Winthrop University: Office of the President - Faculty & Staff - October 2018 Update
Contact Information
Office of the President
114 Tillman Hall
Rock Hill, SC 29733, USA
803/323-2225
803/323-3001 (fax)
president@winthrop.edu

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Announcements

Faculty & Staff

October 29, 2018 

Dear Colleagues:

I want to thank you for attending the recent State of the University Address and taking time to hear our progress. If you were unable to attend, I encourage you to watch the full video presentation. I encourage your thoughts and feedback; feel free to reach out to me at president@winthrop.edu.

As we've passed the midpoint of the fall semester, I wanted to take a moment to update you on a few items.

Institute on Teaching and Mentoring
Last week I once again attended the Compact for Faculty Diversity Institute on Teaching and Mentoring conference held in Arlington, Virginia. I was joined by Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Takita Sumter and Chief Diversity Officer Zan Jones. Winthrop has been a recruiter at this conference, which is the largest gathering of minority Ph.D. scholars in the country, for the last four years. I enjoy attending and telling others about Winthrop and the benefits of living, learning and working here. As you know, increasing the diversity of our faculty and managerial staff is an important objective of the Winthrop Plan, and this conference allows us to showcase Winthrop to the best and brightest minds in higher education. This conference also hosts undergraduate students in the McNair Scholars program and this year I was pleased that Winthrop had three McNair students, along with Dr. Cheryl Fortner-Wood, in attendance.

Reorganization of Former University Relations Division
I would like to share some changes in our leadership structure that I am initiating due to the vacancy created by Jeff Perez's departure. You may know that Jeff was responsible for several areas: government and community relations, University Communications and Marketing, and University Events.

Moving forward with an eye toward administrative savings, I have decided that government and community relations as well as UCM will be housed within the Office of the President, reporting to Kimberly Faust, vice president and chief of staff. University Events will move to Finance and Business Affairs, under vice president and CFO Justin Oates. This structure will allow us to more closely align our communications and marketing efforts with strategic presidential outreach and board relations, as well as fold University Events into our business operations, as UE continues to focus on contracts and revenue generation. In addition, this will result in financial savings to the university as we will not be filling the Vice President for University Relations position.

I appreciate Kimberly and Justin taking on these areas.

Board of Trustees Meeting
The Winthrop Board of Trustees will hold a two-day regular meeting Nov. 1-2. Subcommittees will meet on Thursday afternoon, and Friday morning will include a special budget presentation and the regular full board meeting. The board's meeting agenda will be emailed to faculty and staff in advance of the meeting as usual.

Homecoming
I hope to see many of you at the various Homecoming events that will be held Nov. 12-17, whether that's the family friendly Homecoming on the Green on Friday evening or Saturday's tailgating and women's and men's basketball games. This is always a fun time to reconnect with our alumni and show off our beautiful campus. Read more about the week's activities.

As always, thank you for all that you do for Winthrop. I appreciate your support as we work together on Winthrop's behalf.

Sincerely,
Dan

Last Updated: 8/11/23