The School of Arts and Sciences is proposing to hire a part-time faculty secretary to help support the growing number of faculty and staff. With 40% enrollment growth over 10 years and only 2.5 staff supporting 56 full-time faculty and 67 adjunct professors, the current staff is overwhelmed. Hiring a part-time secretary would allow the office manager and administrative assistant to focus on administrative duties rather than faculty support work, and ensure coverage during summer months when staff take leave. The proposal outlines assessing needs, planning the new role, announcing and hiring for the position, training and integrating the new staff, and evaluating the results.
2. CHANGE AGENT ACTION PLAN:
Hiring New Part-Time Office Staff
School of Arts and Sciences
ASSESS:
• The School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) is growing rapidly with each term that occurs.
• In the past ten years since the opening of SAS has grown over 40% with the amount of students
enrolled.
• Office staff consists of the Office Manager, a Senior Administrative Assistant to the Dean and
one Graduate Assistant (is part time, 20 hours per week)
• SAS currently has 56 full-time faculty members and 67 adjunct (part-time) professors.
• The current office staff of 2 ½ supports the faculty.
CLAIRFY:
• Other schools have a dedicated “Faculty Secretary” to work directly with the faculty and support
their needs while the office manager and administrative assistant work directly with the deans
on budgetary items, travel arrangements, and other administrative duties as needed.
• The School of Arts and Sciences needs this position to more effectively support the faculty as to
not let their assigned duties slip behind.
DIAGNOSE:
• Deans & faculty members have brought this topic up in faculty meetings recently, so they would
be on board with this change.
• The main obstacle I see for implementing this proposal would be from a budgetary standpoint,
since everyone is on board and this would be a welcome change to everyone involved.
• Faculty members would have their needs met in a timelier manner than the feeling of “take a
number”, almost like being at a deli and taking your service number.
• Of course, it would go without saying, that if for some reason the secretary is busy and cannot
get to the requests, office staff would help out in emergency cases, but this would alleviate a lot
of backlog that is being experienced by all.
PLAN:
• We are prepared to show a work load of both the office manager and the administrative
assistant that will substantiate the need for a part-time faculty secretary.
• Also included in this request is that the office manager is a long time employee and has as part
of her schedule to have 6 weeks off during the summer months, from mid-July to late August,
she is not here. Most days leaving the administrative assistant alone during the working hours
after the graduate assistant leaves for the day.
3. • Having this other secretary in the office will allow more time for the administrative assistant and
get more of her priority work done that needs to be completed before the opening day of
school.
• We spend more than 20% of our time supporting faculty requests rather than doing our own
work.
1) Hire part time secretary to help in covering office during the absence of full time staff such as
summer leaves, scheduled leaves and/or sick days.
2) Alleviate the work load from full-time staff from faculty requests to concentrate on budgetary
items, payroll and scheduling.
3) The graduate assistant hours are from 9am – 1pm Monday through Friday. The part time
secretary would ideally work from 12:30 – 4:30pm Monday through Friday.
4) The part time secretary would take on the following tasks from the full time associates:
a) Textbook Adoption forms
b) Conference Room Scheduling
c) Maintain and update Office Hours Schedules
d) Maintain and update Faculty Class Schedules
e) Maintain Adjunct Professor Mailboxes
f) Sort all incoming mail
g) Support faculty with both printing and copy requests
h) Request and maintain syllabi from faculty members
i) Create and maintain SAS Arts flyers for upcoming events
ANNOUNCE:
• Once the proposal is submitted and reviewed by management and the Provost office, and
approval is gained, both office manager and administrative assistant will announce a job posting
to find qualified candidates.
EXECUTE:
• Training will commence upon hire with the new secretary upon hire
• I would hope to have the new hire on board and trained by the Fall 2013 term
MONITOR/EVALUATE:
• Both office manager and administrative assistant will monitor the results of the new hire to
show that their workloads have been lightened so that they can concentrate on their job outline
and be able to work more effectively as well.
• Administrative Assistant will show that having the new hire in place will have a direct benefit
specifically during the summer months when office manager is on her annual leave.
• Faculty secretary will be supervised by both office manager and administrative assistant and job
performance evaluation will be performed by both.
