The start of a new semester kicked off at the Fall Conference for all of the staff and faculty members on Thursday morning.
Sinclair President Dr. Stephen Johnson started off on a high note, praising both new employees and old ones as well. The conference then turned to a more serious note and new ideas and improvements were introduced to help better Sinclair.
An emerging plan was brought forward that, according to Johnson, would better improve a student’s overall experience and help to lessen their confusion.
“What was excellent service then, was excellent service, but the expectations have changed,” he said.
The plan would redesign the parking garage to include a walkway and a visual entrance to the garage and also a walkway that would lead directly to Building 10. Building 10 would also be remodeled to have an entrance and an open view in the building that would show all of the floors.
“You can see it all, it’s not all chopped up, it’s not hidden,” Johnson said.
They would also replace the parking on 4th street with a bike lane and make it a greener, more pedestrian friendly place. The parking lot next to Building 12 and the new Health Sciences building would also be replaced with a greener entrance that Johnson says will be more welcoming to students.
According to Johnson, the new plan would help guide new students to where they need to be and also erase some of the extra time that older students have to spend navigating the building.
“When we dove down into that, there were a number of things that were very important to see… the fact that when you’re new to Sinclair and you don’t know anything about us, and you drive up for the first time, you don’t know where to go; you don’t know where the front door is. We don’t have a front door,” Johnson said.
Johnson introduced the plan as a way to help solve some of these concerns and problems.
Mayor Nan Whaley was a guest speaker at the Fall Conference and she voiced her excitement to see the emerging plan go into action.
“One of the exciting things that I think Dr. Johnson and I are working on right now is to really brighten up the campus down here in the core, the connectivity that can happen with our downtown in the city because there are thousands of people wandering through Sinclair everyday, they provide a great asset for our rapport,” Whaley said.
University of Dayton President, Dr. Eric Spina was also a guest speaker at the conference and expressed his desire to improve and continue the relationship between Sinclair and the University of Dayton.
“I want us to work together at every level… to figure out what are the places that we can have the greatest impact on our students, to help them achieve their dreams, and what are the things we can continue to do together to continue forwarding the tremendous progress of this city,” Spina said.
The conference also recognized the men’s baseball team for placing third in the World Series, therefore making history as the first baseball team in Sinclair’s history to do so. They were given World Series rings as a result.
The meeting also covered where Sinclair has gone in the past year and where they want to go in the 2016 and 2017 semesters.
Laina Yost
Associate Editor