At the beginning of winter term, on Jan 18, the SLC began their elections for president and vice president. Running unopposed for president is Danae Fouts who is the current Executive Assistant.
Danae says that since starting her position as an Executive Assistant at the SLC, she’s really enjoyed the positive, welcoming work environment. She said she would’ve liked it if the team were more in-person, but she is really proud of the events they’ve been able to pull off.
When asked about what her motivation was to run, Danae says that the decision was really motivated by the movie “Encanto” which was released late November in 2021. She said that she really underestimated herself and had a lot of self-doubt but after watching the movie and understanding that their main message was “you don’t need to be special or important to do things.”
Danae also says that her adviser, Rob Camp also really influenced her decision by telling her that she’s not the only one who faced self-doubt; many presidents before her, including current President, Hannah Briggs, felt the pressure and self-doubt. She said that made her feel way better about applying.
She said that her biggest challenge is figuring out how to balance school, personal obligations, and her work with the SLC. She says that it was tough too when she was starting out last April to figure out what exactly her position entailed.
However, Danae says that her favorite part of being part of the team is how supportive and welcoming everybody is. She refers to them as “the family” because of how close they have all become. She especially enjoys it when everybody is together during meetings, events outside of school like the summer camps, and whenever they do things outside of campus together.
As the next President, Danae plans to continue having a tightly knit team as they do now. She said that she wants to focus on “not dropping the ball” on advancements they’ve made; she wants to keep the momentum of this year going into the next school year and so on.
She said she also really wants to make the SLC’s presence on-campus more felt by students and staff and make what they offer more well-known.
Danae adds that because of her interests in people and being able to help them as much as she can, she wants to promote mental health and illness awareness so that people who are struggling know they’re not alone and there are many ways to deal with it.
Danae shares that she was homeschooled her whole school-life so that made the transition of going to community college way easier. She said it was most helpful to go from completely online high school to completely online college and slowly transition into in-person, instead of being dumped into it.
One of Danae’s main passions is helping others. This fits with her current major in Human development with an emphasis on family studies. She said she takes “any opportunity where I can make [people] feel a little better.” She thinks it’s important to let people know that they aren’t alone in her struggles.
Outside of her 17-credit workload, Danae says she likes to destress by watching YouTube videos and reading WebTunes online.
29 credits away from earning her Associates degree, Danae said that after graduating she wants to possibly take a work-break to see if Human Services is really her cup-of-tea. She says that the current plan she’s thinking about is switching to accounting for its technical and versatile attributes.