UTC Chancellor Steven Angle
UTC Chancellor Steven Angle recently sat down with UTC graduate student Cheryl Toomey to discuss his first year at UTC and his vision for the future of the campus.
How do you try to keep in touch with the student population, their needs and concerns, while Chancellor?
We’re here for students, we ought to be listening to them. They have good ideas.
I try to have regular meetings with a group of students. Some are from student government, some are student ambassadors, and some I’ve met while walking across campus.
I wanted a diverse group of students. We have commuters, residents, engaged, not engaged. There are sixteen students and ten to twelve can come to any given meeting. We usually meet in the morning and have breakfast or something and just talk.
You have to work to find opportunities to talk to students, because it is harder as Chancellor than it has been in my past positions. It would be very easy to sit isolated in my office and think I know what’s best. I’m going to teach a freshman seminar this fall, so I will get to meet freshmen.
I occasionally go to lunch in the UC and just sat down next to people. It sometimes makes them feel uncomfortable. I just talk to them, though, and ask what’s going on. I took a state legislator over and we sat next to a group of students and ended up talking for an hour about their college experience, UTC, what the state can do, what can the university do. I’ve tried to just wander through buildings and say hello to people. They think I’m checking up on them, but I’m not! But it is important to keep that connection.
We are looking at how we are trying to communicate with the University as a whole. We would like to have at least a monthly email and maybe a short video. I will include points of interest, points of pride, what’s happening. We didn’t get a regular schedule for that last year, but we will work on it from here on out.