This interview took place between an Academic Affairs administrator and me. The interview keenly looked into the main functions of the office, its objectives, mission, and emerging issues in need of addressing, and to shed light and inform on recurrent student issues. The summary of the interview lies below detailing the vital segments of the interview.
The Core Functions of Academic Affairs Office
As an administrator most of my roles in the Academic affairs office entail scheduling, executing, and management of educational programs of the entire University (Charles et.al, 2018). In assuming these roles, the administrator works in conjunction with other offices such as the dean, the Vice chancellor of the university, other administrators and staff members of that particular faculty. Although most of the roles carried out under the Academic Affairs office, relate to syllabus and instructions, which fall under the mandate of the dean, the administrator acts as the sole executor and planner of long term educational programs, assessment of quality, assortment and progress among other functions. In addition, administrator also assists the president of the university with vital decision-making tools.
Issues of Concern in the Academic Affairs Faculty
The first issues concern the ever increasing cost of college education hence a major worry to the office. The actual cause for the increase needs addressing and students need to know the underlying reasons triggering the increment (Charles et.al, 2018). On Other hand, the office struggles with strategic ways of curbing the rising cost of higher education per year. Thirdly, the accumulating student debt and the need to introduce measures hindering the piling debt.
The second issue has to do with online learning. With the accessibility to internet services, observing academic fraudulence, for instance plagiarism is not an easy task. How and when to reach out and raise awareness on the predicaments that arise due to plagiarism is not an easy task either. Online platform such as Turnitin reduce instances of plagiarism but the main issue is being able to generate surroundings that reduce academic fraud and being able to communicate regularly with students.
The third concern revolves around communicating efficiently with students who interact daily with various emails and social media notifications. Students depend on their social media platforms to acquire information on college options hence academic institutions need to effectively utilize social media platforms to help students make wise decisions (Charles et.al, 2018). Most of the times, academic institutions depend on part time staff members to complete their duty rosters. Yet, these faculties never appear or mentioned in faculty consultations, given workstations and salaried hence not heavily invested in one college because they visit various institutions. Relying on part time work force impedes development and continuous assessment of the institution.
How the Office of Academic Affairs Deals With Matters Concerning Rising Fees
In the present society, university is the only institution capable of offering higher education. Each year more than 20 million people attend universities across the world seeking a degree or a second degree. In the coming years, the number may double or even triple. In all this, the office of Academic Affairs ensures elimination of unnecessary costs such as counselling fee, which the students sometimes never make, use of. Some students come from poor backgrounds and their parents cannot pay off some expenses. It is up to the school to fund some services especially secondary services such as counselling. In short, campuses need to invest in some services and take some of the financial burden from their students.
How Academic Affairs Office Communicate With Students Effectively
The office of Academic affairs came up with holistic approach to communication (Leišytė, 2016). Through marketing, the university is able to reach more students rather than making use of internal communication mechanism such as internal memos addressing a large body of students. In addition, the office works together with students and students organizations for better communication distribution. In other words, cooperating with other people creates relations thus one can listen to issues the institution raises now and then.
How Academic Affairs Regulate Fraudulent Academic Behavior
The office makes use of Academic laws, which encompasses various policies, frameworks, and directing academic matters (Leišytė, 2016). The entire framework of academic laws gives administrators measures and ways of curbing plagiarism and other ways dishonest ways. With online learning comes creation of various stipulations that makes it possible to reduce cheating. First of all, a student has to register before attending class and remain throughout the course teaching and in the end be able to answer questions to an exam. In addition, expulsion of more than a thousand academic years when found cheating in an exam.
Making and maintaining a tradition of reliability within an academic institution is vital for efficient teaching, acquisition of information and carrying out research studies. Integrity means following laws leading to moral uprightness and upholding values in line with elaborate practices (Leišytė, 2016). Basically, academic settings become tainted when students take part in unfair academic malpractices such as plagiarism, dishonesty during examinations and illegal collaborations on coursework. Therefore, dishonesty undermines academic affairs office to accurately evaluate students.
References
Charles, E., Johnston, J., Kenworthy, A., Lind, C., McCammon, H., Merryman, D., ... & Yadav, Y. (2018). To: Susan R. Wente, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Faculty Senate Executive Committee From: The Shared Governance Committee Terrah Foster Akard, associate professor of nursing.
Leišytė, L. (2016). New public management and research productivity–a precarious state of affairs of academic work in the Netherlands. Studies in Higher Education, 41(5), 828-846.
