Robin Geller PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

The road ahead for ARR

DANIEL McCABE | For a woman who has just been handed one of the most important jobs in the whole University, Robin Geller seems remarkably relaxed. Those squash matches she regularly plays at the Currie Gym must be doing wonders for her. Mind you, people who know her portray Geller as a woman who can keep her cool under pressure. It's a useful character trait for someone to have when they head up a university's admissions, registrar's and recruitment operations. Geller is currently sandwiched between two jobs. She is spending half the week finishing up her duties as the Faculty of Law's assistant dean of admissions. The other half of the week is spent as McGill's new registrar and director of the Admissions, Recruitment and Registrar's (ARR) Office. In February, Geller takes on the ARR gig full-time. "She is smart, energetic and has lots of common sense and good judgement," says Associate Vice-Principal (Academic) Nicholas de Takacsy, who sat on the committee that recommended Geller for her new position. "She looked like the type of person the University could rely on for many years to come." "She has done an excellent job in the Faculty of Law," adds Vice-Principal (Academic) Bill Chan. "She has a real commitment to student service and she'll bring that to this position." Apart from getting used to the new boss, Geller's staff will have some other major adjustments to make. The Recruitment and Liaison Office, for the past two years a stand-alone entity, is being formally folded into the Admissions and Registrar's Office -- hence the new moniker, ARR. Geller holds degrees in civil engineering and in law. "Having studied two different disciplines, I think that gives her a fairly broad perspective of the academic needs of a university," comments Chan. Before joining McGill as the assistant dean in law in 1995, Geller worked for the federal Department of Justice and the Canadian Bar Association. She says she applied for the ARR job because "the person in this position has the opportunity to have a tremendously positive impact on students' lives." Although she is still awfully new in her role, Geller has a clear sense of some of her priorities. "There is a perception out there that this office isn't sufficiently student-friendly. I'm not prepared to accept that as a given, but I want to look into it. If it isn't accurate, I want to dispel the notion. If it is accurate, we have to fix things. "In any case, we have to make sure that the processes work as well as possible, that the interface with students is as positive as possible and that students are served in as timely a fashion as possible." Another challenge will be in absorbing the RLO. The RLO was given a three-year trial mandate in 1997 as an independent unit. The idea was to give more emphasis to McGill's student recruitment efforts. The bulk of McGill's students has traditionally been drawn from Montreal's anglophone community, but with that community in decline, the University has had to expand its recruitment efforts. The RLO has done a good job -- undergraduate applications from the U.S. are up 27% in the past year, for instance. Why run the risk of knocking a productive unit off track by changing its administrative structure? "That danger exists and I'm very conscious of it," says Geller. "The RLO did what it set out to do -- in spades. "That being said, people felt it was vital that we put forward a reasonably seamless front to potential applicants and students. We need closer coordination than we've been able to get in the last two years." Adds de Takacsy, "Students don't want to be recruited, they want to be admitted. It's very important that recruitment and admissions have a very close link and the current structure didn't favour that kind of link. The intent [in RLO being absorbed by ARR] is that all the great stuff that has happened shouldn't be lost." "Ensuring that staff morale isn't damaged by the changes is a priority," says Geller. "This kind of reintegration can be very difficult for people and I want the process to be smooth." To make the transition easier, Anne Roussell, the director of RLO, will remain in that position until the end of May and carry on in an advisory role until the end of the year. "I'll be part of the planning process," says Roussell. De Takascy says the timing of the move is connected to Geller's arrival. "With a new person in place, it just seemed to make sense to do it now." Mariela Johansen, the long-time director of admissions (and, more recently, the registrar as well), retired in December. Geller will also oversee the step-by-step adoption of McGill's new student records system. "Once it's all in place, we'll no longer have separate admissions and registration databases -- right now, if you're in one database and you need something from the other, you have to stop and download. There will be much less data entry, it will be much easier to keep track of students and much easier to get information from students' files. "It will take time to set up, but in the end, we'll have a quicker, more student-friendly way of doing things." Geller served on the Faculty of Law's equity committee and praises the work of the Senate subcommittee that recently released its report on educational equity at McGill. Among the report's recommendations: that McGill spend more time recruiting new students from groups that are underrepresented in the student body -- aboriginal, francophone and Latin American students, for instance. "The whole concept of educational equity is something that is very dear to my heart," says Geller. "I want to focus a lot of attention on that as part of our recruitment effort. There are groups who haven't traditionally seen university as being a part of their lives and I would like to try to reach out to them." For now, Geller knows she has to attend to more urgent matters. "The first priority is to get through the current admissions cycle -- to meet all the deadlines for sending out acceptances and for sending out scholarship offers. Then, I want to take a hard look at the budget and see what our staffing needs are."