By: Nadra Mabrouk/Staff Writer
Although student is still a role Steven Moll plays while at the University, the position he was recently appointed to allows him to set in motion plans to improve the Biscayne Bay Campus and the University as a whole.
“I am FIU. I came here when FIU was two years old as a student, I’ve gotten my Bachelor’s, my Masters and [I’m] working on my PhD. I’ve taught here for 34 years,” said Moll, who was appointed to be BBC’s vice provost on Jan. 4. “If there’s anything I can do to make this University a better place for students to learn, then I am more than happy to work as hard as I can to make it happen.”
Moll would like to enhance the campus and its services through his 2010-2011 performance goals strengthened with his belief that there is always room for constant improvements in every aspect of the campus.
He has organized his top goals in an outline he composed each with “metrics” in order to measure the goal and in how they link to “Hit The Ground Running,” a statement University President Mark Rosenberg designed before becoming president in August 2009.
They include goals Rosenberg hopes to accomplish for the University. Rosenberg’s goals include a desire to have a strong financial base, become more concerned with the environment on campus and engage the community with the College of Medicine.
Moll is also considering an improvement in customer service on BBC. Customer service covers people who interact with the students including workers in the Financial Aid office and cashiers. His plan would be to offer more customer service training and professional development provided for the faculty and the staff across the campus.
A BBC customer service survey will be used to analyze the results in order to further enhance improvement. These surveys would ask questions based on what kind of services students received, as they will be allowed to rate the service ranging from poor to excellent. It would ask about services provided in Financial Aid, the Library, including services provided in each major.
“There is room for continual improvement in all areas all the time for constant growth,” Moll said.
Another goal is to increase the private contributions made to BBC and to search for more outside sources of funding.
“The support we receive from the state of Florida continues to go down. 60% of what it cost to operate a University used to be provided to us,” Moll said, “Today it is less than 40%. We must get funding privately, otherwise we won’t have [any].”
Increasing grant activity would assist the campus. Moll at the moment does not know the precise number of how many grants he would like to receive.
Another goal to help funding involves increasing the number of Circle of Friends members and private donations made. In 2009, the Circle of Friends was designed to expand FIU’s reach into the community and raise necessary funds. The members are from the community and are invited to a series of events organized by the BBC Vice Provost. Their goal is to improve the quality of life on BBC.
The money given through the circle of friends is used to fund events on campus, elective classes, trips, and activities that enhance BBC students’ life. Membership begins at $100.
This would help strengthen financial base for BBC. Increasing the financial base is a top priority goal due to the decrease of the financial assistance state universities are receiving from the state legislature.
“The whole purpose of what we do in setting our annual goals is to continuously improve the University,” Moll said.
Moll plans to work with the Alumni Foundation, community leaders and anyone else willing to benefit the University.
Another priority is to better promote the Quality Enhancement Plan at BBC. QEP is a strategy designed by the University to improve the quality of higher education and enhance student learning.
Moll would like to increase the amount of Global Learning courses offered. This would create a larger variety of courses for the students to choose from and take a greater interest in and for the students to find more GL courses that relate to their individual majors. There would also be an increase in the number of events promoting the concept of Global learning.
A student with an associate in arts from Miami-Dade College transferring to FIU is still required to take two Global Learning courses in their major.
Increasing the number of GL courses offered on campus, promotes QEP, according to Moll.
Moll would also like to eventually place another building on BBC for the School of Environment, Arts and Society. Because the building would have a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, its ecological footprint would be much smaller. This would make it a “green” building in the sense of how much less energy it actually uses. This building would include classes and offices and would be a subdivision of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Building the SEAS building would require the University to raise $70 million, according to Moll.
According to Moll, the SEAS building would include more interdisciplinary studies. An example would be a class on how Anthropology and Environmental studies relate. A larger variety of courses offered at BBC would also help those students living near the area so these students would not have to take a trip to the Modesto Maidique Campus. This would allow students to take classes closer to where they live.
The performance report Moll designed outlining his goals states another hope is to “increase activities, programs, and courses at BBC that encourage environmental stewardship and support sustainable practices.”
The Adopt-a-Tree program provides homeowners residing in the Miami-Dade county area with two trees a year, but they may instead donate them to BBC. According to Moll, a couple hundred trees have been donated thus far.
In addition to attempting to accomplish these goals for the campus, Moll lectures a Lodging Operations Control course on Thursdays from 12:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in room 260 of the hospitality building. The course teaches students how to maximize sales of hotels and reduce costs of delivering those sales and increase revenues by department.
On improving the campus with these goals, Moll said, “Every day, in every way, we are working to make the Biscayne Bay Campus a better place to learn and grow.”
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