Academic Programs and Leadership

A small number of special assistants support the president and a handful of division heads with titles of vice president or executive director are direct reports.

Beneath these division leaders are a modest number of deans and directors who oversee various functions: academic affairs, administration & business affairs, student services & student affairs, university development, information technology services, marketing and communications, community outreach, and enrollment management. Administrative growth and complexity over time remained consistent with the growth and complexity of the university (see Appendix D for a review of the SVSU organizational charts from 1989 through 2013).

On the top administrative level immediately below that of the president, the 1989-1990 chart stipulates two vice presidents, one non-academic dean and a director of development and the SVSU Foundation. By 2010-2011, this top executive level included a provost/vice president for academic affairs, an executive vice president for administration & business affairs, a vice president for enrollment management, a vice president for student affairs, an executive assistant to the president/executive director of public affairs, an executive director of the Center for Business & Economic Development, an executive director of information technology services and an executive director of the SVSU Foundation.

Adjustments to this organizational structure at times reflected a strategic plan or the departure of key personnel; other times these changes were designed to streamline operations. An example was changes that took place in 1995-1996 when John Fallon III resigned as vice president for public affairs to accept a university presidency out of state. This allowed for one of the senior administrative positions to be redefined. Gilbertson, as he explained to faculty and staff during his beginning of the school year orientation remarks Aug. 24, 1995, “created a new position, vice president for student services & enrollment management, to bring together all of those administrative functions directly related to the recruitment and retention of students.”

At the time, institutional planners were giving highest emphasis to recruitment and retention of students, and that remained the case at least through 2013. Other times, administrative change involved adjustments to functions and their oversight. That was the case in 1998-1999, when the president separated responsibility for admissions into undergraduate and graduate offices to reflect expanding interest in graduate education.

Over the years, Academic Affairs has had a history of the greatest stability in organizational structure: deans of SVSU’s five colleges, as well as directors of Zahnow Library/ Learning Resources, Instructional Support Programs, Writing Center, Registrar, Institutional Research, Sponsored & Academic Programs Support, and Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum.

Appointments to middle and upper administrative positions in Academic Affairs explain, in part, the collegial relationships that developed during the history of SVSU. (See listing of administrators and their affiliations in Appendix E.)

Academic Programs and Leadership

Offices administering the university’s growing and increasingly complex student population underwent far more varied modifications. The 1995-1996 creation of vice president

for student services/enrollment management entailed absorption of a number of functions formerly assigned to the dean of student affairs: Academic & Student Support, Academic & Career Services, Minority Student Services, Registrar, and Scholarships & Financial Aid. The Admissions Office was moved into this unit after the Public Affairs division was eliminated. Athletics and Co-Curricular/Commuter Programs (with the addition of Campus Life Center), the Children’s Center, Disability Services, Health Services and Personal Counseling Services remained in Student Affairs.

In 2001-2002, the Office of International Programs was moved into this division, as well. Then, in 2003-2004, when Richard Thompson, dean of student affairs, moved to the newly-created position of university ombudsman, all Student Services offices reunited into a single unit under the vice president for student services & enrollment management, headed by Robert Maurovich. This continued until Maurovich retired in 2010, when further reorganization split the unit into two parts: Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, each headed by its respective vice president. Once again, the retirement of a key member of the administration occasioned important changes to university organization, as Gilbertson explained to faculty and staff, in consideration of “the importance of enrollments to the university.”6

The new vice president for enrollment management assumed responsibility for Admissions, Financial Aid, Academic Advising, Career Planning & Placement, Web Communications and International Programs; the new vice president for student services became responsible for Student Life Programs, Residential Life, Health and Counseling Services, Minority Student Services, Recreation Programs and Disability Services.

Urgency about retention of students drove the organizational changes in Student Services and Enrollment Management. The university was recruiting successfully; numbers of entering students continued to grow. But too many students were departing SVSU without completing their degrees. President Gilbertson commented about this in his 2010 State of the University address:

One big issue both the Enrollment Management and Student Services Divisions — as well as the rest of us — will have to work on in the months and years ahead is ahead is our university’s still disappointing rates of student degree completion. We need to be self-critical and candid about this matter. We have made slow — glacially slow — progress at increasing our freshman retention rates; but there’s nothing much to brag about in this regard. We’re still not doing nearly well enough. The loss of students through attrition places enormous pressure on our admissions efforts, and it will be increasingly difficult to maintain enrollments if we continue to lose students at the rates they now leave.7

Other administrative changes reflect the times. This especially was true with technological advances. Older faculty members recall ditto spirit duplicators, cumbersome opaque projectors, 16 mm film projectors and the awkward carts that transported mounted heavy television monitors with VHS players below them. Digital copiers and smart podiums made the equipment obsolete.