 "Photo: Shaun Stewart")
The University's new vice president of student affairs, Juan Gonzalez, visited campus Friday for the first time since his appointment last week. Before looking for a home in Austin, Gonzalez met with senior student affairs staff and student leaders.
Gonzalez, outgoing vice president of student affairs at Arizona State University, will officially replace current head of student affairs James Vick by Sept. 12.
Although Gonzalez said his focus was to be directed toward finding a new home over the weekend - he will not live on campus as he did while vice president at Georgetown University - he said he visited campus to begin trying to understand the "mosaic" of the University.
"I couldn't wait to start a conversation," Gonzalez said.
The Student Government executive board met with Gonzalez Friday morning to get acquainted and discuss issues such as student fees, community building and the history of student groups on campus.
SG President Omar Ochoa said Gonzalez agreed with Student Government's desire for students to be able to set student fee rates themselves.
"It's important students have control over their own student services," Ochoa said, adding that Gonzales knew how important it was for students to have control over their student service fee collection, which they do at Arizona State.
Ochoa said he was surprised that Gonzalez was taking such an active role so soon after his appointment. Ochoa said he was impressed by Gonzalez's attentiveness to student input.
"[He would] not just listen to it and say 'That's a great idea let's move on,' but he actually gave comment on what we were saying," Ochoa said. "What that tells me is he's a very up-front person and will tell us what he thinks about different things, so there's no blurred lines between what students want and what he wants."
Student leaders at Georgetown and ASU have criticized Gonzalez for being an "enforcer" of the administration instead of an advocate for students. Critics said he angered them by threatening to remove a student newspaper at ASU at the behest of ASU's president and for not supporting an off-campus fund-raiser at Georgetown that was eventually cancelled.
When meeting with students and staff, Gonzalez voiced interest in making the somewhat decentralized student affairs division a more unified operation.
"One of the things that he talks about a lot is strategic planning," said Lisa Henken, development coordinator for student affairs, who met with Gonzalez Friday. "Looking at a division of student affairs as a comprehensive unit and developing a strategic plan for the division of student affairs is what his idea is."
Henken said an example of a division-wide strategic plan would be having more freshmen on campus or providing more campus-based experiences for them. She said individual student affairs units have strategic plans but currently the entire division lacks a specific, unified plan.
"All of the division would work toward those goals," Henken said. "He thinks it's very important to have those goals laid out."
Gonzalez, 53, was born in Amarillo and is the youngest of 10 children from a low-income Mexican-American family, deeply rooted in Catholicism. He said his parents taught him and his siblings not only the importance of education but the meaning of serving one's community.
"I think our role is educating young men and women for the service of others," Gonzalez said. "If we're educating young men and women for the service of themselves, we're not doing our job."
He credits the Upward Bound program, signed into effect by former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, for recruiting him and other low-income students into University life. Once there, he said his success was partially a product of student affairs programs.
Gonzalez said he could only read at the sixth-grade level when he began attending Texas Tech University as an undergraduate.
"I was ill-prepared, under-prepared when I got to college," Gonzalez said. "It was a lot of people in student affairs who mentored me, cared for me, tutored me, advised me, counseled me. ... Me going to college was a godsend. Me surviving and succeeding at the university was highly related to the programs and services in student affairs."
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