UW-Eau Claire’s Student Senate has successfully completed its annual I.T. survey. This student-geared survey helps to determine the allocation of over $50,000 of school funding.
Third-year information systems student Kyler Simonet is the director of Student Senate’s I.T. Commission.
Simonet, who was an intern last year, said the 2024-2025 survey received more responses than 2023-2024 despite the fact that overall enrollment is down. This year, roughly 1,200 students responded.
“We give the results to whoever wants it – usually LTS and Student Senate,” Simonet said. “It’s just kind of a check-in about where students are at for tech stuff. It helps a lot of groups out.”
Simonet said the questionnaire was sent out via email by the Dean of Students, and that most of the questions were similar to last year’s survey.
“There was a lot that was kind of expected, but one of the big things we’re acting on already is that a lot of students said they like closed captioning in their videos,” Simonet said. “We’re currently drafting up a resolution for Student Senate that says if professors are able to use live captioning in Powerpoint when they’re giving lectures, that students would support that service.”
I.T. Commission intern Michael Michlig, who worked with Simonet on the survey, said he started as an intern with the I.T. Commission at the beginning of this school year, but has been a member of the commission for a couple years.
“I helped with the survey by adding and tweaking questions from previous years, as well as checking to make sure the survey would make sense to those taking it,” Michlig said.
Simonet said one of the I.T. Commission’s first orders of business following the survey is already underway.
In response to student requests for more captioning, Simonet and Equity in Student Matters senate director Nelly Christelle have partnered on a resolution encouraging professors to use live captioning on PowerPoint during lectures.
Simonet said this resolution is set to be brought in front of senate at their meeting on Monday, Feb. 24.
Simonet said the I.T. Commission is responsible for allocation of the Innovation Budget.
“This is roughly $50,000 that we spend on things to hopefully make students’ lives easier when it comes to technology,” Simonet said.
He said most of the funding is put toward the UW-Eau Claire library. The Blugold Makerspace and virtual reality studio both received funding. This allocation occurs between late March and early April each year.
“We usually try to spend the funding on new stuff every year,” Simonet said. “The library is definitely a popular space to use money just because a lot of students go there — it’s an easy place to find projects to fund.”
As of right now, Simonet said, the decisions on what to fund have yet to be made.
“It’s good that students filled the survey out. It’s really important to have actual student feedback, especially because Student Senate is supposed to be the voice of the student body,” Simonet said. “If we didn’t have so many people fill out the survey, I wouldn’t feel as confident in the results that we got.”
Michlig said he hopes the survey results can be put to good use and improve the technology experience of all students for the sake of their academic success.
“Our goal is to make things easier for people, and consistently gathering their opinions and information is a good first step to accomplishing that,” Michlig said.
Wojahn can be reached at wojahnal7429@uwec.edu.
