President
Karl Low 
Hey Folks!
I've been a student at AU since 1999, slowly plugging my way through my first undergraduate degree. I started off in the Bachelor of Arts, Information Systems program, but have realized that it's just not a great fit for me and I get much more enjoyment from writing and literature. Accordingly, I'm now in my final year of a four year Bachelor of Arts, English.
I got involved with AUSU through writing the old Fedwatch! Column for The Voice Magazine. First just by volunteering to help out with their bylaw revisions, which eventually lead to my chairing the legislative committee, and from there an appointment on Council. Two elections later, I'm still here, having gone through both VP positions and now serving as your President. It's both interesting and challenging, and I'm hoping that under my guidance, Council will be able to keep moving forward and developing both programs and lobbying strategies that benefit all of us.
When I'm not busy with AUSU, however, I have a couple of other part-time, distance based jobs, one working at the Virtual Helpdesk with AU, helping out the junior computing science students when they're having problems getting the courses installed, the other watching over the general forums for Macleans' Magazine and basically making sure that the discussions don't turn to flame wars. As if that's not enough, I've pretensions of being a professional writer, with material published for a role-playing game called Paranoia, and having written a few reviews for the gaming magazine "The Escapist" which can be found online. (Sadly, my reviews haven't actually been published, but I suppose as long as they want to keep sending me free games, I'm not going to complain that much)
There's also academic writing, and with my partners, we've had a research paper peer-reviewed and accepted by AU's own IRRODL, which went on to be hosted in a special international joint issue of various education related journals. We have a second project we plan to develop over the next year or so, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's as well received.
Outside of the writing, I'm a huge politics and news junkie, which drives my wife crazy as she hates the stuff, and we're both avid readers, with our library having over 1500 books in it currently. I'm also big into playing and designing games (as you may have guessed from my writing) and the tales of swashbuckling pirates.
We have two cats, which have decided that 7:00am is the time when people should be getting up in the morning. Unfortunately, I tend to be a night owl, so this doesn't suit me terribly.
Currently, the plan is to finish off my degree during this term at AUSU, and then look at continuing on with a Masters of Arts degree in Integrated Studies, hopefully leading on to a position working with AU as a tutor or faculty member. In the meantime, I'm looking to see if I can't find more time to do more writing and hopefully get a few more items published.
You can find me in the AUSU chat between 4 and 5pm MST on Mondays, feel free to drop by talk for a while. (Though you might have to wait a minute or two for me to respond.. I'm usually reading some news site while I'm in there.)
|
