And welcome to the Vice Chancellor's Notes website! So what's the deal with this? Well, my name is Sam Miller, I'm your Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and I'm planning to post these notes every few weeks to help facilitate communication on campus. I'll share information, answer questions, and respond to your concerns. As your Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, every day I'm working on various student issues or representing student interests in the administration. I'm also new to Western - I moved to Cullowhee back in August - so I'm looking forward to learning more about you and what students think about Western.

To get your questions and feedback, my office has a special email setup for these notes: vc-notes@wcu.edu You write to this email, I'll read ‘em, and if I can't respond, I'll make sure someone gets back to you. Then in my future notes, I'll cut and paste some of the questions I receive along with the answers I find out. I'll also address any rumors or concerns or just odd questions that you might have on your mind. These notes will also be a chance for me to write to you about serious issues that come up, for example...

Unfortunately last week a security situation occurred at Appalachian State and tragically two more colleges experienced a shooting death in their campus community. The senseless deaths of the young women at Auburn and UNC-Chapel Hill along with the tragic incident a few weeks ago at Northern Illinois University remind us that violence can occur anywhere. Even before the Virginia Tech tragedy last year, Western began a review our preparedness and our procedures to enhance our ability to respond to a University-wide crisis on our campus. Some of the most important initiatives underway involve creating new ways to communicate with the campus community in the event of an emergency. 

As you know, your safety is a paramount concern at Western. We will continue to rely on MyCat and your WCU email to send you important notices. Now, in the event of an emergency, Western has the ability to send emergency text or voice messages to your phone, if you provide us with your number. Please go to www.wcu-campus.info and sign in as a student with CatTracker so that we can reach you in an emergency. You will notice that there is also a category for parents/guardians. Talk it over with your family and enter their contact information for emergency use only. Be assured we will use this notification system only when it is absolutely necessary – you will not receive commercial messages or spam through CatTracker. It will be used only in an emergency. Let me encourage you to help us get in touch with you in a crisis. Enter your contact information at www.wcu-campus.info and encourage your friends to sign in, too.

Now back just before spring break there was a rumor circulating around campus...

My office and the folks over at Health Services received a bunch of calls regarding a rumor that WCU would cancel classes because so many students have the flu. I know some of you were hoping this would happen, but this is so totally not true! While there have been a lot of cases of flu over the last few weeks, we haven't seen more cases than were expected. The University has not discussed canceling classes or any sort of a shutdown for this semester's annual flu outbreak. The folks in Health Services tell me that the flu vaccines didn't include the strain of flu spreading this year so nationwide there are more cases, and more severe cases than we have in a more normal year. But again, we're not seeing a level of cases that would cause the University to close. Several of us administrator types were scratching our heads on how this rumor got started and here's our theory: We have been working on a plan for the possibility of a future pandemic outbreak of Bird Flu, and in that sort of emergency universities around the country would cancel classes. But we're not talking about anything like that for this year's flu season - rumor busted.

Changing the subject...

One complaint I hear a lot is there is nothing to do at Western. I have to admit, it can be really frustrating to find out what's happening on campus, but when I've asked around, it's surprising just how much there is to do on any given night or weekend on campus. We really need a web-based events calendar that has everything on it, but for now anyways, we have this website: http://r25web.wcu.edu/wv3 So to help spread the word about activities on campus I'll feature a couple of events or student organizations in every issue of the notes. If your group has an event you'd like me to plug, email that to me and I'll use a couple whenever I post one of these notes.

To get started, I'd like to highlight what the folks over at the Western Carolinian are doing. The student editors are working to transform the WC back into a newspaper. For the last several years the Western Carolinian has been more of a news magazine publication, with special interest articles and relatively little campus news. They did a nice job with that format, but the new student editors have decided that they needed to become more of a newspaper. I for one am really excited to see the new format and want to congratulate everyone involved for making this successful transition. For any students interested in writing or becoming a photographer, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of the new WC and contact the editors - I know they are looking for students that want to get involved.

Another set of events is coming up... Women's History Month. This year's theme is “Women's Art, Women's Vision” and will continue through April 9th with “The Century Project Exhibit” – an award winning art exhibit that explores body image and aging through photography. Look for one of the posters or event announcements and take advantage of the great events lined up this month.

Finally…

Spring is almost here! I hope everyone had a great break and came back rested and relaxed. Okay, maybe just relaxed…. Anyway, there are just a few weeks left in the semester, so hit the books and finish strong!

Well, I guess that's it for the first VC Note. Thanks for reading and don't forget to send in those emails to vc-notes@wcu.edu . Until the next note... Take care and look out for each other!

- Sam