Adrian Bautista served as Community Coordinator in Oberlin’s Multicultural Resource Center from 1996 until 1999, and after that he became the Bonners Scholar program director. In 2001 he went on to help develop two first-year programs in Lorain County Community College and was also taught first-year classes there. He came back to Oberlin this year as an associate dean of students, class dean for the first-year class of 2008.

You decided to come back to Oberlin and to take on the position of Associate Dean of students and Dean of Student Life in Oberlin this year. How have things changed?

It definitely has changed. It’s the same but it’s different. I see so many familiar faces, it’s nice to have them around, it helps very much day to day. I didn’t have that many familiar faces in the student population anymore, the Bonners Class I had graduated in 2004, but some of them stuck around. In terms of physical changes, the Science Center was still in progress when I left. Oh, and I also bump into a lot more Ohio students now, which I like because I am from Bowling Green.

Many changes took place in the Dean of Students Office last year and Oberlin started the academic year with a very different staff. What are your observations of the work of the office so far, the people, the atmosphere?

July 1 was kind of comical, everybody was moving in their offices, Barbara was going crazy giving out keys. But I knew the people I was working with because we met over the summer, Shozo, Eric and I, since we were running for the same position. Wonderful people. And we very intentionally work together where our jobs intersect. I knew the people who worked here, Rachel and Bill Stackman, they were amazing, but the people we have are great and we work well with and for the students. In my job description it is stated that we should increase the multicultural resources, and Shozo and I are working on enhancing them. One thing that students are talking about is resurrecting the Brotherhood, which is a support group for men of color on campus, black and Latino men, and that includes working with people from Lorain. This is a great way of increasing our resources.

There have been student concerns recently that some issues that are of importance have not been properly addressed, for instance, the Wilder renovation didn’t find a place on the agenda of the last strategic planning meeting. Do you think there is enough communication between the students and administration on issues that are important?

I think that from the Deans of Students Office perspective there is very good communication. Every Thursday we have at least 10 or 20 students coming in to Deans Are In and talk about random issues they have. First thing I did this year as a class dean of the class of 2008, was to organize the first-year student council. Deans Are Out and About is also a great opportunity to meet with students. I think this week Shozo and Eric went out to Lord/Saunders. Basically I think that the Wilder renovation is a great idea, because this is the physical place where we all meet. I have not been part of any official conversations, but I have talked to students about it and it’s definitely a concern.

You and Shozo Kawaguchi are in charge of a project that works with first-year students and helps them adapt. How did this idea come along and what is its purpose?

There are several goals behind this project. First and foremost is to gather information from students about how their transition in coming to college is going. For example we ask them about orientation and we pass the information we get along to the people who organize orientation. But mostly we want to find out the stories behind the experience. This really helps to get to know the students. We gather information from them and direct them to someone who can answer their questions. It’s really interesting to talk to the students about this transition, I never thought that time management is such a big issue. I think again that this is the idea of collaborative effort that this office is modeling, the vision we had when we were hired here.

How is the development of the program going?

Right now we’re considering first round conversation with students and in December we will share the information with other students who participate as peers and other administrators who serve as facilitators. We will meet with 10 other administrators and discuss the issues whether positive or negative and then in the spring we will see how these issues have been faced. Then in the end of spring semester we will have another session. We ask the students about their opinion on first-year seminar programs, on orientation, residence halls and others. Our goal is to have 50 to 75 students to talk to and I think that’s a pretty good number.