Change for better includes people

Three years and some months ago I decided to go out exploring. I was a freshman. Trotting around, I could not help but notice a considerable number of banners hovering around Blagoevgrad. These banners were celebrating AUBG's soon to come 15th anniversary. Yet, the university would not have been celebrating much, had it not balanced its budget. The U.S. accreditation would have been revoked under such conditions. The real pride was not so much in the 15th birthday as it was the fact that it coincided with AUBG being financially stable.

For all the wave of under spoken criticism, Provost Ann Ferren needs to be credited for it. In the decade and a half since its creation, the university achieved a sustainable flow of enrolling students only after Ferren took office. This does not mean that it was solely her achievement, and I believe it would have taken much longer to get there without her. Although not thriving, the institution was also financially stable for the first time. This meant a great lot as AUBG could start attracting donations more effectively. To top it all up, the same year AUBG was given a "very good," or 4 out of 4, from the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency. As former SG Treasurer Giorgi Mariamidze put it, "she has a notebook, and if you see her writing down something in that notebook, it's 1,000 percent sure she will get it done." In my three years that was the only time I remember numerous administration members with smiles on their faces. They were satisfied.

I did not know, what, or who, the provost was, but he/she sounded like a darn great person to me. For all the improvement though, some very important matters apparently never really made it to that notebook. My first impression was soon to change. Perhaps being a freshman, my ideas were more promptly malleable. But I doubt someone could fight the anti-administration feeling radiating from the old JMC department. To make the matters worse, I had my first Office of Communication and Computing (OCC) experience the same day. It was a fatal combination. I'll start with the later.

For reasons to this day unknown to me, I had to go to the OCC to change my AUBG password on their e-mail request. Between the "servera se pak" (the server is down again) and "kakvo e parolata?" (what was the password), the whole procedure took a little less than an hour. For an institution that claimed to have the best in technological means - at least in the brochures - the situation seemed a bit unreal. Fast forward three years and the situation hardly changed. This shortcoming, unfortunately, goes on the provost's tab. Had the OCC not had the strong support from the provost, a faster to adapt, cheaper to maintain and more effective OCC would have long been established.

My second slap in the face for the day was meeting the JMC department. Surprisingly, it wasn't the former chair that gave me the mandatory JMC101a Administration Aggravation tutorial. It was a conversation he was having with a colleague about not being granted a small extra amount of money to hire another professor for the department. At the time the argument looked a bit overstated and taken too personally. However, as the years passed I realized that the JMC department was driving with the hand brake on, and the provost seemed to be holding on to that brake. In fact, money for the much needed JMC equipment was - and we are grateful for it - granted only last financial year. In retrospective, I realize that a bit more diplomacy on both sides could have avoided the headaches and kicked JMC up three or four levels. Unfortunately, there was a clear and willing lack of support toward the department, leaving it handicapped, even if things are starting to change.

As the cliché goes, change is the only constant. AUBG is moving from survival to success and the steps needed to achieve this success are going to be ever greater and harder. Therefore, change for the better needs to become a constant at AUBG, and it will involve changing some people. The provost is doing, again, what is right for AUBG and for this we need to thank her. We need to thank her - and we owe her a lot - for having been here and helping this university survive. More importantly, we need to thank her for not overstaying her welcome. With that said, I wish the provost a happy retirement and a successful pursuit of her dreams.