SOUTHEAST MAY RESTRUCTURE STUDENT SERVICES

Student services would be restructured with an emphasis on greater coordination, under a plan proposed by Caryl Smith, interim vice president of student affairs.

The plan was unveiled by Smith at a meeting last week of the university's Administrative Council. The council consists of Southeast's vice presidents, deans, representatives of the employee groups, and faculty and student leaders.

Smith said the plan could be finalized by mid-February and implemented July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

Students, faculty, administrators and others on the university campus will have an opportunity to comment about the plan at two public forums scheduled for Jan. 31 at noon and Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. Both will be held in the University Center.

The plan calls for keeping the position of vice president of student affairs, but eliminating the position of dean of students.

Part of Smith's job as interim vice president is to assist the university in the hiring of a permanent vice president of student affairs.

Smith said a new vice president could be hired by fall.

Student affairs would involve two major units student development, including health and international student services; and enrollment development.

The major change would involve the enrollment development area, university officials said.

"The big change is the move of new-student relations, and admissions and records into student affairs," said Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast.

The plan also calls for setting up a student assistance center, "a one-stop location" that would make it easier for students to obtain information and assistance from the various student-oriented services on campus, Wallhausen said.

Currently, there is no central coordination of many of these services, which are spread out in various campus offices, Smith said.

"One of the concepts that we are talking about is putting a number of ... services into a student assistance center, which would be a unit to coordinate all those efforts," she explained.

Four auxiliary operations the University Center, residence life, university dining services and the Student Recreation Center would continue to be under the supervision of the student affairs vice president, Wallhausen said.

The final decision on restructuring student affairs rests with Southeast President Kala Stroup and the university administration. The Board of Regents must give its approval for the hiring of a new vice president, Wallhausen said.

Both Smith and Wallhausen said the whole idea is to provide coordinated services for students from the time they are recruited to when they graduate.

Both university officials said the restructuring would be done with existing manpower and finances.

Wallhausen said the plan is "very preliminary" at this point and "subject to a lot of discussion on the campus."

Smith said, "There are a couple of things that are innovative in this proposal.

"Wrapping all (these services) into enrollment development and the entire concept of enrollment development as part of service to the institution is a bit of a different twist," she said.

As part of enrollment development, Smith said, the university needs to coordinate all the scholarship programs on campus.

"The whole concept of a student assistance center is new to Southeast and very exciting," she said.

As part of the overall restructuring, Smith said she believes students need to be more involved in the planning of such events as homecoming. Currently, that is handled largely through the alumni services office.

Smith, associate vice chancellor for student affairs and dean of student life at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, was named to the interim position at Southeast last August.

Smith currently serves as both dean of students and vice president of student affairs. She was hired following the departures of Thomas Lovett as dean of students and Thomas Risch as vice president. Both men left to take administrative positions at other universities.

She said she doesn't think it's necessary to have a dean of students position separate from that of the vice president. "I don't think that's necessary and probably it's confusing."

Smith said she was hired to help the university reorganize its student services.

"I was asked to come get acquainted with the university and how things were working, what the needs and mission are, and then put together an organization that I feel would be the best to serve the needs of the students and the university in the future," Smith said.

She said that change doesn't come easily. "The whole concept of change is difficult and institutions are totally bad at dealing with it."

But she added, "Hopefully we will end up in a better spot for the efforts."

K.C. Martin, president of Student Government at Southeast, praised the restructuring plan. "I think it is an excellent idea."

He said he was pleased with the recommendation that the head of student affairs be a vice-president-level position.

Martin also said students would benefit from having student services managed from a centralized location rather than spread across campus.