With a nearly empty room, AGB representatives Richard Wueste and Beverly Warren meet with students on what they are looking for in a new provost on Thursday in Skyline.
A forum to gather student input on the search for a new provost at Emporia State was lightly attended and cut short on Thursday. The forum, one of three for campus input on hiring a replacement for the previous provost George Arasimowicz, was scheduled two weeks after classes ended for the semester.
“I don’t know if it was on purpose that they were waiting for the semester to be over,” said Rachel Spaulding, chair of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism, who was one of the few in attendance. “Which I understand from a pragmatic sense, but if you’re trying to hear people’s voices and give them a space to speak, doing it after the semester’s over feels to me a little shady, frankly.”
These forums were hosted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), which is conducting the search for ESU, in Skyline in the Memorial Union on May 19. AGB representatives Richard Wueste and Beverly Warren were there to ask questions and gain an understanding of the university.
Only one enrolled student, Christy Grant, senior business major, was in attendance when the student forum was supposed to begin at 4 p.m. Grant is also the administrative specialist for English, Modern Languages and Journalism and had attended the staff forum right before.
However, after a few minutes, more people arrived. The final count consisted of two alumni – Jasmine Gonzalez, Spanish education 2022 graduate, and Jorge Britez-Aveiro, instructional design and technology 2020 graduate and current assistant online program coordinator– and two current students – Grant and Carlos Bautista, business major. Spaulding was also in the group.
The attendees seemed to agree that the forum was held too late in the year and Gonzalez added it “definitely should have been earlier.”
Spaulding was the reason she ended up attending, Gonzalez said.
Spaulding said that after finding out they were going to talk to students “literally two days ago,” she sent out messages to as many students as she could to hopefully get them to come.
On top of the late notice and post-semester timing, the group said it was confusing to plan to attend due to the different information, location changes and time changes.
One major change was that the one hour session was shortened to only 30 minutes with a curt “I hate to cut it” from Gregory Schneider, professor of social sciences, sociology and criminology, who was overseeing the forum. The representatives had a meeting with Interim President Ken Hush scheduled and left after the brief forum.
Britez-Aveiro said he felt like they shouldn’t have cut it off and just stopped the meeting like that.
While the forum was brief, topics spanning from international students on campus to what the new provost needs to know were covered.
The representatives talked to the group about their personal connections to ESU and how the students and community make up the environment of the campus.
Some subjects the group brought up about what the new provost should know include: Understanding the university departments and which ones need more support; attend multicultural events; get to know the community well and foster a relationship with the local government; listen to what faculty and students need and how they feel regarding safety, support; and inclusion and understand that due to ESU’s small size, they will be walking into a family.