Two candidates are running for the 2025-2026 Associated Students of UCI’s (ASUCI) Academic Affairs Vice President (AAVP) position. Christopher Tan is a third-year biomedical engineering: premedical major. Summer Phan is a second-year biological sciences major. Voting for the ASUCI election will begin on Monday, April 14 at 9 a.m. and end on Friday, April 18 at 5 p.m.
The ASUCI Office of the Academic Affairs Vice President is under the executive branch and runs programming designed to provide students with academic support, which can include “meeting with the Academic Senate, bridging the gap between professors and students, inviting educational speakers, spreading awareness of campus resources, highlighting higher education and more,” according to ASUCI’s website. The AAVP oversees five commissions: Office Outreach, Academic Advocacy, Academic Engagement, Academic Resources and Speakers.
The elected candidate will replace fourth-year computer science and economics double major Shreyas Vasist Chandramouli in the position.
Christopher Tan
Tan is currently in his second year serving as a director of the Academic Advocacy Commission under the Office of the AAVP, beginning as an intern in the commission his first year. As Academic Advocacy director, Tan has held town hall meetings with UCI Division of Undergraduate Education Dean Michael Dennin and Dean of Students Rameen Talesh to facilitate conversations between administrators and students. He hosted weekly office hours that the commission held to allow student representatives to engage with and hear from other students, as well as develop advocacy projects.
When asked what issue he would tackle first as AAVP if elected, Tan chose “opposing student fee raises,” with “hope[s] to pass university-wide policies that help protect the rights of students, and build our university as a place of excellence.”
As part of his campaign statement, Tan pledged to advocate in the Academic Senate for policies that recommend open-source course material, oppose the increase of student fees and continue to facilitate a close relationship between the branches of ASUCI.
“One overall important change I would like to make is to increase the visibility of ASUCI and AAVP as a place for students to go to get help with representation on the UCI Academic Senate and as a place for pushing for policy changes and improvements,” Tan wrote in an email to New University.
Tan is running as part of a coalition of ASUCI student candidates known as the Anteater PACT — Progress, Advocacy and Campus Transparency — alongside Alondra Arevalo for President, Harshvardhan Rathore for Internal Vice President, Jared Castaneda for External Vice President and Patrick Kendrick Maranon for Student Services Vice President.
Summer Phan
Phan currently serves as the campus climate commissioner under the Office of the President and is an intern for the Speakers Commission under the Office of the AAVP. As campus climate commissioner, Phan described to New University her frequent correspondence with campus safety officers associated with the UCI Police Department. She proposed having officers already scheduled for night shifts to work around student libraries during exam seasons for greater student library accessibility and longer hours.
“Especially because a lot of the police officers that I talked to, they come from UCI. They know what it’s like to go here, they know what it’s like to be a student here and they understand the struggles,” Phan told New University. “So I think it doesn’t take much to convince them to do it. It’s just [that] nobody’s tried, because everyone’s like, ‘that’s impossible.’”
In her campaign statement, Phan said that if elected as AAVP, she would ensure that students across all schools would have discipline-specific resources through implementation of a “post-graduate guide,” urge the libraries to have extended hours during midterms and advocate for more variety in courses offered at UCI.
Phan further stated she would advocate for more in-person options for major-required classes in all departments to ensure students are able to choose how they learn.
“I have friends from all sorts of majors that I’ve advocated for. I’ve told them about resources they need,” Phan told New University. “I’m like that girl where [someone’s] like ‘oh, I didn’t know this is going on campus.’ I’m like ‘yeah’ and I send them [there].
Voting begins April 14 at 9:00 a.m. and ends April 18 at 5:00 p.m. Election results will be released on Wednesday, April 30. For more information on the upcoming ASUCI election visit here.
Alyse Billiard is a News Staff Writer. She can be reached at abilliar@uci.edu.
Edited by Logan Heine & Karen Wang.
