Meetings and responses

Responses to comments and some questions from email:

• "Are they going to hire new staff members for the new colleges?"
  
  The news colleges will have staffs, but those staffers will not necessarily be new hires. The existing dean's staff members will provide a source for staffs of the new colleges.
   
• "How many people are we hiring?"
  
  That will depend on the size and makeup of each college and on what the existing staff members decide to do. Some may choose to take other jobs within UWG.
  
  Of course, the task force will only make recommendations for initial staffing; the new deans may rearrange things after they get oriented and after their first budget cycle.
   
• "What is the timeline for hiring them? If they aren't hired by January 1st, to whom will the existing staff members in the dean's office report as they can't report to all three new deans?"
  
  We don't have a timeline yet, but I hope decisions will be made well in advance of January. Each college will need a budget person, for example, and they need to know what's what very early on.
   
• Will this be included in the task force's formal recommendation?
  
  Yep.
   
• "When will new deans be selected?"
  
  I would expect that Dr. Hoff will announce a selection process and timeline fairly early in the semester. We'll certainly recommend an open, inclusive process and prompt selection.
   

Meetings:

• We had a very useful meeting with Dean McCandless, the associate deans, and Kimily, the COAS budget expert, yesterday. We focused on budget issues - college budgets are messy and, at least for me, tricky to understand. A&S budgeting has always been a bit opaque, so it was good to see such openness and willingness to help.
   
• We have a slot at the COAS meeting Tuesday. Please ask questions and bring up concerns.
   
• Later that afternoon, Kathy Kral and Blake Adams from ITS will meet with us to talk about tech support. There probably won't be much change in day-to-day support, but we need to think about the more administrative side of it.
   
• We're scheduled to participate in the first A&S chairs meeting of the semester the first full week of school. We've already met with the chairs' council once, but it will be good to talk with all the chairs.
   
• After we get some more budget materials from Liz Baker in Business and Finance, we'll met with the departmental budget people to look that stuff over. We don't want anything to fall between those infamous cracks.
   
• Let me know if your department or group wants to meet. We'll have another open meeting soon after the semester starts, too.