The University Office of Academic Affairs has its hands full as it works on a number of initiatives for the future of the campus.
Jane Cassidy, vice provost for Human Resources and Facilities Management, said its initiatives include “anything that reaches out to the academic portion of the campus … from recruiting students to retention of students, facilities, faculty and reports as to how successful the University is in terms of student GPA report through the provost office of Academic Affairs.”
Cassidy said the office’s major focus is the reaffirmation process. The “site visit” for University reaffirmation is spring 2014, and three years of work have been required to pull together all the information needed to keep the University accredited.
Other initiatives include new faculty orientation, professional development for campus administrators, an emergency services session, promotion and tenure for faculty members, renovations and new buildings on campus.
Atkinson Hall, which can be found on the far south end of the Quad, is currently undergoing renovations to include an elevator and repair the bathrooms. The current contractor is behind on renovations, and it isn’t expected to be finished in time for the start of the fall semester, Cassidy said.
Because of this, Academic Affairs is working with Facility Services to help solve the issue.
“We would love to have everything done by the time classes start, especially in the buildings where classrooms are going to be used,” Cassidy said. “Sometimes the [late starts for renovation] have to do with the money not being available or the weather.”
Cassidy also said new buildings will be constructed, but they were never intended to be ready for the fall semester.
All in all, she said she expects renovations on classroom buildings to be completed roughly when classes resume.
“In general, we try to do renovations of the buildings that classes are held in between semesters or over the summer, where we have a lot more flexibility of rescheduling classes while we do it,” she said. “But we’ll be pretty close this year on everything.”
Additionally, 80 to 100 faculty members will be up for promotion and tenure, and Academic Affairs is the final step on campus for reviewing documents for promotions.
But Cassidy said Academic Affairs still has room for improvement.
She said the office would like to improve on customer service and how quickly they respond to issues. Academic Affairs is also working to clarify a number of campus policies.
One such clarification includes revising of the student appeals process to make the procedure smoother.
“We’d love to get it online so that students will be able to track where it is,” Cassidy said. “Right now it’s all manual, and it’s hard, but that’s just where we are with things.”
Academic Affairs holds regular staff meetings to discuss initiatives and customer service.