After months of waiting, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities will finally welcome a full-time director. Gregg Heinselman, currently director of campus life at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, will take the OSAF helm Nov. 3.
The OSAF was formed last summer when the Office of Student Activities merged with the Event Advising Center. Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Zoila Airall, to whom Heinselman will report, has been directing the OSAF on an interim basis.
"[The OSAF] has been without a director for several months now, so they're going to be really glad to have him," Airall said. She said his main duties as OSAF director will include programming initiatives and planning for construction and renovation of the West Campus student center--duties with which he has become familiar throughout his career in higher education.
"I'm excited about the [student center] project because it's a pretty major undertaking for Duke and it can have a pretty major impact on the campus ecology--how students and faculty interact with their environment," Heinselman said, adding that he has had the experience of building two new student unions and renovating another in his career to date.
Most recently, Heinselman coordinated planning for UW-Platteville's new $17 million Pioneer Student Center, a 100,000-square-foot college union that received mixed reviews from Platteville students.
"The new student center, like everything, has its good and bad," said Brian Reed, a UW-Platteville student who said he worked with Heinselman when he was on the Student Center Advisory Committee, which Heinselman advised. "They put a lot into convention and meeting facilities, which students don't use that much as compared to recreation or study areas."
Reed noted, however, that Heinselman consistently pushed for what students wanted in the new student center--including a recreation center--but was unable to bring all such plans to fruition because of directives from his superiors.
When he begins as the director of OSAF next week, Heinselman will have a report by consultants Brailsford & Dunlavey as a general planning guide for Duke's planned student center. The report, based in part on student surveys, calls for an almost quintupling of meeting/conference/multipurpose space, more than tripling in social/recreation space and campus life/advising/support services space and a doubling in student organization and retail space.
Airall said she has utmost confidence in Heinselman to coordinate a center students will like, in great part because he has shown an ability to communicate well with all parties involved--from architects and contractors to undergraduate and graduate students.
"Everyone we spoke to, from his supervisors to his colleagues, said Gregg has a real skill in dealing with a variety of constituencies," Airall said.
During his career, Heinselman has also gained experience with dining services, events management, auxiliary facility management and student housing.
"[Heinselman] has experience in many of the components involved in [West Campus student center plans]... and so I think that he will understand the issues involved as these are redeveloped in partnership with the new Campus Services department," said Event Management Director Chuck Catotti.
In addition to working with student center plans, Heinselman will take charge of programming initiatives for the center--a responsibility that will put him in close contact with student leaders.
"He's got vast experience advising student governments and student programming boards like the Union," said Duke University Union President Jonathan Bigelow, who met Heinselman when he came to campus for an interview. "From what I've seen, he seems like a very capable leader."
Reed said Heinselman was always very approachable at UW-Platteville and operated under a "very open-door policy."
Heinselman said he has spent about 18 years in the area of student programming, working with everyone from greeks to student governments to student union boards.
He received a bachelor of science in business administration from Northern Arizona University and a master of science in education from Pittsburgh State University.
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