The Student Association Senate filled 10 of the 12 vacant seats it had to start the academic year at its meeting Monday.

Senators passed a measure allowing the two remaining open seats – undergraduate spots for the College of Professional Studies and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences – to be converted to undergraduate-at-large positions, making any undergraduate student eligible to serve in the role, if the positions remain unfilled by the SA’s next meeting Oct. 11.

SA Executive Vice President Sydney Nelson said the move will allow more high-quality candidates to apply to the senate.

“We want to make sure we reach out to student orgs affiliated with those schools – students affiliated with the schools – and try to get someone from that direct community, but if not, we still want to make sure that undergraduate voice is represented,” she said in an interview.

The SA will relaunch its application for the two open positions, Nelson said.

The senate filled all of its vacant graduate seats and two vacant undergraduate seats, putting forward a total of 18 nominations for the 10 seats.

Five of the positions – two School of Business graduate seats, a Law School graduate seat, a business school undergraduate seat and a Columbian College of Arts and Sciences undergraduate seat – were contested.

Nelson said even though the SA did not hit its goal of filling all vacant positions by Oct. 1, approving 10 new senators is a “huge feat.”

“I think that we’re a lot farther along than you are in typical years,” she said.

The SA debuted a new recruitment strategy this month, combining its vacancy application process with its freshman recruitment effort, in hopes of filling all empty spots by the beginning of next month.

Also at the meeting, SA President Peak Sen Chua announced Jacob Smith, formerly the SA’s vice president of community affairs, would become Chua’s new chief of staff after Ezra Alltucker stepped down from the role earlier this month.

Monica Mercuri contributed reporting.