Office of Academic Affairs

March 26, 2012

To: The University Community

From: Joseph A. Alutto, Executive Vice President and Provost 

To further enhance and streamline the university’s services to our students, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience will move from Enarson Hall to the Student Academic Services building.  In addition, the university’s Hale Center, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the Office of Outreach and Engagement will move all operations into Enarson Hall.  

These moves, which are expected to be completed by May 2013, will build on our goal of the ultimate one-stop-shop for our students and will be paid for through the significant cost-savings that will be achieved by these consolidations.

As a result of these streamlining moves, all key academic service functions will be housed in the Student Academic Services building, and campus tours will operate out of the new Ohio Union.  In addition, 80 employees from the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion will be able to share a central location in Enarson Hall, where before they were spread out in a number of university facilities. 

Further, the university’s Hale Center will be able to fulfill its long-term goal of moving to one of the most premier locations on central campus.  The opportunity for the Hale Center to move into the historic home of the university’s first student union will certainly benefit the more than 100,000 students and visitors who come to the Hale Center each year.  We all regret, however, that Dr. Frank Hale was unable to see his dream come true of moving Hale Hall to more expansive and aesthetically pleasing quarters.

The six-story Student Academic Services Building opened in 2009 and houses core functions such as: admissions, registrar, financial aid, bursar, and the student service center.  These program adjacencies will enable the university to provide greater service to our students.

The Frank W. Hale Jr. Center, considered one of the finest Black Cultural Centers in the country, serves many academic units and the larger Columbus community as classroom space and a programmatic site for dialogue on race, politics, economics, art and culture.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which oversees the Hale Center, is also home to the Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, the Americans with Disabilities Act program (ADA), the nine-city Young Scholars Program, as well as home to a wide-range of retention, mentoring, scholarship, and access programs for Ohio State’s many diverse student populations.