Former Government of the Student Body Director of Academic Affairs Heather Mitchell was voted this year’s cabinet member of the year.

The recognition comes due to Mitchell’s outstanding effort to continue former GSB President T.J. Schneider’s initiatives from last year, as well as developing her own, said former chief of staff Rick Cordaro, who presented Mitchell with the award April 15.

As Director of Academic Affairs, Mitchell worked primarily on the re-formulation of teacher and course evaluations and coming up with alternatives to Iowa State’s academic calendar.

Mitchell sat on the Student Evaluation of Teaching Committee, where she created pilot programs in the business college for the evaluation of business college professors and their courses.

Mitchell said her goal this year was to make the evaluations more available to both students and faculty, which she said she believes will help create a better learning environment at Iowa State.

“By having course feedback available to both students and faculty, I think it will help students to make better decisions on what courses will best meet their needs.

“It’s an experimental run right now, because we want to make sure we’re doing this cooperatively, meaning we want to work with professors on a voluntary basis,” Mitchell said.

Students can look at the trial pilot program through a link on the GSB Web site, where they can see students’ opinions on teachers in the business college.

She was also involved with looking at changing the academic calendar. Mitchell sat on ISU President Gregory Geoffroy’s Academic Calendar Task Force, which she said gave her a chance to make sure students’ viewpoints and perspectives were represented.

She said she tried to do this by opposing some faculty members’ proposal to lengthen winter break and shorten summer break.

Mitchell said some faculty wanted to lengthen winter break to be able to attend conferences during that time. Mitchell said she understands the benefit of faculty attending conferences, but believes shortening summer break will be bad for students.

“Students already think winter break is too long, because winter break can be a dead period for students,” Mitchell said.

“Students are more productive during summer break than winter break, and we shouldn’t cut that time for them to be productive.”

She said summer is an opportunity for students to work toward their degrees through internships, co-ops, summer jobs to pay for college and summer classes.

Mitchell said through these two projects, she has worked to uphold the principles and duties of her position.

“I am here to reinforce the idea which we are all here for, which is to educate students,” she said.