Staff's Role in VISION Twenty12

June 2007 issue

As the Assistant Dean at The Theatre School, I am responsible as the "team leader" among staff at the school. An area where I have been perplexed is Vision 2012. Basically, I don't understand what the role of the staff is in the plan, so I feel ill prepared as a staff leader at The Theatre School to "lead" in this area. Fr. Holtschneider did roll out the plan to a joint session of The Theatre School and the School of Music this past November, but what he said was directed to the faculty. He spoke of "teacher/student", "the value of the classroom experience", etc, but said nothing about what the staffs' role is in the strategic plan. I just completed my annual performance review and expressed this to my supervisor. He encouraged me to contact Staff Council for any information or guidance. Thanks.

Response

Source: Transcribed from Rev. Dennis Holtschneider’s discussion at Staff Council on April 18, 2007.

Response:

It is true that Goal One, Objective One talks about academic quality. Even if that was the only thing, many many many staff in the university support the academic sector and the learning of students. Even if that staff member is not teaching in the front of a classroom, we know perfectly well that faculty couldn’t be successful in doing what they do if they were not surrounded by the support of all kinds of expertise. Try doing a job as faculty member an not having an IT professional on campus. Try being a faculty member and not having someone attending to the building you teach in. Try being a faculty member and not having staff in your department. That is so tied up in the work being done to improve the academic quality for our students.

At moment, very small group in The Theatre School are working on an item in the plan that concerns them. And it’s a very small mention in the plan for a very ambitious item, and that’s to get them new facilities. Right now a few people in the department are working with the university facilities staff, the finance staff and the master planning group to make that happen. In time, once we select a particular direction and figure out a way to do that, many more people will become involved in The Theatre School in the planning that comes with new facilities. The only way to do good planning is to bring in everyone involved. The only way we had a good plan for the new science building is we brought in broadly the people from the sciences to tell us what needs to be in the building.

Beyond that, there are a number of committees in the plan too. If someone particularly wanted to come up and say, “I would love to be on a committee, maybe it’s not my area but I want to make a difference some how” -- that could be a wonderful thing. It’s something that would always have to be done in consultation with one’s supervisor, but there is certainly an awful lot of work happening out there, and I’m sure people would be happy to have someone work along side them, if it was appropriate and they had something to bring to the conversation.