Submitted by Kris Boone, boone.3@osu.edu
HI Folks
I did a little update for Carri Gerber’s team this week and realized: Dang, we have a lot going on. So I thought I should write it up to share with you all.
1. Strategic planning is continuing. Dave Benfield and I are working on the writing. It is not the most fun writing to do, but we are coming along and will have a draft out probably early in fall.
2. The master facility plan for Wooster will also crank up this fall. A consulting group has been hired and will facilitate discussions. You will have opportunities to participate.
3. Joy Rumble is representing us and ACEL on the CFAES strategic alignment steering group.
4. We recently hosted the University’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. Michelle Villers did a great job in setting everything up. We had faculty, staff and students interacting with them. We received some very nice thank you notes. To all who participated, thanks so much. This was an important group to host.
5. Another fun group that our faculty and staff hosted recently was the CFAES Advancement Team – Advancement includes our development and marketing and communication folks for the college. Our new leader, Keith Didonato, is a CFAES graduate and Gary Crocker’s nephew! I’m really enjoying working with Keith, who formerly was with the College of Wooster. He will be located on the Columbus and will frequently be in Wooster. Also Pablo Villa, who is our development officer, spends quite a bit of time in Wooster and is located in Shisler when he is here.
6. We are seeing facilities upgrades this summer in an office in Halterman, admissions, and the library. Also in the June Board of Trustees meeting, our swine unit was approved as a capital project, as was funds to re-envision the Fisher Auditorium building to meet changing campus needs.
7. Last week we had a positive meeting with Mark Conselyea, Associate Vice President for Facilities Operations and Design. This office is highly involved with capital projects on our campus.
8. Planning for the Wayne County Fair has started. Faculty, if you have interactive demonstrations or projects, we are looking for ways to incorporate those into our schedule.
9. Thank you to Mark Schleppi who is leading our efforts regarding safe handling of equipment by students. Our faculty and staff recognized a significant issue in this area. We are working on an immediate means to address this for fall and, looking to the future, a longer-term solution. I really appreciate the faculty and staff for bringing this to my attention.
Last thing: Orientation starts next week! Thom Janini and Dave Dietrich have done a great job in refreshing our orientation. I appreciate everyone who is putting so much time and effort into making this happen. We know not everything will work perfectly, but let’s keep notes on improvements we can make. We have found the students and their supporters are using the orientation book we mailed them to prepare for orientation! In fact, they are so thoroughly preparing that they found inconsistencies in some of the other forms of communication we have like our website. So we are working on that too.
Thanks all. Go Bucks!
Kris