While the recreation and wellness center has captured the bulk of ASI's attention, board members are hard at work on other projects to improve the SF State experience.

ASI Sophomore Representative and Lobby Corps chair Travis Northup, 19, put months of extensive research into effect on Tuesday Oct. 20 at State of the Student, a recruitment event for the newly formed lobby corps.

Lobby Corps is a product of the California State Student Association. Over the summer an ASI representative, from each of the 23 CSU campuses, was chosen to chair their school's lobby corps.

"The idea behind lobby corps is that we can take an informed, professional and really impacting approach to our problems," Northup said. "We are directing it in the right place, which is the state government."

The focus of lobby corps is to address the budget cuts made to the California State University system. Northup hopes to take the future lobby corps team of 10 students to Sacramento and inform state policymakers of the wants and needs of California's students.

"In the state Senate we need to let them know that we represent 450,000 voters," Northup said.
For the State of the Student event, Northup planned a presentation on California's political and budgetary past, how the state came to be in the current situation and the potential for the future.

He would like to give students all the information they need to become "forces to be reckoned with" and focus their frustration and complaints in the right direction.

"This is something I came into because I'm upset, just like other students," Northup said.
Fellow ASI board member and technology officer Emily Switzer, 20, is working with CSU Academic Technologies Services to increase the usage of open source educational material, like electronic textbooks.

"There are a wide range of free supplemental materials available online which students
and professors alike could use to enhance the quality of their courses," Switzer said. "My goal is to promote awareness of the resources which exist that students and faculty may not be aware of."

Switzer is working on a series of informational workshops about the electronic materials available, such as e-portfolios, orgsync, MERLOT, and the digital library research databases.

Also in the works is a proposal from ASI's green committee to transition the teacher evaluation process from paper questionnaires and Scantrons to an electronic platform. This project is in the very early stages.

The green committee, a subgroup within ASI focused on campus environmental issues, will be looking at the benefits of consumption reduction in eliminating the use of paper evaluations versus the difficulty of ensuring response with a new system.

"The main concerns being heard about implementing this are actually...response rates," ASI College of Creative Arts Representative Rick De La Torre said. "Usually, when a new system is implemented, there is a decline in responses due to transitioning time. Because evaluations help decided the hiring/firing of teachers, it is important that there is no drop in numbers."

For more information about ASI projects visit http://asi.sfsu.edu