Adam Schmidt is a second-year studying civil engineering, a student senator for the College of Engineering, and the Student Senate president pro tempore for session 97. We interviewed him about his role, goals and experience as an orientation leader over the summer.

What is the role of Student Senate president pro tempore?

It’s sort of like a vice president position, kind of like a chief of staff, too. Technically, it’s the person who’s supposed to fill in whenever the Senate president can’t be there, so if [Student Senate President] Mitchell Moravec has to miss a meeting or he can’t complete something, I’m supposed to step in and fill that gap.

I’m trying to help coordinate, too, like help out the student body officials who all sit at the front, like the legislative secretary and the Senate secretary when they take minutes and show things on the screen.

Tell us about your history in Student Government. Were you in Student Government last year?

Yeah, I was a first-year senator last year. Before that, I went to the School of Science and Math in Durham; I was actually senate president there my senior year of high school and a junior senator my junior year there.

Last year, I was the associate vice president of budget and finance for the UNC Association of Student Governments, which is the umbrella organization over the 17 campuses in the UNC System.

Right now, the books are open for first-year seats. What did you think of being in Student Senate your first year?

Being a first-year senator was something I really enjoyed. You get to do a lot of cool things. I met some of my best friends in Student Government.

I think it’s really interesting because, unlike a lot of student organizations where the base comes from one major or one academic college, you’re meeting people from across the university who have a broad set of interests, but also share the same Student Government interest.

Beyond that, you get to learn a lot about the university because we bring in people who are starting new initiatives or trying out new things from around campus to Senate to talk about what they’re doing and what they’re changing, and then we get to interact with administrators and staff people to ask them to do things better or do things differently.

What’s your biggest goal for this session, and how as president pro tempore are you going to implement that goal?

Student Senate can be kind of scary just because you can feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you want to do but you don’t really know how to tackle, so I think I want to work on breaking that down and connecting people with similar project interests to each other so that they can work on bills together, meet with administrators together, because it’s a lot less scary when you don’t have to do it alone.

Who in previous sessions have you looked up to?

The Senate president last year, Jamie Plummer, is a real role model of mine. She’s also one of my better friends. I love Jamie for a lot of reasons, but she was very — and she is very — no-nonsense. She graduated and I miss her, but I continue to look up to her.

I remember over the summer seeing you as an orientation leader. Could you talk a little about that experience? What was it like?

I loved being an orientation leader — I tried to tell everyone that — which was really strange because I went in thinking it would just going to be a job, and that I was going to do it for the summer, and I would get paid, and at the end I would be done and that would be it.

But, for me, and I think for a lot of people on the team, it wound up being something much more than that just because New Student Programs does such a good job connecting the orientation leaders to each other and working to cultivate a familial culture.

I thought it was really cool to see students come in and during our first small group, right after they come to orientation, they’re always so nervous and they’re so scared, and then a day and a half later, they’re really excited, and they’re ready to come back to campus in August, and then I’ve seen some of them around the past week or so, and it’s been really cool to catch up and see how they’re doing so far.

Is there anything else you want to add?

I think Student Government is really awesome. I always encourage people to join it, so I guess this is a good place to plug that, especially at the beginning of the year. Exec is recruiting people, the first-year Senate seats are open, first-year grad Senate seats are open. We have a couple other ones that are up on the ballot if people are interested in running, and it’s a great way to meet new people, get connected to the university, and try to do something to impact positive change.

A version of this story was published on August 24 under the headline “Senate pro temper Q&A”.