This year, SAGE is trying something new. The SAGE Scholars Advisory Board has renamed itself the UC Berkeley SAGE Scholars Leadership Council, and along with the SAGE Scholars we have formed four committees: Marketing, Communication & Events Committee, Outreach, Fundraising and Development Committee, Program Development Committee and the Finance Committee. Each committee is chaired by one of our Leadership Council members and a SAGE Scholar is a co-chair.

The Outreach, Fundraising and Development committee has led the charge to bolster our work-study program for SAGE Scholars at non-profit organizations. Through this program, SAGE Scholars can gain valuable work experience with competitive pay that utilizes their work-study funding offers while non-profit organizations benefit from the scholars’ great work at no cost to them. Over the course of the year, the committees will be tackling important program tasks such as marketing, fundraising, program development and financial management. The Marketing, Communications and Events committee has been hard at work putting together the first e-newsletter of the 2011-12 school year with contributions coming right from the SAGE Scholar committee members! Behind the scenes, the Program Development committee has been hard at work collecting student feedback as they work to improve and supplement SAGE’s already stellar student support, while the Finance committee is focused on the program’s budgets.

It’s an exciting time here at SAGE as everyone is taking ever more ownership and contributing to our wonderful program!