SGA president Ellis sets goals for office and track
Ethan Ellis loves to run. And whether he is on the track or running for office, Ellis is ready to leap any hurdles that come his way.
Ellis is Lamar University’s Student Government Association president for 2024-25. The junior political science major from Missouri City is also a hurdler on LU’s track team. As with his athletic career, Ellis said he sets goals for himself and SGA.
“What I want to accomplish most during my term is just to improve the overall student life,” he said. “Lamar University is a community-based campus. I want to bring atmosphere back to Lamar, so all our students can have similar experiences.”
To boost the overall happiness, Ellis said he plans to bring more events and activities to the university to get students more involved.
"Last semester, we had a concert at the Week of Welcome,” he said. “After the Week of Welcome, there aren’t many events going on for the students to interact with. My biggest thing has been trying to get all the organizations on campus together, so that we can all collaborate and host bigger events and better activities for the students.”
Ethan Ellis is Lamar University’s Student Government president
and is a hurdler on the Cardinal track team. UP photo by Aaron Saenz.
Ellis said part of his vision for the presidency is to improve retention rates of the school.
“The university system wants to improve the amount of students we have,” he said. “I want to expose more resources that we have around and keep students here. With the student engagement aspect, as well as giving more information on all the resources we have available, we’re trying to influence students to want to stay.”
Increasing awareness of student resources is another goal, Ellis said. Many students are not aware of transit options, he said.
“We just did a few surveys last week where students were saying that they didn’t know who the transit system was for,” he said. “They didn’t know they could use it. They didn’t know the routes. They didn’t know the times. They didn’t know where the stops were. So, we’re just trying to get more exposure to that.”
Student engagement also depends on how well they can connect to student organizaions and their leaders, Ellis said.
“We have over 200 registered organizations,” he said. “I devised an Excel spreadsheet trying to contact each leader of the organizations. Right now, I’m at about 100 of them. We’re trying to get SGA representatives so that every organization stays in the loop. We have all far reaches of the campus to just let us know what’s going on, what they would like to improve.
“Honestly, that’s what we’re here for, this is what the SGA does. We’re here to listen to the students and see what we can do to improve student life.”
Ellis said his experiences have given him the tools to do the job.
“A leader is a person that has experience in the shoes of somebody in everyday life,” Ellis said. “I’m a political science major, so a lot of the things I do deal with legislation — the House of Representatives, Congress, Judicial and Executive branches. That’s my experience with all the official things of it, but I feel like my experience comes with having the everyday experience of being a student. Seeing what goes on day to day influences you to want to do better and improve.”
Competing on the track, where he runs the 400-meter hurdles, and homework take a lot of his time but he said he has a lot of help with time management.
“I couldn’t do anything that I do without my team,” he said. “My team has been a very vital resource for me. We plan around each other’s schedules. I schedule everything in my calendar. I don’t put my phone down till 10, so I’m constantly replying to emails, messages, GroupMe’s, anything. I put my all, like 110%, in everything I do. No matter if it’s sports, education, SGA — I feel like this has been a very important thing to me.”
The SGA office is located on the 2nd floor of the Setzer Student Center, above the Panda Express. Ellis can be reached at eellis5@lamar.edu, or by calling 409-880-8891.