Administrators share perspectives

How does your office serve the university mission or the student community as a whole?

Responsibilities of the President include recommending the annual budget, approving hiring of faculty and senior staff, recommending tuition and fee rates, maintaining buildings and infrastructure, serving as principal spokesperson for the university, and working with external constituents such as legislators. The President reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the U.T. System, and to the U.T. System Board of Regents.

UT Dallas is planning several major construction projects, and these will have a major impact on our campus. The projects include a new classroom facility, new student services building, new residential housing unit, new dining facility, and landscape enhancement project. In addition, renovation of Founders is expected to begin soon, and we are already planning the next major academic building. We will also begin a new DART shuttle bus program this academic year and complete planning on roadway and parking improvements. I am especially excited about the student-focused nature of these projects and the improvements that will result. I am especially anxious to see us improve the quality of classroom space. Our Business Affairs team is doing an excellent job of managing an exceptionally heavy work load, and is working diligently to implement these improvements as quickly as possible.

How does your office serve the university mission or the student community as a whole?

The Office of Communications provides strategic leadership to meet the challenge of shaping the character, direction and underlying principles of institutional communications at UT Dallas and takes primary responsibility for organizing university-wide resources in the areas of communication and marketing, brand identity and positioning, internal and external communications, message content, media visibility/media relations, and crisis communication.

The best advice I received as a student was to get out of my dorm room and go do something. I loved reading and writing and would have been completely content to spend every moment at my desk, but a very wise professor encouraged me to apply for a series of internships that radically changed the way I thought about my own skills and helped me to discover capabilities that might otherwise not have emerged in as timely a manner. As a result I got an early introduction to journalism that made me confident enough to turn down the first two jobs I was offered out of college and to hold out for one that offered both greater challenges and a better than average (for that time) level of salary. The experience also helped me relate more easily to the wide diversity of ages and kinds of people in the workplace when I finally arrived there as a fulltime reporter.

How does your office serve the university mission or the student community as a whole?

The Office of Public Affairs supports the University's vision to be one of the nation's best public research universities by building effective relationships with elected and appointed leaders, monitoring legislative and regulatory initiatives, and developing the University's presence among civic and community groups. In addition, the Office of Public Affairs works to promote the University's activities and interests with key officials and business organizations.

The Office of Public Affairs worked with members of the UT Dallas student government to pass SB 285 during the 80th Texas Legislature. Pending approval by the UT Board of Regents this fall, SB 285 will enable the creation of three new student fees, which were all approved by majority votes of the UT Dallas student body in 2006. In the coming year, students will see the benefits of these fees - including DART passes for all students, shuttles from the University to key surrounding locations, expansion of student services on campus, and construction plans for a new student services building.

How does your office serve the university mission or the student community as a whole?

Information Resources provides central IT support for UT Dallas. Email, web services, WebCT, the main HelpDesk(assist@utdallas.edu, x2911), networking, administrative computing, information security, and many other services are managed by IR.

We strive to achieve 24x7 service delivery and work hard toward this goal.

The most immediate impact from IR should be the re-invigorated eLearning Team operation supporting UTD's course management system, WebCT. WebCT's history over the past year or so has been on the hairy edge of marginal and we have allocated substantial resources toward improving this service. The collaboration between IR and departmental resources focused on course management and distance learning has really blossomed and we are anxious for this service to excel as a critical student engagement.