(A Conversation with Shannon Ellis, Vice President for Student Services: Part I)

We all reach a certain age when statements like the one I’m about to share with you strike you as prescient, pitifully truthful or perhaps a bit on the peculiar side. Either way, I had to smile when I read an exchange from the blogosphere, where Tech Confidential Blog’s Andrea Orr questioned Michael Kinsley’s wisdom concerning the way we package information in this era of electronic communication. “Haven’t you heard that blogs – at least many of them – have crossed the threshold to respectability?” Ms. Orr asked Mr. Kinsley, who some would argue may actually understand how ideas can be exchanged without killing off an entire forest.

I note this exchange as a way of introducing a semi-regular feature for this blog. From time to time, I hope to share some conversations I have had with some of my colleagues. The idea is to inform, spur further discussion, and, perhaps at the very least, help this blog cross a certain threshold. Whether the threshold that we are hoping to cross is that of respectability, I will leave entirely to you.

Recently, I sat down with Shannon Ellis, vice president of Student Services. Shannon has been at the University of Nevada since 1998. She has seen the student experience on our campus change dramatically over the course of her tenure, with more change on the way in the form of the soon-to-open Joe Crowley Student Union. Following a recent President’s Council meeting, I asked Shannon a few questions about what the future holds for Nevada’s students, and what she views as her most pressing challenges in the coming months.

Milt Glick: What kind of impact on the student body will the opening of the Joe Crowley Student Union have?

Shannon Ellis: It’s going to be the first introduction of more of a 24-7 atmosphere on campus. We’ve tended to turn out the lights and shut things down at 10 o’clock at night, and on the weekends. This union will be about blazing lights well into what are more normal student hours – midnight – and weekends and evenings. It will provide those alternative opportunities for them. They won’t have to go off-campus. They will be able to come to campus, hang around, go to movies, use the Starbucks, have meetings, use social areas for different functions. It really is going to be a central point for student activity. (Jot Travis Student Union Director) Chuck (Price) talks about the new union being the heart of the campus. We will even have fireplaces in there that will emulate that feeling, where people can go and hang out.

M.G.: What about the programming? How will the programming help to make it become that necessary jumping off point that you are talking about?

S.E.: It’s got to be the type of programming that students can “drop in” on. You can have some programming that the students can plan ahead for, and buy tickets for, but the majority of it needs to that you are simply walking into the union and you want to see what’s going on tonight. We’re going to have a movie theater, with first-run movies. They will probably run the movies several times a night. That theater will also be for student performances, for bringing in smaller artists, again, things that our students already do at the Pine Lounge, but in a space that is a lot more amenable, more forgiving of, a lot of people.

A lot of the programming will take place in the area between the new Knowledge Center and the Crowley Student Union. There’s a beautiful plaza there, and they’ve intentionally designed it so that we can have concerts and things going on outside. Our students have been pretty adamant about this – when the weather is even only 40 or 50 degrees, they’re outside, just as long as the sun is shining. So I think it will be used a vast majority of the time.

The bookstore will be on two levels, and that second level will be critical, because it will be level with Mackay Stadium and the upper part of the hill that runs up to Mackay Stadium. On game days, for both football and basketball games, we will be able to take bookstore merchandise and be able to put things out on that strand of pavement.

This will make the union a much more integral part of athletics, which it hasn’t been in its current location.

M.G.: How does this help us “stretch” the campus?

S.E.: The southern end of campus will become even more the more “historic” piece of campus, while the new end of campus, with the Crowley Union, the Knowledge Center, will be the more modern piece of campus. Both ends will have obvious strengths, and be magnets for different sorts of activities and traffic flow.

M.G.: How will this impact our shuttles?

S.E.: This is another vice president’s area, so I appreciate the opportunity to put in my two cents’ worth, Milt. It’s my hope that they will wipe the slate clean in terms of where the shuttle goes, how often it goes. We need a drop-off at this end of the campus, and this will give us an opportunity to re-think the shuttle routes and how the whole nature of campus will be, if it will be a pedestrian-based campus or one that would have mixed modes of transportation.

M.G.: We want the campus to be a pedestrian campus.

S.E.: Ultimately, the new union gives us an opportunity to re-think our campus and how we navigate it. The No. 1 comment when we recruit, whether it’s students, faculty or staff, is what a beautiful campus we have. We want to keep that look and feel. Our students tell us all the time that they come here because our campus looks … it feels … like a real college campus. The Crowley Union and the Knowledge Center will help us accomplish this even further.

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