Time pressures have simply pushed this task down on daily agendas. Kellie Harmon, my very able assistant, was quite efficient in pulling together the data for the year, but her effort has had to await some open places in my schedule for completion of the report. A statistical summary is provided on page 2, and the following comments should be helpful in interpreting those figures. A few observations and concerns are elaborated on pages 3 and 4.
Initial contacts tend to come more often by telephone or e-mail, and they vary greatly in length.
Office visits, whether as first contacts or follow-ups, will usually involve an hour or considerably more time. All units that have developed new procedures have sent copies to this office as well as to the other required recipients. It has been important to look over each of those in order for us to be familiar with the developments there, but we trimmed the number of those contacts, well over 40 in all, to a round number of 20. A significant change from previous years was a major increase in student problems with regulations, requirements or practices in academic units. Another change is an increase of issues and conflicts brought to the ombudsman from non-instructional staff, both unclassified and classified.