Artem Senchev

Artem Senchev is a candidate for ASUCD Senate in the Winter 2014 ASUCD Election running as an independent.

Born in the chilling Russian Winters, Artem started off his journey at UC Davis as a Managerial Economics major. He hit it off quick by becoming a member of the Theta Chi Fraternity and a founding member of the Economics and Business Student Association spring of his freshman year, serving as Vice-President his sophomore year.

Artem began his experience with the Associated Students of the University of California, Davis with the Executive Office of the ASUCD President under Rebecca Sterling, specifically serving the Association as Assistant to the ASUCD Controller Melanie Maemura. Following his employment under the Financial Controllers Office, Artem began serving the legislative branch of student government as a commissioner of the ASUCD Business and Finance Commission. Artem served as Vice-Chair of the commission and was awarded the Exemplary Commissioner of the Year Award for his audit work.

No stranger to the world of finance, Artem also works as an administrator to the UCD/Sacramento Morgan Stanley Financial Training Program and connects ALL UC Davis students, not just undergraduates, to opportunities with a leading investment bank. Together with his friend and fraternal brother Chandler Hill, Artem has shared his knowledge of finance in an easy to understand way with the public by co-hosting Word on the Street, Financial News on KDVS, the UCD student-run radio station.

Artem directly works with our ASUCD Fees as payroll assistant to the payroll manager of Unitrans and supports the drivers that do so much for our student body.

Platforms

A Student Organization Oriented Approach

As students of the University of California, Davis, we go to class to get the most out of our tuition dollars. However, if all we did on campus was go to class, we would not get the most out of our UC Davis experience.

Clubs and other student organization are a vital part of UC Davis because student orgs give us the opportunity to develop leadership skills, something important to help us achieve all our future goals.

One of the UCD student government programs funded by our undergraduate student government fee of $41 is the Club Finance Council (CFC). The CFC gives up to $2,000 grants and as of now it can fully fund up to 36 programs and events held by student orgs.

Our university is home to hundreds of student organizations and expanding the Club Finance Council is an important step in helping as many students as possible develop key skills and help us achieve our future goals.

An Impact on Student Affordability

College is a significant investment and on top of ever-increasing tuition, the cost of textbooks puts us further in the hole.

CALPIRG and ASUCD Senator Gareth Smythe have made progress in Student Affordability with the Affordable Textbook Campaign. The campaign’s goal is to have at least five professors each quarter switch to open source textbooks and if the course does not allow for alternate learning material, to express public support for the campaign.

Textbook costs should not be something that inhibits us from the knowledge that UC Davis has to offer, and if and when elected, contributions to the Affordable Textbook Campaign will be made to expand its goals and to further encompass a diversity of courses, such as those in biological sciences.

Increasing our Financial Literacy

When we come into UC Davis, we have a checkbook and cash funded through public or private loans as well as our own efforts.

Certain entities are not looking out for our best interests with information sharing and may even contribute to us falling further into the Student Debt Trap.

Currently UC Davis has budgeting workshops in Dutton Hall and a Personal Finance class in the Agricultural and Resource Economics department, but these programs are taught by someone who cannot relate to what we are going through.

A personal finance initiative created for the students by the students is necessary to increase our financial literacy so we can escape the Student Debt Trap ASAP. Implemented by students who know what we go through every day, a personal finance initiative helps us all better our money management skills.