The Student Government Association plans to get more involved with student life, diversity and financial aid this semester than in years past.

SGA convened for the first time this semester Tuesday night in Cravens Library. SGA President Keyana Boka said she has many plans this year with SGA.

Boka said being president is a big step up from her previous role in SGA as executive vice president but that so far it’s been a “smooth transition.”

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“I’m looking forward to a productive year,” she said.

Boka said she wants to be known as getting out there and talking to students and reaching out.

“I want students to know what SGA has to offer and they’re welcome to come to us with any issue,” she said. “A goal I have this year is to go to more campus organizations because typically SGA presidents don’t go to campus organizations until campaign time.”

Boka said her main goal is to encourage the senate to take a more active role on projects.

“We will be expanding our scholarship program, we’ve budgeted out a winter scholarship along with the summer scholarship that we started last year,” she said.

Mark Reeves, executive vice president, and Boka both attended a program called Kentucky in D.C. over the summer where they spoke to Kentucky senators and representatives about higher education issues.

“Three main issues we touched on were the federal loan interest rate, Pell Grant renewal coming up in 2015 and university research funding,” she said.

Boka said universities are the cutting edge in global research and it’s important that it’s continued.

Reeves said he encourages minorities to get involved and he will be meeting with minority organizations.

“So that Student Government is reflecting everyone on campus,” he said.

Reeves said he hopes SGA will hear more concerns from students this semester.

“Another one of the things I’m working on is making sure students are represented on the university bodies that SGA has the privilege of appointing people to,” he said. “It’s a range of about 15 to 20 members.”

Reeves said there are a lot of ways students can have their voices heard even beyond the senate.

“We want to make sure students get their voices heard,” he said.

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Nicki Seay, administrative vice president, said she’s excited for the new year as well and getting organizational aid together.

“So far it looks like we got some people to sign up for the committee,” she said. “After that we’re going to approve our application and get it online, so any student organization can apply.”

Seay said she’s focused on getting the word out about organizational aid.

“I went around to organizations I hadn’t seen apply for org. aid and talked to them and told them what it was about,” she said. “It turns out that a lot of them didn’t even know about org. aid or that they could apply for it.”

Seay said she plans to work with SGA’s PR team to promote organizational aid so it will be used by more student groups.