President Elizabeth Rider and members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) made themselves available for student queries at a Sept. 14 forum held in the Koons Activity Venue (KAV) where several announcements were also made by SLT members.
The SLT consists of Elizabethtown College’s five vice presidents who oversee the various areas of college operations. Keri Straub, Vice President for Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications, served as moderator for the forum.
An email was sent out on Sept. 1 asking for students to submit questions ahead of the forum. Three students submitted questions in response. Other questions posed to the forum were developed based on questions and input that have been taken directly to SLT members over the past six months. About a dozen students were present in the room and participated in a Q&A following the moderated section.
President Rider opened the forum by explaining Strategic Plan 2030, a roadmap launched this semester designed to outline Etown’s five-year goals under the themes of “Boldly Living Our Mission and Values,” “Education for a Changing World” and “Foundation for Sustainable Success.”
“I am excited about this strategic plan and I think there are a lot of good things in it and I also think it’s very practical.” Rider said. “It’s very accessible. It doesn’t have things in there that are just fluff.”
Nichole Gonzalez, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students, addressed criticism received in response to Etown reassessing its policies amid changes in the federal government’s support and guidelines for collegiate institutions, especially within the realm of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices. Among these criticisms was the purported disbanding of the Campus Inclusion Committee.
“I’ve heard a lot over the past year-and-a-half that it was disbanded. It was not intentionally disbanded,” Gonzalez said. “It has not been operating over the past year, but it was not by intention or by mandate that it not operate in response to federal guidance.”
Gonzalez says that the committee will be reconstituted with the goal of remaining an active body.
Issues of campus accessibility for disabled students became a repeated point of discussion at the forum. Bob Kerin, Vice President for Operations and Auxiliary Services, spoke about some of the recent summer renovations he said were meant to be proactive maintenance to ensure accessibility. Among these were the installation of new elevators in Nicarry Hall and the High Library along with renovation of restrooms in Thompson Gym.
Kerin also announced that a golf cart has been acquired by Disability Services to help students with mobility issues get to class in a timely manner.
During the student Q&A section, issues of accessibility in Royer Residence Hall were brought up including the lack of a pushbutton automatic door.
In 2023, Royer was renovated to be more in line with Americans with Disability Act (ADA) standards, including a stair lift in the lobby. The lack of button-activated doors appears to be an oversight. Vice President for Finance Amanda Stahl addressed those concerns from the standpoint of Etown’s budgetary process.
“We are limited to the amount of resources so sometimes we can only tackle one or two things per year, but [Disability Services] has certainly become a priority of the budget process,” Stahl said. “And the more that you guys can share with us those things that you are seeing from your viewpoint, the better we can allocate those resources.”
Kerin also provided an update and further context to the ongoing turf installment at Herr Field. The project was intended to be complete by the beginning of the fall soccer season, but was delayed by around a month due to permitting. At the latest, Kerin expects the field to be ready for use by early October. Once in operation, Kerin believes that the turf field will be a great investment and allow for expanded access and use.
“We spent a lot of money on maintenance for a grass field to be used about 18 days a year,” Kerin said. “We thought it was time to change that and make it much more accessible.”
In one last announcement, Kerin said a new ice cream machine for the Marketplace will be coming. Ordered in July, it will replace the machine that became inoperable last semester.
There have been a few complications in acquiring the replacement machine including a typhoon that impacted the Asian country where it is being manufactured.
