Campus offices move to give a central one-stop shop

As of June 2010, students and faculty will no longer have to venture the 1,441 acres that make up Oakland University to take advantage of services offered on campus. 

Throughout campus, various offices are on the move. 

According to Terry Stollsteimer, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management, all of the recent changes have been going on for over a year and will be completed by June of 2010. 

The purpose of this move is to bring all of the offices that directly relate to students to North Foundation Hall. 

NFH currently houses offices like the Cashier’s Office, Advising Resource Center and the Center for Multicultural Initiatives, as well as tutoring services. 

The renovations OU underwent nearly 10 years ago brought the offices of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid to NFH and by June of 2010 the final piece — the office of Career Services — will be added. 

The relocation of Career Services has been discussed for years, but gained more traction about two years ago with urging from OU’s Student Congress. 

After funding for the move became available, the next step was to locate a new space.

“We want to create a one-stop student service center so students don’t have to run all over campus to get business done or to get help when needed,” said Mary Beth Snyder, vice president of Student Affairs.

To make room for the incoming offices, things had to move out. 

On March 23, the Budget and Human Resource departments will move from NFH to join the employee administrative services, as well as the budget office, which moved to Wilson Hall earlier this year. 

Despite all of these changes, the classrooms in NFH will remain intact and the space in Vandenberg, where the office of Career Services is located, will be turned into additional student housing. 

Other offices shuffling around campus include the various professors’ offices that moved from Wilson to O’Dowd Hall in 2009. Administrative offices are now all in ODH.

“With Career Services now in the center of campus, we hope students begin to explore their career interests and possible job prospects much earlier as undergraduates,” Snyder said. 

Many students find this move to be a helpful and potentially successful action for OU.

“It will be nice not to have to go all around campus to get things taken care of,” said Courtlin Baca, an undecided student. “I’m a freshman and hardly know where my classes are let alone where all of these offices are; I’m glad I won’t have to hunt any more.”

New campus maps and directories are currently in the process of being made.