STROM SETTLES INTO STUDENT AFFAIRS JOB

Strip away SueAnn Strom's professional veneer and what you find is a woman who genuinely likes students.

It may not be in the job description, but Strom the new vice president of student affairs at Southeast Missouri State University says it's at the core of her career.

And, she said, you can't fool students. "If I don't like students, if I don't want to help them achieve their goals, they are going to know it."

Strom was hired by the university's Board of Regents earlier this month. She officially began duties Monday.

She said she's in the process of getting to know the students and student leaders.

Prior to coming here, Strom, 45, served as assistant vice president of student affairs at Mankato State University in Mankato, Minn.

She said the division of student affairs should be concerned with helping students achieve their goals. "What we need to be about is helping students first of all set clear goals," she said. "We need to help them understand what a university experience is all about.

"All students don't come to a college to get a degree," Strom said, and there's nothing wrong with that. Still, she said, with Southeast raising its admission standards, the university is going to see increasingly better prepared students who are more likely to graduate.

Strom said it's important for students to have goals. She said there's a saying that emphasizes that point: "If you don't know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else."

A mother of a 20-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, Strom has dealt with countless students over the years in a variety of settings. "I've worked in the field off and on for 20 years," she said.

She has served in student affairs positions not only at Mankato State but also at Stephens College and the University of Missouri in Columbia, and at Miami University in Ohio.

At Miami University, she served as an academic adviser for freshmen students. "I did that for a couple of years," she recalled. "There is nothing like living with students in residence halls to really understand what their concerns are."

Mankato State is about twice as large as Southeast, with an enrollment of 16,500. But Strom said the school in many ways parallels Southeast in its mission and the type of students it serves. "It's very similar."

She said Mankato started as a teachers college 125 years ago. Like Southeast, it has strong programs in business and education.

Strom said she was looking forward to directing a restructured student affairs division and developing a student affairs program at Southeast that will complement the academic curriculum of the University Studies program.

The actual restructuring was put in place by Caryl Smith, who has served as interim vice president of student affairs. But it will be Strom's task to make the restructuring work. "It's still on paper," said Strom.

"How do we make it come alive? It's there on paper. It's two dimensional. How do we make it three dimensional?"

Strom said it's important for the students affairs division to have good relations with the other operating divisions.

But while university officials and employees may think in terms of such divisions, Strom said students view the campus as a whole. "They don't think in divisions like we do," she said.

"The bottom line is that most students aren't political," said Strom. Students, she said, have personal, academic and social needs. "My primary concern is students," said Strom.