Alberta Students' Executive Council

The Alberta Students' Executive Council (ASEC) represents over 105,000 students from 14 universities, colleges, and technical institutes across Alberta, Canada.

ASEC is a member-driven organization that is governed by its Board and Executive Committee, selected from its membership. Each member school is represented at the Board level with a voting delegate. ASEC is governed by the "one-school one-vote" principle to ensure that all member organizations are treated equally, regardless of student body size.

History

ASEC begun as ACTISEC (Alberta College and Technical Institute Students' Executive Council), and was created after the disbanding of the Federation of Alberta Students (FAS) (a provincial organization that represented all of the public post-secondary institutions in Alberta) in 1981, when a number of colleges and technical institutes withdrew their membership citing domination of FAS by the universities. In 1982 a group of student delegates from colleges and technical institutes (Grant MacEwan College, Lakeland College, Lethbridge College, The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Medicine Hat College, Mount Royal College and The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) met to form ACTISEC, an organization that would recognize the differences of all non-university post-secondary students.

The inaugural meeting of ACTISEC was held at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology on March 11, 1982. David Whalen from NAITSA was appointed as the initiating Chairperson of the council, and sent a letter to James Horseman, the Minister of Advanced Education at the time, advising him of the formation of the new organization.

In the onset, the group focused mainly on sharing information and resources between its member institutions, as well as professional development of student leaders. Over time, however, it became apparent that there was also a need for a strong lobby organization that would concentrate mainly on external issues affecting post-secondary education, and on maintaining constant communication with government and other post-secondary institutions and organizations.

In May 2009, after it was made clear by the Government of Alberta that Grant MacEwan College and Mount Royal College would become known as Universities, ACTISEC initiated a name change to reflect its changing membership. The name Alberta Students' Executive Council was selected; ASEC's first Leadership Conference was held in May 2009 in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 2014 the students' associations of Mount Royal University, MacEwan University, and Athabasca University announced they were leaving ASEC and would be completing that process by March 2015.^[1] The former Executive Director of ASEC claimed that the organization forced him to quit following a suicide attempt in 2015.^[2]

See also

• List of Alberta students' associations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alberta Students' Executive Council.

• ASEC Home Page

Canadian students' associations
College	Algonquin
Undergraduate	Acadia Alberta Athabasca Bishop's Brandon British Columbia Brock Calgary Carleton Concordia Dalhousie First Nations Guelph Lethbridge Manitoba McGill McMaster Memorial Ottawa Queen's Ryerson St. Francis Xavier St. Thomas Simon Fraser Toronto UPEI Victoria Waterloo Western Wilfrid Laurier Windsor York
Graduate	McGill Ottawa Ryerson
School memberships	ASEC ASSÉ CASA CAUS CFS CSA FECQ FEUQ NBSA OUSA SNS TaCEQ UEQ