Q&A with President Sullivan




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  • 2017-10-10 22:05:18
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  A professor, chair of the Economics department, dean of faculty, and a provost - now that Steven Sullivan is the president of AUBG, he feels that all of the positions he has had are an advantage to him in his workplace. Although the presidential duty is still not that familiar to him, he has a lot of plans for the prosperity of the students at AUBG. [caption id="attachment_36864" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]AUBG President Steven Sullivan in his office; Stiliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily AUBG President Steven Sullivan in his office; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] Admissions
“This is the class with the incoming highest average academic credentials in the last 6-7 years,” said President Sullivan about the class of 2021.
Despite the assertion of President Sullivan, some AUBG Alumni have noted that the quality of the new students is, in fact, decreasing. A further mismatch between the positivism of the president and the statistical reports indicate a further drop in the admissions numbers of first-year students for the aforementioned period. Financial Position of AUBG Despite the words of concern by the former President Kulinski during his last Town Hall Meetings about the need for further improvement in the area of fundraising, Sullivan reassured again that AUBG's balance sheet remains in positive terms.
“The financial position of AUBG is as good as it has ever been,” said Sullivan. ”The next step is to circle back to our major supporter, the donors who have been supporting us in the past, so that they know the university is still here, we are still doing good work, that there are great things happening on campus and that they should support us.”  
Seven presidents in 14 years
“Sometimes the Board [of Trustees] and the president don’t get along, and so therefore if someone has to go, it’s the president, because the Board can fire the president, but the president cannot fire the Board,” answered Sullivan.
Another reason why not only presidents but also faculty members leave is that they come from other countries. Eventually, they get homesick, although they like it here.
“People living far away from their home countries, far away from their families, sometimes have difficulties. They get homesick, or their family needs them, or there is a crisis at home,” shared Sullivan. “We’ve lost a couple of presidents for that reasons. They found it a distraction being too far away from home, they couldn’t handle it; they couldn’t give all of the attention to AUBG… That’s the same reason we lose faculty members. They come here and in a couple of years they love the students, they love the town, but at the same time they get too disconnected from the rest of their lives.”
The Admissions Director With the resignation of Boryana Shalyavska, Admission Director until 2015, there was a search for a new head coordinator that ended up with re-hiring the former director.
“We had a search for both candidates from inside Bulgaria and outside Bulgaria and had two finals,” said Sullivan. “The search committee recommended that I interview two candidates, one of them was Shalyavska, the other one was a candidate from the United States.”
“Politically, it might not look good to bring back someone who has already been here before but everyone thought Boryana was the stronger candidate,” said Sullivan. He noted that the difficulty in recruiting first-year students existed before Shalyavska was here and while she was here. For the last 10 years, the number of recruited students has been the same, according to Sullivan. There were times when there were almost 300 students in AUBG but in 2007 Bulgaria joined the EU and the Bulgarian high-school students could go and study in countries such as England, Germany, and other European countries. In retrospect, the president's statement comes in direct conflict with the institutional research numbers conducted last year, showing a decline from a total of 1093 to 920 enrolled students in the period between 2007 and 2017. Increasing Alumni Engagement
“We need to communicate more often, more clearly, more directly with all alumni,” said Sullivan. “We have some new ideas to have special recognition for some alumni who participate; we’re thinking of having some kind of competition for graduating classes to see which class has the highest participation rate in supporting the university.”
The Bookstore Question The bookstore has changed its location multiple times throughout the years. Last year, a lot of students complained about the bookstore being in the basement of Skaptopara II Residence Hall mostly because there were a lot of customers outside the university wandering around the halls of the building. After asking the Student Government (SG) senators what they thought about the location of the bookstore, Sullivan decided to move it to a different place. One option was the Main Building but no one from SG liked the idea. So they decided to bring it back to its old location - where Aspire is now. [caption id="attachment_36856" align="aligncenter" width="285"]Aspire and The Bookstore Aspire and The Bookstore[/caption] They decided to let the bookstore have the whole place where Aspire used to be during the first week when there are a lot of books and Aspire is not needed. When the books are sold out, the bookstore could be in that small area and Aspire would occupy the rest of the space, so the bookstore can be accessible to students. “If it works, we’ll keep it this way. If we don’t like it, next summer we’ll scratch our heads and think of a different solution,” said Sullivan.