College, Trustees consider restructuring of student services

Williams and Amherst Colleges each have 33 administrative offices. Hamilton College has 41. And Vassar—whose offices, like all of our peer institutions, deliver student services like Career Development, International Programming and Health Education—has 66.

The idea of streamlining and even combining some of these offices at Vassar has been discussed intermittently throughout the past several years—more as vague notion, a concept floating in and out of conversation rather than a serious consideration. But now, in light of the fiscal crisis, this idea has taken on greater weight.

"As difficult as the financial context is," noted Dean of the College Christopher Roellke, "it has forced us to think about the kind of collaborations between offices that might be possible. These are discussions that, even before I became Dean of the College, the division was already having." Now, however, with the backdrop of a global recession, these conversations are accelerating.

Though the consolidation of Vassar's offices is less of an immediate possibility and more of an idea in its most preliminary stages, Roellke and members of other College divisions have started to think seriously about ways in which certain offices, specifically ones that may overlap or be complementary in nature, could enhance their collaboration or even be combined and moved into one space.

In addition to the Deans, the Board of Trustees must also play a large part in this discussion, since restructuring the administrative offices would require amending the College's Governance—something that cannot be done without the majority vote of the College's Board.

College attempts retirement incentives as first step

Conversations concerning restructuring will intensify this summer after the College is able to count the number of employees returning the following year. Thus far, Vassar has tried to reduce its workforce by taking advantage of natural attrition—if there is a position open, it will remain unfilled—and also by offering early retirement incentives. Within three years, the hope is to reduce the workforce by 10 to 15 percent.

"When we see how many people actually take the early retirement plan this summer, we will have a better idea of what we are left with and how we can put it back together," said Senior Associate Dean of the College Raymon Parker. "That is really the point at which we can start moving from ideas about what we might be able to do to the reality of what we want to do."

If the early retirement incentives are successful, certain offices may be left with fewer employees and with gaps that need to be filled. These offices may thus begin to collaborate more closely in order to compensate for the loss of personnel. In this way, the College may be able to combine offices that they have long wanted to streamline or even physically combine.

"In the case of the Dean of Studies Office and the Office of International Programs, they are already technically together, but because of the physical constraints, each one has had to have a separate administrative assistant," said Roellke. As of now, International Programs report directly to the Dean of Studies—so, in that way, they are administratively linked—but the offices are not currently run out of the same space; International Programs resides in Main Building North 173 and Dean of Studies in North 128.

"So if we do have some success with the early retirement incentive, maybe then we can make this long-term goal of having collaboration between these two offices now come to fruition—that is what the early retirement allows us to think about," he continued.

There is an April 30 deadline for notification of retirement. Then, during the summer, Senior Officers, the Board of Trustees and every administrative division on campus will begin considering how to reconfigure the offices on campus in a way that is most effective and efficient. These conversations, explained Roellke, will take place in the form of a functional analysis of the College.

"We are going to evaluate every single position, every single person. It has to go to that level," said Roellke. "If we were, for example, talking about merging Campus Life and Campus Activities—that is another idea we have had—we would have to think about what it would actually look like if we had a merging of these two offices. What kind of administrative support would be needed? How does this group want to function? What are our priorities for this office, and what, frankly, is going to have to go away?"

Inevitably, combining offices would mean fewer employees—fewer staff members, fewer administrative assistants, fewer student interns—for each office that is combined. This kind of consolidation would not only save money, but it would, explained Parker, streamline and improve the student services at Vassar.

"Combining offices is really multifaceted," said Parker. "It will help with the economic climate, but it will also improve student services. On the one hand, you could say that it is going to help us be sharper; on the other hand, some people see it as a loss. But I think it will make us better. To look at something and re-evaluate it, and to say, ‘How can we do this differently, how can we do this better?' is always a good thing."

VSA Executive Board dissatisfied with bureaucratic office structure

Vassar Student Association (VSA) President Jimmy Kelly '09 and the other members of the VSA Executive Board have also been discussing ways in which collaboration between offices would achieve greater efficiency within the College.

"We made some non-formalized proposals to the Dean of the College to say, ‘These are some services we think should be working together,'" said Kelly. "We have not issued a formal memorandum or a formal proposal. We will before the academic year is over. This is one of those areas where it is clear to us that what we have now is sub-optimal and what we could have, even in the midst of a financial crisis, is a much better, more synchronized and synergistic student service base."

Over the years, students have raised concerns that because the College has so many offices in so many different locations, the bureaucratic system is often difficult to navigate. "I think there is a real feeling on the part of students, that they do get bopped around from place to place when they need an area of support or enrichment," said Roellke. "Right now we are describing our office structure as a bit of a silo issue, where we have this pocket of student service, and this pocket, and what we need is one big pocket."

This structure has presented a problem for many students trying to build their résumés and gain insights into careers and graduate schools. Pre-professional students, in particular, have complained of the confusing structure of Vassar's counseling services.

Amory Meltzer '09, a pre-medical biology major, has tried in vain to utilize the College's multiple offices to build experience and get advice on applying to medical schools. "It seems like there isn't really a good single place for science-oriented people to go for career advice and experience-building," he said. "So many of the [Career Development Office's] resources are based on alumnae/i, a group that itself is heavily shifted away from the sciences."

Meltzer has also found it difficult to navigate beteween the CDO and the Office of Fellowships and Pre-Health. "[The counselors in Pre-Health] have lots of useful information, but all of the academic internships and experience-oriented activities are in other places. There's little integration or communication. I think many of us in the sciences are discouraged by those sort of difficulties."

The VSA Executive Board is trying to raise awareness of these complications. "We have become very bureaucratic in a lot of ways, when we should be bringing forces together," said Kelly. "We just keep adding things without implementing any real formalized coordination between these offices. And so I think that, while we have a lot of great student services on campus, students do not utilize them because the bureaucracy that they are approaching is so daunting, and it is hard to know where to start."

According to Kelly, the best and most efficient way to reduce the bureaucracy of the system is by combining administrative offices that may have similar end goals, moving them into the same space and, in effect, streamlining that service, making it more accessible to students.

"I think that there is a hope among the VSA Executive Board," said Kelly, "that certain services that we have might be working together more—groups like the CDO, the Field Work Office and the Office of Fellowships and Pre-Health. Those are offices that, if they were working together more often on a more daily basis, we would see a lot more synergies coming out of those spaces. But the fact is that right now they are largely disconnected."

According to Roellke, the groups of offices being considered for consolidation are Health Services, the Office of Health Education, and Counseling Services; Campus Life and Campus Activities; and, as Kelly mentioned, CDO, Field Work, and Fellowships and Pre-Health Advising.

Offices express differences of opinion concerning consolidation

A combined office—with Career Development, Field Work and Fellowships all in one space—would be similar to the Career Centers at many of Vassar's peer institutions such as Williams and Amherst Colleges. At Vassar, however, many people working within those offices disagree on whether or not the merge into a Career Center would be beneficial.

For Mary Raymond, Director of Career Development, it seems almost unnatural that the CDO is on the south side of Main and the Fellowships and Field Work offices on the north.
Because of her background at Sarah Lawrence College—where there is also a single Career Center—Raymond is familiar with career services in one close, collaborative space.

"At Sarah Lawrence," said Raymond, "we did pre-professional advising, we did field work and everything all on the same floor. We were very collaborative and we handled a lot of the same functions. It was great, and it made logical sense."

Raymond went on to explain how complementary these offices are. For example, if a student is looking for an internship, that student could want it for academic credit, which would fall under the purview of Field Work, or that student would want the same internship for the experience and not for credit, which they would get through Career Development.

"It's kind of like a false boundary," said Raymond. "It makes total sense to have everyone in the same space. If you think about the work of a student, it is all about what the student's needs are and what their questions are. And it should not be broken down by someone saying, ‘One office does this and one office does that,'" she said.

Director of Field Work Peter Leonard, however, believes that there should be a clear distinction between his and the other two offices. "Career Development, Fellowships and Field Work are all very important offices, and they all have to do with learning something out of a classroom—that is the similarity," said Leonard. "But the way they are designed is very different. The main difference is that Field Work is an academic subject—you get credit for it, there is an academic perspective on it and there is a faculty member who supervises the student. It is an academic pursuit that is different from but equal to academic pursuit in the classroom."

Career Development, Leonard contests, is unlike Field Work in that it is not necessarily an academic pursuit. This distinction is actually manifested in the structure of the three offices—the CDO and the Office of Fellowships and Pre-Health both fall under the Dean of the College Division, while the Field Work Office reports to the Dean of the Faculty Division.

"Schools that have a Career Center are not making as clear a distinction as we want to make between academic work and non-academic work," said Leonard. "It would be a tremendous loss to think that the reason Field Work is useful is because it helps you get a job. That would be diminishing the power of Field Work as an academic text. It would be just like putting the English Department with Career Development—academic pursuits have different aims and different methods."

This structural boundary would create difficulties in combining these offices not only for bureaucratic reasons,  but also because of those, like Leonard, who may feel strongly aligned with the Dean of the Faculty division. "A merging of these three offices would require a different reporting structure," said Roellke, "which [Dean of the Faculty] Jonathan Chenette and I are both open to doing. But we have folks who deliver these services who have strong allegiances to one division or another."

For example, the Dean of the Faculty division—the division to which the Field Work Office reports—"tends to be a sort of prestigious alignment, because you are with the faculty and you are ‘academic.' I think that is really artificial, and I think those associations are really artificial, and Chenette and I agree on that," said Roellke.

It also seems that the distinction between the three career-centered offices is not as rigid as it at first appears. For example, if need be, a counselor from the CDO could help a student with something that actually falls under the purview of the Office of Fellowships and Pre-Professional Advising.

"We are almost like the clearinghouse," said Raymond. "I do not pretend to know all the answers, but we have done everything in our office—even medical school interviews. And it is just the nature of all of us. We are all career counselors in the end. There is a lot of overlap." Just this year, the CDO took over pre-law advising, despite the fact that law is technically a pre-professional pursuit.

Though there is indeed overlap between the missions of the offices, many agree that there is not enough collaboration between the three areas. Raymond explained that a lack of close and daily partnership can sometimes become problematic when dealing with employers.

"One time earlier this year," said Raymond, "an employer called my office complaining about a student whom they thought I sent them, but I did not know anything about it or about the student, because he was actually coming out of Field Work. And that is the tricky thing with the face of the world—with the employers—because they see the College as all the same thing and place where we all know each other and what everybody else is doing, but we don't."

Space proves to be a challenge

One of the biggest obstacles to streamlining these interconnected offices is space. Though the space currently occupied by the College Bookstore will become available after the Bookstore's move to Collegeview Avenue, few other spaces are available without knocking down walls.

"We do not have the luxury of space now," said Kelly, "and we do not have facilities right now that are conducive to lots of people being in a shared space. That is going to stymie some of the efforts to streamline our system."

Some believe that an efficient collaboration is not fully possible without putting two offices in the same space, and that the costs of renovations and knocking down walls would be worth it in the long run. "I think you have to get people out of their spaces in order to get them to collaborate," said Parker. "And so it is not that expensive to do a bit of renovation in order to save money in the long term. Personnel costs are what are very difficult for the College to support—it is part of what you would call a structural deficit in the budget, those things which are ongoing that you have to support on a continual basis."

"You do a little construction project and knock down a couple of walls," Parker continued, "and that is a one-time cost that comes and goes. Then you are good for as long as it exists."

Others, however, believe that there are other ways to achieve collaboration. "Space is clearly the most convenient way to streamline the offices," said Kelly, "but there are other ways to do that. I hope that in the future we could have some sort of regimented time in which people are working together on a daily basis—through maybe daily updates where they spend an hour together making sure everyone is one the same page, things like that."

Certain groups of offices, like Health Services, Counseling and Health Education, are already making collaborative efforts similar to those that Kelly hopes for, even though they operate in two different spaces. While Health Services operates out of Baldwin House, Counseling and Health Education are in Metcalf House.

"We have been collaborating as what we call an Integrated Health Team for four years now," said Director of Health Services Irena Balawajder. "We look at the idea of health through an ecological model. So ‘health' is not just physical health, it is emotional health, psychological health, spiritual health and environmental health. We wanted to integrate the whole thing and see what we could be doing to work more effectively together. And it is very rewarding to work together that way."

Health Services, Counseling and Health Education—the three offices that comprise the Integrated Health team—often co-sponsor events and information sessions, sit on several of the same committees and also meet with one another every two Fridays.

Though some have proposed to move the Integrated Health team into one building, into what they would call a Wellness Center, a system similar to that at other schools like Williams and Carleton Colleges, Balawajder insists that even in two separate spaces the team works well together.

"At the moment we are close enough. Baldwin and Metcalf are just across the way from each other within walking distance. Space is an issue for us on campus, but we are still able to function quite nicely as we are at this present moment," said Balawajder.

Difficult discussion among Trustees, administrators to continue in May

Though some offices may be able to function sufficiently in separate spaces, one must remember that the College is not only thinking of combining offices in order to make student services less segmented and more holistic, but also—and perhaps more so—they are considering consolidation in order to save money through an inevitable reduction in the workforce.

"We are in a system right now where we have a lot of trade-offs and decisions to make—and those trade-offs will be, at the end of the day, clearly connected to people," said Kelly. "I personally don't just interact with students, I interact with lots of faculty, lots of staff and lots of administrators. And to know that this hypothetical 10 to 15 percent workforce reduction proposed by the College will include some people I know and love on this campus—it is painful."

"But at the same time," continued Kelly, "how else do you do it? The College has already cut the obvious things dramatically. What else can you do? Can we take away need-blind admission? It is a situation with truly the most unfortunate trade-offs."This discussion is set to continue among the Board of Trustees and administrators later this May. Because the College is still in the preliminary stages of discussing office restructuring, there have been no formal meetings on this idea with the offices or any of their directors.

"There have been no recent comprehensive discussions of restructuring," said Roellke. "Clearly, should any of these ideas have merit, we would be having lots of discussion, as some of these ideas involve major changes in reporting structures."

At the moment, consolidation is more of an idea than a planned project, something that the Deans and the Board of Trustees are thinking about as a way to not only better student services, but to save the College from serious financial difficulties.

The idea is, as Parker said, truly multifaceted, and one upon which not everyone will agree—one that would result in both positive and negative ramifications. But as the financial situation becomes increasingly dire, it seems that the College will have to think more and more seriously about making this idea a reality.