Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2015
SINCE 1916
VOL. 99 ISSUE 57
Benoit shows proof of successful initiatives at chancellor open forum luke nozicka | @LukeNozicka When Pam Benoit, the third of four finalists hoping to become the campus’ next chancellor, spoke at her open forum Monday, she presented evidence of a strategy implemented at Ohio University that increased enrollment. Benoit, executive vice president and provost at OU, is also the sole finalist for the chancellor position at the University of Colorado Denver after two of the top three finalists withdrew, according to OU’s student-run newspaper, the Post. She visited CU Denver on April 28 and 29 for her open forum interview for the position, the paper reported on Friday. Administrator with a plan for enrollment growth Enrollment at Ohio University has increased from 30,000 to more than 38,000 since Benoit became Ohio University’s provost in July 2009, Meera Komarraju, co-chair of the chancellor search committee, said during her introduction of the finalist. Benoit said OU created a fiveyear enrollment plan for students, including transfers, ones from outof-state, in-state and community college students. To better recruit people attending community college, Benoit said Ohio University places “relationship managers” on the 19 campuses OU has partnerships with. “They’re actually physically present on the community colleges so that they feel like that person is part of their staff,” she said. “And those students at the community college already feel like they are an Ohio University student. We give them the garb. ... They are already ready to come to Ohio University when they are at the community college.” Benoit said Ohio is also recruiting students “earlier than ever before.” “One of the things that we’ve done is we’ve completely restructured our scholarship program, and now we use data analytics to try to figure out, ‘What
S teve M atzker | @stevematzker Chancellor candidate Pam Benoit, right, provost at Ohio University, and Meera Komarraju, incoming dean of the College of Liberal Arts and co-chair of the Chancellor Search Advisory Committee, share a laugh after an open forum at the Student Center Auditorium.
will it take to yield a particular student?’” she said to the crowd in the Student Center Auditorium. “You can’t wait for them to come to you anymore.” She said while SIU is on the right track, there is room for improvement when retaining students. Benoit said Ohio University has professional advisers to accomplish this. “How do we make sure that we’re doing an early intervention to try to make sure that we’re getting to that student before they’re thinking about leaving us?” she asked the crowd. “All of those things can be done even more intensively... than you’re doing now.” Asked about strategies she would implement to improve
the university’s connection to the city of Carbondale, Benoit gave examples of how OU does this, noting she meets with the mayor of Athens, Ohio, to discuss projects about cleaning the city. She said Ohio University staffers and city police patrol streets together during Halloween. “I understand you had a Halloween project too,” Benoit said jokingly. “Together our Athens Police Department and our OU Police Department and a lot of our staff are out. ... And I’ve got a walkie talkie and I’m calling in when I see something that should not be happening.” Benoit — who earned a master’s degree in communication from Central Michigan University and a
doctorate degree in communication from Wayne State University — said unfortunately, she has experience regarding budget cuts. While it is not nearly as much as the $44 million that would be slashed from the Carbondale campus if Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget passes the General Assembly, Benoit said $11 million was cut from OU’s state funding during her first year at Ohio. To deal with the cuts, she said administrators talked about a set of “budget principals.” “One of the budget principals was that the academic core needed to be protected as much as possible,” she said. “All of the units were asked to prepare scenarios. ... They all were asked, ‘What were
the things they thought they could do that would have the least affect on students?’” Benoit said the scenarios were then shared by spreadsheets with the entire campus, and OU held open forums to discuss the changes. “One of the things I said to my president at the time was that I thought we needed to discuss it on campus, and his initial reaction was, ‘Are you crazy?’ ... I said, ‘Yes, I really think it’s important... the campus needs to understand what we’re grappling with,’” she said. “At the end of that process one of the comments that we got back from several people was, ‘I don’t like some of the decisions that ended up being made, but I really liked the process.’” Please see BENOIT | 3
Komarraju named dean of CoLA luke nozicka | @LukeNozicka
Meera Komarraju
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Meera Komarraju, chairwoman of the Department of Psychology, will become the College of Liberal Arts’ next dean on July 1 pending approval of the SIU Board of Trustees, according to an SIU press release Monday. Psychology professor Jane Swanson has been serving as interim dean of the college since Kimberly Kempf-Leonard began as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of
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Louisiana in August. In the release, interim Provost Susan Ford said Komarraju is a respected professional on campus and in her field. “She is an exceptional faculty member known for both teaching and research, and she brings to her new role a commitment to the future of the college as well the university,” Ford said. Komarraju, who co-chairs the chancellor search committee, joined the university as a lecturer in 1986. She holds two doctoral degrees, one
in applied social psychology from the University of Cincinnati and the other in industrial-organizational psychology from Osmania University in India, according to the release. “Her research interests include cognitive, non-cognitive and sociocultural factors related to motivation and performance, teaching self-efficacy, and the influence of ethnicity and gender on perceptions of leadership effectiveness,” the press release says. “In addition, she has earned
SIU’s university-wide Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award and has twice been its nominee for U.S. Professor of the Year.” In the SIU release, Komarraju said she considers serving as the dean of the university’s largest college a privilege. “I am excited about working with our amazing students, talented faculty, dedicated staff, and other stakeholders and am confident we can collectively work toward realizing CoLA’s full potential,” she said.
SIU police will meet and talk with students during “Coffee with a Cop” from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. today at Starbucks in the Student Center.