We are deep into the Fall semester and looking around the corner we can see lovely, colorful foliage and Thanksgiving and Winter Break are in sight. Homecoming was a wonderful week with the dedication of the NPHC Garden, recognizing and honoring the NPHC Greek Letter organizations (we’ll have a story for you on that great event in a future issue). Basketball season has begun with a pre-season men’s team ranked 16th by the AP.
Our COVID numbers continue to drop. Students, faculty and staff are continually getting vaccinated and boosted.
This Fall the University of Arkansas created incentives for students to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the students responded in a big way. More than 16,000 students registered for incentives, which include tickets to sporting events and concerts, scholarships, and parking permit discounts. In fact, more than 1,200 students reported getting vaccinated this Fall once the incentives were announced.
Student Affairs staff are some of the most dedicated people on campus. They care deeply about students and work hard every day to help ensure the students have a great experience at the University of Arkansas. The U of A has recognized two of our staff members with Employee of the Year awards for 2020-2021 – Andrea Allan, the director of U of A Cares and A.J. Olsen, the director of Medical Services at the Pat Walker Health Center. You can read about these two outstanding Student Affairs staff members in this issue.
Our Q&As in this issue come from University Housing, which is one of the largest teams of staff in the Division of Student Affairs. This group is responsible for all our residence halls, as well as the educational and fun programming for students in those halls. Tia King, who has been with the U of A for 9 years, works in Housing Assignments helping our students with so many things. Our student staff member, Ashton Stephens, is a senior graduating in December, who has been a Resident Assistant in Housing for 3 years. She even helped develop the trainings that all RAs go through.
Interim Chancellor Charles Robinson, who led the Division of Student Affairs for the past 7 years as Vice Chancellor, gave his first State of The University Address a few weeks ago. Robinson highlighted the university’s achievements in enrollment, student success, scholarship and research. He gave a “call to mission” to remember who we are and believe in who we are as Razorbacks together. We have the story and a link to the full address video on YouTube.
Thanks for reading the November issue of the Student Affairs Bulletin. If you’re interested in more information about anything you see here or have ideas for other stories you would like to see, please email Scott Flanagin, executive director of communications at sflanagi@uark.edu.