Life balance, Tommie citizens and Tommie takeover are the Undergraduate Student Government’s three main initiatives for the 2013-2014 school year.

USG President Jenna Johnson said along with these top three priorities, there will be a significant emphasis on working with university administration on the academic curriculum.

Although the council will focus most of its resources on the three main initiatives, Johnson said student responses to President Julie Sullivan’s planning survey prompted USG to evaluate its role as a liaison to the administration. A significant number of students responded that they would like to lower the number of required philosophy and theology courses and have a more developed fine arts department.

“We’ll start a conversation for change with the administration,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the Tommie citizen initiative, which is a push to involve St. Thomas students in more volunteer and community work, is unlike any of USG’s previous goals. To move toward reaching this goal, USG members plan to work more closely with clubs and organizations such as Volunteers in Action and Feed My Starving Children to provide students with citizenship opportunities.

“We would bus students to off-campus events, and we’re looking into how we can bring volunteer opportunities to campus,” Johnson said. “It’s part of the St. Thomas mission statement to ‘promote the common good,’ and we wanted to include that in the initiatives.”

The other two goals are continuations of last year’s initiatives— Tommie pride and health and wellness. Johnson said the council will look into new ways to promote these goals, and she said USG hopes to bring at least one TED Talk speaker to St. Thomas this year who can speak to these goals.

Tommie takeover, the expansion of Tommie pride, seeks to raise student awareness of the on-campus services and resources open exclusively to St. Thomas students. To help create a heightened awareness, Johnson said the delayed student calendar smartphone application will undergo serious development.

“We put in a request with IRT (Information Resources and Technology) to work on this last year, but the Anderson Student Center had a lot of technical needs that kept delaying our request and putting it at the bottom of the stack,” Johnson said. “This year, we’ll work with IRT, but we’ll outsource if we need to to get this app released.”

The life balance initiative will expand on last year’s focus on health and wellness. Johnson said a committee is working with Dining Services to post nutritional information in St. Thomas dining venues and have more fresh, gluten-free and lactose-free options available. She also said USG will work with the Wellness Center to educate students about sleep and stress.

Junior John Kinkead said most of the initiatives are not particularly centered around his interests, but he said he would welcome more opportunities to volunteer.

“I think it would be great for the school to start shuttling students to volunteer opportunities, such as non-profits,” Kinkead said. “As for (seeing nutritional values), I’m indifferent, but I’m sure others would appreciate it.”

Yet some students, such as sophomore Loïc Attikossie, think this year’s initiatives will involve and excite the student population.

“I think all of these points are great, and it’d be really awesome to see all of them come true. TED Talks are amazing, and I’m sure many of my peers would agree. If that were to happen, I know I would be there,” Attikossie said. “The app would be a life-saver, considering everyone is always on their phones.”

Anastasia Straley can be reached at stra0669@stthomas.edu.