Governor Abbott Appoints New Texas State University System Student Regent

Governor Greg Abbott has appointed 10 student regents to their respective university systems.

Sam Houston State University student Spencer Copeland has been named Student Regent for the Texas State University System.

Currently Copeland is pursuing his masters in homeland security, where this spring he finished his undergraduate with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

He also spent this past year as Student Body President where he says one of his biggest initiatives with being in Student Government was working to understand what the students he served needed most from the Texas State System.

“So one of the major roles of the student body president is to attend the student advisory board. All the student body presidents and vice presidents from all the universities in our system meet together once a quarter when the regents meet and what we do is we sit down and talk about the different things going on our individual component campuses and we make a report about all the needs of our students across the system. Which is now the board I will be serving on. So that helps in that I know the basic overview of what the system is, it helps to know that I have experience working with the regents. And so it’s kind’ve those little ins and outs that you get to pick up whenever you are Student Body President, I’m sure will help.”

As well as working within Sam Houston State to encourage involvement on his campus, Copeland says he is extremely excited to be the new Student Regent and hopes his insight will help him give more input on discussions.

“I’m a member of the Board of Regents except I get all the rights and privileges of a regent member but I get the ability to vote inside of the board meetings. And so with that, all the events, all the discussions, we have, whether it’s different courses we’re adding, removing from the Constitution, adding in new construction, different things that are higher system decisions, I get to be in the discussion and give my input with.”

Along with encouraging students to join their campus student government, Copeland says he hopes as Student Regent he can encourage students to become more involved on their campuses across the system.

When asked about his regent plans for the upcoming school year, Copeland says his prime goal as Student Regent will be “to ensure that the voices of the students are represented and that our best wishes are advocated for on a system level.”

The next scheduled Quarterly Meeting for the Texas State University Board of Regents is August 13-14 of this year.
For KTSW News, I’m Taylor Zavala.