With the residential life process mostly sorted out and West Campus social space decisions scheduled for next semester, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta is using this spring to fill several vacancies.
Moneta hopes to hire a new Career Center director in addition to a dean of residential life and an assistant vice president for campus life by the end of the summer. The Office of Student Development is also busy finding nine residence coordinators who will organize student and academic quadrangle services next year.
Moneta said the dean of residential life will focus primarily on implementing the new housing plan.
"The plan is close to becoming a reality," he said. "The person will inherit the opportunity to make it work. The person will work on financial models and take a lead in integrating new building and housing issues, focusing on renovations to Main West [Campus]."
Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs, said the new dean will be faced with merging the housing management and residential life staffs. Residential life currently falls under the Office of Student Development, which will be dismantled under Moneta's reorganization of the Division of Student Affairs.
"That's not something that I have necessarily done this year," said Wasiolek, also interim dean of student development. "We will certainly work well with each other, but I think the new person will want to fully integrate those staffs."
Wasiolek said the residential life office will be on Central Campus, where the current housing administration office is located. In addition, the service offices--two on West Campus and one on East--will include a mix of housing management and residential life officials.
Wasiolek, who will serve as dean of students next year, will be joined by a second assistant vice president who will be in charge of organizing student group advising, something administrators said could be more coherent.
"There have been times in the past where we organized in such a way [that there is a position to govern student advising]," Wasiolek said. "I think this position certainly mirrors that, but expands it to some other kinds of entities, such as some of the [cultural] centers."
Moneta said he will work closely with the new assistant vice president to reorganize space on West Campus. Moneta's top goal next fall will be to maximize student space in the Bryan Center, Page Auditorium and the West Union and Flowers buildings.
Most decisions on space will be contingent on the number of stores currently in the Bryan Center that will move to a new planned building.
Moneta said he hopes the Career Center will receive better facilities after it gets a new director. That position, vacant since last summer, has experienced a lot of turnover in the past.
Moneta said it is more important, however, that the new director think about the long-term implications for the center.
He said Duke has more difficulty identifying employers than Stanford University and Ivy League schools because of its location, adding that the center will have to be more clever with technology.
"What is the career center of the 21st century?" Moneta asked. "We don't want to be behind the curve."
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