President
Bethany Tynes
Hello fellow AUSU members! My name is Bethany Tynes, and I'm excited to be a part of the AUSU council. I was first elected in 2008, was voted in as VPEx in 2010, and became President in March 2011.
I'm from originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and did my first year of university classes in Halifax at Dalhousie University. When I started taking classes through AU, I intended to transfer them back to Dal later, but I loved my AU classes so much that I decided not to return to traditional university. I've now completed my University Diploma in Arts and three-year Bachelor of Arts in English through Athabasca, and am currently taking both undergrad and graduate classes at the same time so that I can chip away at a fourth year of undergrad work while also finishing my Masters at the same time. I am a stay-at-home mom, a Victorian literature junkie, and avid an llama enthusiast. Yes, an avid llama enthusiast.
My plan for AUSU this year, in addition to continuing to offer our great familiar services like financial awards and the handbook/planner, is to focus on improving communication - communication with our members, and communication with outside groups, such as the university, government, and media. To help improve communication with our students, we're currently working on a major overhaul of our website (here at ausu.org) to make sure that it's up-to-date and full of fresh, dynamic content. We're also going to continue mailing out our printed newsletters twice a year, and will be reexamining our staff positions to ensure that we have enough staff to meet the needs of our growing student body. To help improve communication with external groups such as the government and media, meanwhile, AUSU is proud to announce that we have been accepted into membership by the Alberta Students Executive Council. ASEC now represents students from fourteen post-secondary institutions across Alberta, and recognizes that each school has a unique student population and there is no such thing as a "normal" student. ASEC has a track record of great success in dealing with government and media, and AUSU is incredibly excited to work with ASEC in the future! We'll also be continuing to seek meetings with representatives from various groups within the university, including the university Executive, the tutors' and faculty's unions, etc..
If you have any suggestions on how we can help improve our communication skills and strategy, or if there are other services you'd like to see, please drop me an e-mail any time.
I look forward to hearing from you!
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