By Heather Monahan
Assistant Features Editor
St. Bonaventure students arrive back to campus in late August re-energized and excited for their upcoming school year. It’s a new start, with new professors, new classes and new housing. This year, the campus will notice fresh administrative faces.
Three deans have officially begun their new positions at St. Bonaventure.
Pierre Balthazard, formerly executive director of the Center for Advancing Business Information Technology at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, has earned the position of dean of the School of Business.
Balthazard said the experience was a unique opportunity for him.
“There’s a fit,” Balthazard said. “What I’ve got to bring to the table is something the institution really needs.”
After 15 years at Arizona State, he gained the knowledge and skills necessary for his position at St. Bonaventure, Balthazard said.
“It was time to step out on my own and see what I could do,” Balthazard said.
While Balthazard arrived from a completely different university, the new deans of the Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Education are familiar faces at Bonaventure.
Pauline Hoffmann, former interim dean of the Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has served as an associate professor, teaching public relations and IMC courses since 2006. However, with her new permanent position as dean, Hoffmann said she has opportunities to do things she previously couldn’t.
“With the title interim, you can’t do everything you want to do, and now, we can move forward,” she said. “It’s nice to be official.”
Like Hoffmann, Joseph Zimmer has spent the past year as an interim dean. Zimmer, dean of the School of Education, has been at Bonaventure for the past 20 years. He said, while the challenges are different, he’s still among the familiar faculty he’s worked with during his time at Bonaventure.
“People ask me all the time if I’m missing teaching a lot,” he said. “But I’m not really because I do a lot of teaching in this job. It’s just not in the classroom.”
All three deans have big plans for their respective schools.
While the new business building is a huge change on the horizon for the School of Business, Balthazard said there will be much more changes than just the building. He sees the new building as an upgrade from coach to first class.
“What we’re going to do is what we’ve always done, but we have to step up our game and do it even better,” he said.
Balthazard said the experience of students in the undergraduate program will be enhanced with the new building and the other upcoming changes.
“We’re trying to develop the highest fidelity education,” Balthazard said.
In the School of Education, Zimmer is also hard at work. A rehabilitation counseling program at the master’s level has just been approved.
The program will allow students in counselor education to be trained to counsel people in rehabilitation programs.
“It’s a very mission-driven kind of a program, so we’re very excited about it,” Zimmer said.
The School of Education is also working towards getting Bonaventure its first doctoral program in decades. The school is proposing is an EDD program, or a Doctorate of Education, in leadership and administration.
The sports studies program is also under construction.
“We’re working with the biology department on trying to get a biometrics lab,” he said.
The biometrics lab would provide students the opportunity to take human measurements with high-tech equipment, such as treadmills and bikes found in official sports science institutions.
In the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Hoffmann also has some new ideas.
In addition to the new strategic communication and digital media major, Hoffmann said there will be changes made to the whole journalism and mass communication program. The goal is to have journalism students have an experience similar to the ones broadcasting students get through the production truck, such as an experimental newsroom.
In addition to their endeavors for the upcoming year, all three deans said they will be collaborating with each other to make big changes at the university. According to Zimmer, the “Dream Team” are working together to better the general education given at Bonaventure.
“Ultimately, we’re all here for the same reason,” Hoffmann said. “You guys need a good education.”
