Aaron Berkowitz – General Assignment Reporter
President Papazian held a student and faculty discussion last week to give anyone with concerns, questions, or issues about anything SCSU related a chance for their voices to be heard.
When Papazian first posed the question of who would like to share, students’ hands shot up immediately and the discussion commenced.
Symphany Joseph, senior communications major and representative for the Residence Hall Association, said she thinks more meetings like this should take place on campus and it was very helpful for her. She did have an opinion on how it was conducted overall.
“I was under the impression that students felt like it was a time to vent and let the president know about more personal issues than issues that included the student body as a whole,” said Joseph. “Which is fine but I felt like it didn’t give her a chance to address changes that need to be made and or updates on the university.”
Topics and questions ranged from the progress of campus construction to issues that some students have had with their graduation audit reports.
Multiple students shared their frustrations with their individual battles they have been having with their advisors, or lack of.
“We have not done a good enough job at advising,” said President Papazian. “We realize that this is a big problem and one of our main goals is fixing it to continue working towards creating that four year pathway. I suspect that over the next few years we will have seen progress made on the issue.”
Papazian said throughout the discussion that a lot of what the university is doing to correct these that were brought up by the students issues are “in the process” of being fixed.
“The very last thing we want to do is have you [the students] jump through unnecessary hoops,” said Papazian. “We are aware that we still have a lot of work to do and this is why your feedback is so important to us.”
Robert Sheeley, associate vice president for capital budgeting & facilities operations, came to the discussion with updates on the campus construction that has been in progress for the past few years.
“The library expansion is on track to be completed by Dec. 5 and we are scheduled to move in there by January or February,” said Sheeley. “The science building’s construction is set for May or June so we will get a chance to move in there over the summer.”
Papazian said the plan is to have classes offered in the new science building by 2015.
Sheeley also gave the students the latest update on the construction that has been taking place by West Campus, in the same area as where the trench collapsed recently.
“We had a leak in a hot water pipe and were losing about 4,000 gallons of water a day,” said Sheeley. “It is taking longer than expected because we had to replace new piping but we are back on track.”
Sheeley said West Campus construction should be wrapped up in the next week or so.
Papazian said all of the goals and initiatives that the university has at this point all keep the students well-being and success at its focal point.
“This is one of the first discussions that we are having like this, but we look forward to having many more and getting more of the students’ input,” said Papazian. “It’s your campus.”
Photo Credit: Derek Torrellas
