The Associated Students of New Mexico State University gathered for their third meeting of the year at Corbett Center Thursday evening.

During the meeting, the Senate selected a committee leader for the Online Campus Task Force, an organization that provides a one-stop website representing all the online and hybrid programs offered across the five NMSU Campuses according to their information page.

Gaspard Mucundanyi, a Ph.D. student studying Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Educational Learning Technology, has been chosen to head the committee.

Mucundanyi is currently a senator for the school of Graduate Studies, and is a member of the Critical Multicultural Educators organization and the Student Chapter of the American Statistical Association at NMSU.

Mucundanyi said he is excited to serve students as the head of the committee because he has experience with online courses.

“Most of the time I use technology education. I have been taking online courses for almost three years,” Mucundanyi said.

Not only has Mucundanyi experienced online courses as a student, he has also been the instructor behind the screen.

“I truly believe I can represent the students because I know the issues students face when they take online courses and also because I’ve used it to teach some online courses, I know also the issues that instructors face,” Mucundanyi said.

Some of Mucundanyi’s duties will include listening to students’ experiences, representing and presenting issues in the Senate on behalf of online students.

Mucundanyi said he looks forward to representing his online constituents.

“It’s great to represent the students because this is what ASNMSU stands for—a student organization serving students,” Mucundanyi said.

The Online Task Force is a relatively new organization. They formed in July 2017 after Provost Daniel Howard asked Dr. Greg Fant to start leading the task force, according to the NMSU Online Task Force web page.

The goal of the task force was to develop two systems for an online campus for the NMSU system.

In December 2017, the Task Force had their first public presentation of the NMSU Online program at the NMSU System Summit, according to a timeline on the Task Force web page.

In June, the Online Task Force published the information site for NMSUO.

NMSUO is expected to launch in January 2019.

According to the site, the organization will provide students with one location to search for online or hybrid courses.

This organization is different from online courses already offered to NMSU students because NMSUO students can pursue their degrees entirely online or via hybrid classes, which require students to attend campus only a few times throughout the semester, according to the site.

The Online Campus Task Force holds meetings once a month on Thursdays.

In other Senate business, two bills were passed in regards to student travel and it was announced that there have been changes made to the 2018-2019 ASNMSU Law Book, which has not been updated on the ASNMSU web page.