Chancellor-designate Kent Syverud will spend the next 10-12 days living in an apartment in Brewster/Boland/Brockway Complex to experience student life.

“To understand student concerns, nothing helps better than to eat the food they eat and experience daily life as they experience it,” Syverud said. “Since I had a couple weeks before I become chancellor it seemed like a good use of that time.”

Syverud will stay in a vacant staff apartment in BBB, said Terra Peckskamp, director of the Office of Residence Life, in an email. The apartment, which sometimes houses live-in residence life staff or interviewees, is generally vacant.

“A staff apartment provides a degree of privacy, while still providing an appropriate amount of connection and accessibility to students,” she said. She said she thought Syverud’s stay in BBB would provide a “great opportunity” for the soon-to-be chancellor, as well as for residents of the dorm and the entire campus.

Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs at Syracuse University, said he thought it was “great” that Syverud wanted to experience life on campus.

“He could’ve been in a hotel, he could’ve been in the Sheraton or downtown, but he specifically asked and requested the university leadership to try and find an opportunity for him to live in a student residence hall and be able to experience what students experience,” he said.

Julissa Romero, a freshman who lives BBB, said she was “shocked” when she found out through a mass email from residence life staff that Syverud would be staying in the dorm.

“I wouldn’t think that someone so high up as an authority figure would be living in the same place as I would be as a freshman,” said Romero, who’s a communication and rhetorical studies major.

Sam Tasch, another freshman living in BBB and a sport management major, also said he was shocked.

“BBB is not known as the best dorm, so the fact that he’s living in here is kind of shocking,” he said. Tasch added that he would like to meet Syverud to talk about the future chancellor’s plans for SU.

In addition to spending more than a week in BBB, Syverud hopes to engage with students by eventually teaching classes at SU while he is chancellor.

“I suspect it’s going to be a while before I’m able to teach here, because there’s many more important things to learn, but I’m hoping by this time next year to at least teach a short course for students here,” Syverud said.

Syverud, currently dean of the law school at Washington University in St. Louis, also teaches a law negotiation course at the school, which he says will not be cut short by his stay at SU. He said he plans to fulfill all his teaching duties at Washington University — including teaching a short, intense course that ends Jan. 10 — before he officially becomes SU’s chancellor on Jan. 13.

Syverud said he has already met with some of BBB’s residence life staff to begin planning how he can interact with students in the dorm, but since he travels to New York City on Tuesday, he won’t be able to do much until late in the week.

Peckskamp, the director of the Office of Residence Life, said many of the residence life staff, including RAs, were happy to hear about Syverud’s stay in BBB.

Said Peckskamp: “I’ll admit, I am partial to life in a residence hall, but what better way to connect with students than to meet them where they live?”

 

—Staff Writer Ellen Meyers contributed reporting to this article.

Published on December 3, 2013 at 1:34 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu