we’ll get another College of Education senator in the coming months.
Q. Why have you chosen to run for this position?
A. I chose to run because in my freshman year, I was an intern for an ASUN senator. It was a position within ASUN that intrigued me the most and that’s when I decided that after my internship, I decided to run my campaign in my second semester of freshman year, then I got it because I was running unopposed. I’m still a senator, I’m just running again and I think that the Senate is probably the best fitting position for me. Judicial or executive or clubs & orgs just didn’t appeal to me the way the Senate did or maybe because there’s so many people in the Senate body compared to other branches, but it’s also a benefit that you get to write legislation for Senate that you can affect different things around campus or even your own community.
Q. What inspired you to be involved in the field of education?
A. I was interested in it throughout high school. I was just inspired by my English teachers and I knew that English was something that I wanted to do, so I went into college with an English major and that’s when I found out about the PackTeach program and my education career took off so I definitely had the interest of becoming a teacher since high school just because it’s the most appealing to me. It’s something that I’ve carried interest in for the longest amount of time.
Q. What do you pledge to accomplish should you be elected?
A. In my goals, I outlined that I would like to create and further establish the student advisory board for our college as we do not currently have one, but we set up a meeting quite soon and carry on into next year. My other goals involve just promoting the different programs for the College of Education. For my other goal, I mentioned campus safety, primarily around the holiday season and winter season. I think that the latest snowstorm we got kinda inspired this goal because on campus, it was safe because we had snow plows and safety precautions but anywhere else, there were crashes and accidents because of the heavy snow. I wanted to accomplish this goal because not many students know about driver safety and we want to avoid accidents as much as possible. My other goal was taking into consideration anonymous feedback forms for students.
Q. Do you have any advice for those wanting to run for student government?
A. I would say that the internships within ASUN help as you get to meet a lot of new people and get your name out there in ASUN, which always helps. Going into it without ASUN experience is also perfectly fine. I would network with as many people in ASUN as possible just so you know who you will be working with and outreach people who will eventually become your constituents.
