Author: Berit Anderson and Lizeth Castillo
A slew of recent resignations among administrative and student life staff at Oxy has led to some raised eyebrows over the past few weeks. Since the school year adjourned last May, the resignations include: the Associate Dean of Students for Student Life, the Vice President for Institutional Advancement and three Area Coordinators, among others. The rapidly increasing turnover has left many students concerned. What happened?
Jon Keates, the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, is one of the most recent faculty members to resign from his post. Effective September 7, Keates accepted a position at USC as the Senior Associate Dean for Advancement in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Keates, who has worked at Oxy since 1999, is responsible for a more than $16 million increase in Oxy’s annual overall giving, as well as a 15 percent increase in alumni annual gift giving.
Director of Communications James Tranquada said it was Keates’s ability to recruit financial support that made him so incredibly appealing to bigger universities such as USC. “It’s confirmation of the quality of people Oxy hires-other institutions find them very attractive, too,” Tranquada said. Keates, like many other administrators who recently resigned, has “had other job offers before . . . Personal and family considerations often play a role in these decisions as well,” Tranquada said.
The departure of Oxy’s current fundraising maven won’t leave the school empty-handed in their ongoing quest for funds. During the search for a new candidate, Lakshmi Dastur-Johnson ’88 agreed to take responsibility for the office of Institutional Advancement on an interim basis. The current Senior Director of Gift Planning, Dastur-Johnson has worked for the Office of Institutional Advancement for the past 16 years.
Oxy students also felt the loss of Associate Dean of Students for Student Life, Earic Peters, who resigned on August 6 to become the Associate Dean of Los Angeles City College. He has been a member of the Oxy community since July 2000, when he first climbed on board as the Student Life Coordinator. Over the course of his seven-year run, Peters worked to reinstate the ASOC and institute a Renewable Energy and Cultural exchange project in Ghana, among other projects.
Oxy faced a major administration change two years ago as well. The school lost its Dean of the College Kenyon Chan, and effective July 1, 2007, Chan became the new chancellor of the University of Washington, Bothell. Chan raised a record $21.1 million in external funds for the College during his reign as interim president. He also recruited and hired 28 tenure-track faculty over the past three years. As of September 1, 2005, Vice President for Academic Affairs Eric Frank assumed the interim Dean of College position.
Lately, the administration has been working in collaboration with students in order to replace Chan. The Dean’s Search Committee held a meeting on September 7 in which both faculty and students discussed how a candidate for Dean of the College should be assessed. At the meeting, the members of the administration asked students about their expectations for the new dean. Students wanted a candidate with academic leadership who would be interested in improving student-faculty interaction and would be committed to the position.
The committee’s faculty also expressed their standards when conducting the search. They emphasized the need for student articulation as they prepare to draft a position description. After the job description is taken care of, the committee will begin to recruit and pursue viable candidates. In terms of recruitment, the committee will be paying close attention to deans at smaller colleges and universities because they have experience with similar institutions. The committee will also consider Oxy faculty.
Once candidates have been found, preliminary interviews will take place, as well as vigorous background checks and a look at extensive references. Three candidates will be chosen to come and speak at Oxy in February and March. Students, as well as faculty, will have the opportunity to interact with the candidates before a decision is reached.
The administrative search committee has not yet acquired a new Associate Dean of Students for Student Life to replace Peters. Student representative on the Dean’s Council Jessica Simes (junior) said Earic Peters’s former responsibilities will be temporarily reabsorbed into already existing administrative positions. Meanwhile, Barbara Avery, Dean of Students, said the college is in the process of a national search for a candidate to fill the position. Until a viable replacement is found, Jonathan O’Brien, Associate Dean of Students, will take on the role of supervising Student Life. “I want to make it clear Dean O’Brien is supervising [Student Life] on a temporary basis only,” Avery said.
When students arrived on campus in August, the Residence Life staff had already undergone massive turnover. Three Area Coordinators (ACs), who serve as liaisons between Res Life staff and the administration, had left before the semester began. Middle Campus AC Anna Lulejian left her position last February. Her replacement Jennifer Dingman remained in that position for one month.
When Residence Life training began this summer on August 12, only two ACs remained. Lower Campus AC Jason Curtis and Upper Campus AC Lauren Keyes both officially resigned at least four weeks before Res Life arrived on campus this semester. When Res Life arrived for training in August, new candidates had already been contacted and flown in from their respective areas for an intensive interview process.
Kecia Baker, Director of Residence Life and Housing Services, denied any abnormality with regards to the turnover rate of the College’s Area Coordinators. “Any entry level position will have a high turnover. No AC will be here for more than two years,” she said.
Newcomb, Erdman, and Chilcott Hall Coordinator Mike Heffner (senior) had similar views on the situation. He said ACs working in higher education look to either move up quickly or depart for a better position. Currently, two of the three positions have been filled, with Bobby Rodgers as the AC for upper campus and Connor Nelson, whose tenure officially begins September 24, as the AC for middle campus.
With respect to the final missing AC for lower campus, Kecia Baker said that both she and Assistant Director of Res Life Amanda Atkinson are searching for the “right candidate.”How are Hall Coordinators and Resident Advisors coping with the Area Coordinator situation? The lack of ACs causes extra stress on other Res Life staff members. Heffner said only the changes in Res Life and Residence Hall Association, not the lack of ACs, have affected the mechanics of living on-campus this semester.
However, Resident Advisor Rosny Daniel (junior) said he hasn’t found any reason to worry about the temporary lack of area coordination on campus. “It doesn’t really affect me because I’m not returning,” he said, noting that those who have acted as RAs in the past might take more issue with the situation. “We’ve just been working around it and finding new ways to deal with it.”
The professional housing staff has been working to fill the void left by the temporary lack of some ACs on campus this semester. Baker said the purpose of the professional staff, like herself and Atkinson, is to pick up any undue strain on Hall Coordinators and Resident Advisors. “[We] love what we do; we’re committed,” Baker said.
Daniel concurred, praising the hard work of both Baker and Atkinson in keeping up with the AC crunch. “They’re being really open with us and helping us out,” Daniel said. “Res Life is really a family, so we have to work together and work things out.”
Baker commented on the unfortunate timing of the replacement process. The administrative staff must continue to function with their day-to-day tasks, all the while pursuing a new candidate, she said. “All we can do is keep reviewing and enhancin
g our services,” Baker said. She also stressed the importance of focusing on the staff already at Oxy.
Most recently, Serenity Blauvelt, Assistant Director of Housing Services and Judicial Affairs, announced her resignation to pursue a career in counseling. Baker said Blauvelt wanted a career with more student interaction and “wanted more than angry students looking for keys.” Baker also said Housing Services denies the presence of any “hard feelings” concerning Blauvelt’s decision.
The Intercultural Community Center (ICC) recently acquired a new director-the first permanent director since Alice Y. Hom, who left to finish her dissertation almost two years ago. Shelia Hill, who worked at Oxy last year, took the position as ICC Director and Interim Assistant Dean of Students on a one-year basis. Brandi Jones, the new Assistant Dean of Students for Community Life and ICC Director, took the permanent position.
Naddia Palacios recently accepted the open ICC Assistant Director position as well. Both Jones and Palacios, who started at the ICC in July, began to implement new programs with the help of five new Program Assistants: Lindsey Fuller (sophomore), Debbie Kim (sophomore), Elizabeth “Libby” Mislan (sophomore), Lauren Moffett (senior) and Selbie Salonga (junior). Jones said the ICC programs and events on campus will continue to boost “education, raise awareness and facilitate discussions around issues of diversity and social justice.”
Ultimately, with all the recent resignations, is it time to question the appeal of a job in Oxy’s administration? Or, do many see Oxy as just another rung in the professional ladder? As Tranquada said about Keates’ reason for departure, “[He] finally got an offer [he] couldn’t refuse.”
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