Departments on the move

By Douglas Sulenta
The Collegian

Stacked boxes line the back wall of McKee Fisk room 243 as professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, chair of the Africana and American Indian studies program, prepares to move.

With the various construction projects around campus as well as the recent budget cuts, programs and departments have frequently been asked to relocate for a semester or longer to accommodate the university.

The Africana and American Indian studies program is in the process of moving out of its home in the McKee Fisk building to make room for the social science department to move in. The program has partially moved into the Science I building.

“Social sciences took over the McKee Fisk wing with political science and women’s studies and we were moved out,” said Meta Schettler, assistant professor for the Africana and American Indian studies program. “With the budget cuts a year and a half ago they reconfigured and consolidated some departments and programs.”

She said the move had its advantages and disadvantages. Though it is nice to have her own office now rather than share one, “I’m now somewhat cut off from the rest of my colleagues,” she said.

Schettler said the most difficult part of the constant moving of the department has been the uncertainty.

The department has been moved twice in the past three years, she said

“Right now it’s like we’re in an elevator stuck between floors. It’s like we’re in limbo,” she said.

And what’s worse is the department’s resource center has lost a home in the process.

“The African American resource center has been homeless for a year and a half and all the resources are boxed up.”

Last semester while construction was being done on the Psychology building, departments they were forced to move from that building to others across campus. The recreation administration and leisure studies program and the department of social work education are two of the departments that were forced out of their normal offices because of the construction.

Juanita Chong-Jackson, the administrative support coordinator for the recreation and leisure studies program, said though it was a bit of a hassle, the move wasn’t all that difficult.

“We’re a smaller department and it wasn’t all that hard,” she said.

Chong-Jackson’s department was moved only a short distance from the Psychology building to the McKee Fisk building.

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought,” she said. “Everything was organized well. Our advanced planning helped and the administration was very helpful as well.”

E. Jane Middleton, the director of the department of social work education, said that their move wasn’t as bad as it could have been either.

“In our department you have to learn to be flexible. I think the students were more frustrated trying to find us than we were in having to move,” she said.

One of the main changes Middleton had to adjust to was closer quarters than she had been used to.

Whereas in the Psychology building she had her own office, at McKee Fisk she shared an office with two others.

She commended the Deans office for the support they provided and added that it’s nice because now their sister program, Title IV-E, the child welfare stipend program, has been consolidated into the same building.

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