While serving on the Board of Governors in 2008, junior Spanish and French Major Ivy Love worked to bring student concerns to the legislative body of Missouri Southern.

Now studying abroad at the University of Bristol in England, the board has an empty position for student representative. Previously, Student Senate President Ben Hinkle was the interim student representative.

Among her roles while serving last year were defending the international program and encouraging creative ways to save money.

“I made a point that it would specifically be unwise to cut the Russian and Arabic programs.”

“Those are taught by Fullbright scholars at no charge to the university except a small stipend paid to one faculty member to supervise their work.”

According to Love, few schools the size of MSSU teach Russian or Arabic. The classes are a unique opportunity in line with the international mission of MSSU.

In the last Board meeting Love attended, she presented an idea to save money by creating upper-division courses that would serve as academic independent studies. The classes would essentially act as internships for departments across the University.

The University could have marketing majors work with the admission office, graphic design students work on promotional material and public relations students could work on creating and improving connections with the community, she said.

Love said this would help lessen the workload of instructors and faculty as well as providing “professional experience” in their fields before graduating.

Though a non-voting member, there hasn’t been a vote Love would have wanted to change.

When the Board needs to vote on something critical, they will go into a closed session, she said.

“I obviously can’t participate in those,” Love said.

Though the members of the Board have been generally kind, it’s difficult to measure the amount of respect she receives.

“In all honesty, sometimes I have to ask myself if I’m being taken seriously,” Love said.

Because Board members aren’t on campus much, according to Love it’s up to her to “shed light on the life and times of an MSSU student.”

She informs the Board on issues that aren’t likely to show up on “paper records or financial statements,” but are still important to MSSU, Love said.