The Oakland Post sat down with Oakland University President George Hynd as he finished his first year in office at Oakland. Hynd covered accomplishments from his freshman year, and focused heavily on what is to come in the future for students on campus. The Oakland Post has compiled his quotes and edited them for an easy read below.

A plan for continued success

My strategic plan has been approved and I now have a crafted budget moving forward. Students are going to see immediate changes after the tuition increase. We have added advisors and faculty, because we look for our students to graduate sooner and provide them with the opportunities to do so. Right now students are graduating in just over five years, and I’d like to bring that down to four years with less debt and more opportunities. 75 percent of our students are taking a full academic load and our athletics are achieving beyond expectations, so this is what we want to continue as the university grows and continues to succeed.

Students making decisions

I have created a master plan process that will be in affect within the next year. We are looking to involve our students a lot more. This campus is surrounded with students, and their opinions matter the most. We have formed a committee that will ask students’ opinions regarding everything around campus. A memo is going to be sent out shortly to the whole campus that will just say ‘hey, pay attention.’

We have a student representative, a board member and representatives across campus all on this committee. They will be holding meetings on campus just to gain input from the students. I can’t tell you when this will take place just yet, because our committee hasn’t met yet to discuss the finer details. It’s important to students to have input on these things. Do we need more classroom space? Do we need more kiosks for coffee or food? Do we need more buildings? All of these things are going to be considered.

This committee will be studying the classroom usage, traffic, parking, and housing reports and try to knit it together to come up with a vision of what we would like the campus to look like. My immediate vision is the committee throwing a giant pizza party on campus and having students share their thoughts and ideas about their campus in the next five or 10 years.

A future look at campus

Though some changes our students will see immediately, some are going to take place within the next three to 10 years here. I have put my plan on three goals: residence halls, the Oakland Center and classroom space. The talk of a future new residence hall has been brought up, and I’d like for it to be on the south side of campus. With a new hall, though, there would need to be a new cafeteria as well. By adding a residence hall to the south side of campus, the Oakland Center would be in the center where it belongs. Late night dining has also been discussed, because of how early the Oakland Center shuts down for those night owls around campus. The renovations to the Oakland Center will still need renovations, we just aren’t sure what those will be yet. But we have our plan in place, and there will be structural changes made to campus, just not in the nearest future.