Wednesday, October 12, Georgetown’s Chief Operating Officer, Christopher Augostini held the first “Hoya Roundtable” to ask students how Georgetown could best serve them.

New to the job, Augostini started the meeting by saying, ”The best way for me to orient my self to the issues to the student body was simply to ask you.”

There were only about ten or so student in attendance who were not affiliated with the Roundtables innitiative, and they were vastly outnumbered by administrators and staff who packed the room. Luckily, the Google Moderator questions ensured that the most pressing issues were addressed–well, they were at least mentioned.

Let’s go over the highlights:

Technology services

Kevin Murphy, interim Chief Information Officer, presented on behalf of UIS.

• They have ordered the antennae to give wireless for Copley lawn, and they should arrive in about 45 days. Similar wireless for Healy lawn are due to be installed next spring.
• Faculty and staff and being moved to Google mail, so they will have full access to apps like Google Calendar, Docs, etc.
• They are looking into programs like lecture capture and additional printing locations
• They are planning on changing printing to five cents per page. Murphy admitted that the cost was arbitrary and mainly intended to discourage students from printing “hundreds of thousands” of pages.

Facilities Management

• Work orders: annually, facilities gets 40,000-50,000 work orders, and they received around 2-3,000 work orders per week during the first month of school. They are looking into buying a new computer system to manage the number of orders.
• Facilities also addressed the state of some of the rest rooms on campus. They were in stark disagreement with one student in the audience about the state of women’s restrooms in the ICC.

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This Wednesday, Chief Operating Officer Christopher Augostini will be holding a forum with University leaders in the Department of Public Safety, auxiliary services, student housing, facilities, and University Information Services to solicit student feedback. The event, held in Sellinger Lounge from 5 p.m. will be the first of a series of discussions in an effort to increase conversation between students and University offices.

The series, called the Hoya Roundtables, was set in place by Augostini over the summer.

“I just need to know what [the] issues are. Right now at the moment, I’m not quite clear if I fully understand all the issues that students want to lay out for me that that I should understand,” said Augostini.

He used concerns with technology at Georgetown as an example. “The issue of wireless has really improved … [students say] it’s better but there is [more]. I understand the issue of technology but I want to get more granular.”

Augostini, who assumed the position of COO last summer in addition to his responsibilities overseeing the Office of Financial Affairs, said the Roundtables were a vehicle he was going to use in his new role to improve responsiveness to issues of student life.

Over the summer, Augostini first met with student leaders on campus to gauge some of the issues that were most relevant to students. He then met with the management team to come up with a structure that they believed would be most effective way to reach students.

“I don’t want it to be just me talking to the students,” Augostini said. “I want it to be a venue for them to raise issues and I wanted not just me responding, but whoever the head of that unit is.”

The structure of the Roundtables is flexible, and will be modified if they find that it is not the most effective way of reaching out to students.

Michael Wang (MSB ’07) has been working with Augostini’s office to reach out to student leaders. “[We reached out to] the Corp, GUSA, the Credit Union to the Chinese Student Alliance, LASA…. Not just what you would think as the top three student organizations, but to cover what Georgetown represents across the University. There are a lot of voices that aren’t heard but we really tried to cover [them all],” said Wang.

“Frankly if one student shows up, we’ll have the event,” said Augostini. “Every institution has lots of constraint, but to the extent we can’t respond, we have an obligation to tell you why.”

Edit: Here’s the link to the Google Moderator they are using to collect questions beforehand.

Victor Reinoso (SFS ’91), D.C.’s former deputy mayor of education under Mayor Adrian Fenty, will join Georgetown University as an “new project development” advisor to University President John DeGioia and Chief Financial Officer Christopher Augostini.

Reinoso will advise DeGioia and Augostini about “international education, distance learning and long-term strategic development.”

“Victor’s more than 15 years of experience in senior leadership positions in government and the private sector will serve the community well as he helps to implement new strategic opportunities for Georgetown,” Augostini said in a press release.

Reinoso, who served under Fenty from 2007 to 2010, faced his fair share of difficulties as a deputy mayor. Although he had oversight of public school construction and the school system’s social services, D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Office of Public Education Facililties Modernization Executive Director Allen Lew “ran their operations with unquestioned authority,” writes the Washington Post‘s Bill Turque, leaving Reinoso “largely elbowed to the margins.”

Reinoso also faced intense scrutiny from the D.C. City Council in 2007 after admitting that a D.C. schools report published by his office plagiarized whole passages from a North Carolina school system’s strategic plan. From that point forward, his relationship with the Council was strained to say the least. (And to top off his tenure in D.C. politics, one of Reinoso’s assistants was fired in 2007 for hanging nude photos of her boyfriend all over D.C. Public School headquarters.)

Prior to joining Fenty’s administration, Reinoso worked for the Federal City Council and a number of start-up companies in the nonprofit and private sectors.

Photo: DCist

Earlier this month, University President John DeGioia, SFS Dean Carol Lancaster, and Chief Financial Officer Christopher Augostini visited New Dehli to meet alumni and explore the future of Indian higher education.

“The delegation focused on productive and effective ways to engage in India with a variety of possible counterparts,” Lancaster said in a press release. “It also sought to strengthen ties with Georgetown graduates in that large, dynamic and important country.”

Last July, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal met with Spiros Dimolitsas, Georgetown’s chief administrative officer, to discuss the possibility of building a campus in India. At the time, University spokesperson Juile Green Bataille downplayed any potential partnership.

“There’s no specifics regarding Georgetown and India,” Bataille wrote. “As we do routinely with a variety of entities, Georgetown is exploring opportunities to develop a range of possible partnerships in India that could further the university’s mission.”

During the trip, Georgetown’s delegation also participated in a conference organized by India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. DeGioia’s keynote address at the conference highlighted the need for educational partnerships between India and colleges around the world.

“When we assemble talent from every corner of the globe, when we can connect that talent in new collaborative partnerships, and when the decisions made in one place can affect the lives of people in many other places,” he said. “I believe we need to acknowledge a new kind of responsibility to engage in the world.”

h/t Georgetown University