BOD: Director of Programming

Ruba,

Congratulations on being elected ASUW Director of Programming. I am so excited to see the amazing things you will do with this role now that you have the opportunity.

My time with ASUW was unique and challenging, but also deeply rewarding. I was (virtually) surrounded by brilliant, passionate students who truly cared about improving the university we all attend. Make the most of these relationships, and do your best to leave a mark on this school.

In this role, my most useful advice is to. . .

1. Ask for help. No matter what you are trying to accomplish, you will have a lot of questions. Most of these questions have no clear or easy-to-find answer. Luckily, you will have an entire team of advisers and board members who will always be there to help you accomplish your goals. Focus on building relationships with your advisers early in the year. Later in the year, you will be thankful you did.
2. Time Management. As in any leadership role, you will be forced to manage the conflict between the allocation of time for your personal needs and your professional obligations. In my experience, always put your own personal needs before your obligations as an employee of the ASUW. Avoid crises by prioritizing your own health and education while always planning far in advance.
3. Think Big. What do you envision for your legacy? While your job description is finite, you have the power to do more than almost any University of Washington student to change students’ lives. Make this year better than you can imagine.

Good luck this year!

Best,

Rahul Prasad | rahulgprasad@gmail.com

Email:

Username: asuwbdpg@uw.edu

Password: 2020#Events

HUB 121 Desktop Computer (UWNetID login):

Username: asuwbdpg

Password: daniella4 or

HUBRes (For placing reservations in the HUB):

Username: asuwbdpg@uw.edu

Password: dpg14 (go to RSO resource center to get this updated)

Slack:

The outgoing Communications Director will reset your Slack account. Afterward, you will be able to use your UWNetID to create a new account.

1. Board Meeting | Occurs every Thursday between 5:30p-7:30p

2. A&E Director Check-In | Occurs weekly

3. Rainy Dawg Radio (RDR) Check-In | Occurs weekly

4. Student Food Co-op Check-In | Occurs weekly or every other week

5. Senate | Occurs every Tuesday between 5:00p-7:00p

8. Weekly Office Hours | Typically, 13-15 hours are spent in your office each week.

Summer/Early Fall Quarter:

• Understand your job description.
  • Create a timeline for the year.
• Read through the ASUW bylaws and  the ASUW Constitution.
• Reflect on your platform.
  • Create goals for each quarter, fall through spring.
• Connect with Directors of Arts & Entertainment (A&E), Rainy Dawg Radio (RDR), and the Student Food Co-op (SFC) to review their quarterly and annual goals to find out how you can support as soon as you report for work. Note: the first large-scale project you will be able to help with is A&E’s Fall Fling.
• Meet with Rene Singleton to discuss your goals for the year.
• Start planning logistics for W Day.
  • You will be contacted by Annie from Marketing (alldra@uw.edu) or Lauren from marketing so that’ll go smoothly. Last year, the director of community relations and DP hosted W day and met with uw marketing to talk about how w day would go down.
• Work with ASUW Office of Communications (who has the format from last year, old formats will be in your drive if you dig, as well) & Rene to send out RSO Newsletter.
  • Your first newsletter should include an overview introducing yourself, how your role impacts RSOs, & most importantly, a survey for RSO leaders to fill out.
  • Response rates to surveys were lower with COVID, so may be a good idea to market the newsletter during the RSO registration sessions.
• Meet with the Finance Director. Having a good relationship with them is one of the biggest keys to having a successful year because they can connect you to so many partners and financial resources.

Fall Quarter:

• Develop relationships within the Association.
  • Try to meet individually with as many members of ASUW, especially Board members, as you can. Additionally, learn ways you can support fellow employees in their programming efforts.
• Start developing relationships with RSOs.
  • Attend RSO tabling fair during Dawg Daze to introduce yourself & spread awareness about resources, including the Special Appropriations Fund.
  • If you have time, attend RSO registration sessions to introduce yourself and spread awareness about upcoming RSO workshops and Special Appropriations.
  • Make copies of “how to apply for funding” flyers from the Special Appropriations folder in the google drive to hand out to RSO leaders at the tabling fair & registration sessions.
  • Work with ASUW Office of Communications to send out more RSO Newsletters.
• W Day
  • See the page below for details.
• Start planning for RSO Leaders Summit.
  • Meet with Patrick Stiver
• Meet with Student Health Consortium Director about programming
  • The past three years there hasn’t been an Everybody Every Body fashion show. However last years Dir. had plans to reinstate it so you should work with SHC to see what your role in that will be.
• Finance & Budget Committee
  • F&B director will give you a handbook. Your “expertise” will be in RSO funding through Special Appropriations, but you will vote on all bills so I would make sure to skim everything.

Winter Quarter:

• RSO Leaders Summit
  • See the page below for details.
  • A new event (Daniella 20′) did for the RSO Event was the “Functional RSO Networking Event”.
  • I (Rahul 21′) added an asynchronous portion where relevant programming info could be shared via Google Drive links to RSOs.
• See Fall Q
  • send out a quarterly newsletter, engage in meetings, attend your quarterly senate meeting, etc.
• Plan a Spring event/engagement

Spring Quarter: 

• New events
  • For example, in 2015-16, Jazmine Perez, then the Director of Programming, in collaboration with the AIS Director, created a new event called Youth Movement 7 where they invited three Tribal Schools to come to our campus, play sports, and interact with students for an entire day. She started planning in January and the event took place on April 22nd. Over the past three years, this project has not come to fruition. However, I would definitely recommend you continue to try and establish it this year. All of the documents from 2016 can be found this folder. The documents for 2017 (which never occurred) can be found in this folder. Your point of contact to start planning is be Jesse Schwarz. You can reach Jesse via Jesse.Schwarz@nike.com. (This was from way before my time but I left it in case you’re interested in it)
• Support the Director of Programming candidates during & after elections.
• Transition Documents
  • Create transition documents for the next Director of Programming at transition.asuw.org.

Other Notes

• You’ll also be doing a quarterly evaluation of the three entities you liaison to and you’ll evaluate yourself based on the goals you set for yourself that quarter. On top this, there are board goals that you’ll do you best to accomplish.

Rene Singleton (sniglet@uw.edu): Rene is one of the associate directors for the SAO, and she is going to be one of your best friends in ASUW. She sits in on Board meetings and F+B meetings, and has a TON of knowledge about your role. You should meet with her during your first week at ASUW and come prepared with any questions you have about your position. After that, definitely lean on her as a resource, and try to ping her from time to time. (Note: I’ve found that Rene is more responsive via text message so if you’re comfortable with that and she offers her number I’d go that route). 

Trevor Whiton (algernon@uw.edu): Trevor is one of the SAO advisors, and will likely be the advisor you interact with most because of his connection to Arts and Entertainment (A+E), and Rainy Dawg Radio (RDR) who you liaise with. He is a former ASUW student employee, and actually brought Nirvana to campus at one point, so knows just about everything there is to know about event planning. Definitely plan on reaching out to him early because you will lean on that relationship throughout the year.

Patrick Stiver (pstiver@uw.edu): Patrick will be your point-man when it comes to the RSO Leadership Summit. The event is one of his babies, so he can definitely help point you in the right direction. He has suggested to me that the summit be moved to Fall quarter, so I would reach out early and see if that makes sense for you logistically.

1. Oversee & coordinate all general & inter-ASUW collaborative programming
2. Liaison to A+E, RDR, and SFC and assist in pursuing joint programming
3. Plan EBEB with SHC
4. Plan & Execute W Day with UW Marketing
5. Serve as the BOD liaison to RSOs, including sitting on, or being responsible for appointments to the Office Space Assignment Committee
6. Plan RSO Leaders Summit
7. Assist RSOs with programming & connect them with relevant resources
8. Assist all employees in programming efforts

Whether or not you choose to recruit interns depends largely on your working style. If there are certain (weekly) meetings you are unable to attend, recruiting an intern via the open selection process might be a good idea. If you decide to hire an intern, ask the Office of Outreach and Involvement for help. (Note: my predecessor had ~2-3 interns, I had 0 because commitments were lower with COVID. Find what works for you).

This year, you’re getting paid for about 30 hours total to make some progress before the year starts. Here’s an overview of the summer to-do list:

• Read through your job description
  • Make a timeline for the year
• Read through the ASUW bylaws & constitution.
• Reflect on your platform
  • Split goals into the respective quarters
  • Review goals from my platform from last year
• Connect with Directors of A&E, RDR, & SHC to review their goals for the years & how you can support them beginning fall quarter (especially since you’ll be here early summer)
  • For example, helping A&E with Dawg Daze Fall Fling & Comedy Show
• Meet with SAO Advisor Rene about support for the year.
• Meet with F&B Director to discuss the Special Appropriations process, rules for spending, resources for collaborations, entity operations, and literally everything else (remember that they have the money in ASUW!)
• Work with ASUW Office of Communications (who has the format from last year) & SAO office (who will send it to the RSO leader listserv) to send out RSO Newsletter
  • See Google Drive for examples from last year, there should be a consistent format/heading every time you send them out.
  • Your first newsletter should include an overview introducing yourself, how your role impacts RSOs, & most importantly, a survey for RSO leaders to fill out. I put the drafts of my RSO newsletters as well as the survey I sent out & results in the drive
• Start planning logistics for W Day.
  • You will be contacted by Annie from Marketing (alldra@uw.edu) or Lauren from marketing ( so that’ll go smoothly. Last year since the focus was on the new TOGETHER campaign by UW Marketing, the DoP job was mainly helping with connecting UW marketing with RSOs to help make a plan

Here is the folder from the last RSO Leaders Summit (in the DoP Drive).

Here is the folder from the last Everybody Every Body Fashion Show.

This was the entity I communicated with the most last year. You probably will too because of the return of Fall Fling and Spring Show.

• Weekly meeting
  • Past directors attended their weekly staff meetings, but when working with Spencer last year we decided it would be more useful to just meet 1-on-1 with him weekly.
• CONTACT: asuwaedr@uw.edu

• Weekly meeting
  • (Same situation as with A+E)
• CONTACT: asuwrdgm@uw.edu

Due to bylaw changes, you are no longer the official liaison to SHC, but you will still collaborate with them for EBEB. I did not work much with them last year since there was no EBEB show.

• End of fall quarter, winter quarter before EBEB usually at least twice a week for planning.
• CONTACT: asuwshc@uw.edu

SFC ran largely independently from my role last year, but you are their official liaison so reach out early and see if they would like to meet more frequently this year.

• Monthly/bi-monthly meetings
• CONTACT: asuwsfc@uw.edu

Here is the folder of my RSO newsletters from last year. Make sure you work with Office of Communications to keep a consistent format.