A view from inside campus.
SARAH ROLKA / THE QUADRANGLE
Sarah Rolka, Asst. Features Editor
Introduced this semester, the Kakos School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) at Manhattan University (MU) will roll out a program called the Kakos Compass Program.
The initiative was developed by Dean of KSAS Marcy Kelly, Ph.D., Associate Dean of KSAS Brian Chalk, Ph.D., the KSAS Student Advisory Board, and, in collaboration, Interim Dean of the O’Malley School of Business (OMSB) Grishma Shah, Ph.D. It’s designed to get KSAS students more involved in campus culture and the surrounding New York City community.
In an email sent to all KSAS students, Chalk commented on the program and how the KSAS community will benefit from it.
“The primary goal of Kakos Compass is simple, to encourage you to make the most of your time at MU by taking advantage of the many academic, cultural, professional, and community experiences available beyond the classroom,” Chalk wrote in an email to KSAS students. “In many cases, you’ll be earning points for activities you already participate in; we simply want to recognize and encourage the habits that contribute to a rich and rewarding college experience.”
Along with the program, a new app will be developed by IT in collaboration with another university.
“Beginning next month, MU will have an app available to all students that will include a calendar of eligible events and allow you to record your attendance directly from your phone,” Chalk wrote. “Until then, attendance can be recorded using ID swipe machines and/or QR codes.”
Chalk, in a separate interview with The Quadrangle, explained the idea for the program took shape about a year ago, inspired largely by the success of OMSB’s Passport Program.
“About a year ago, I was talking to Marcy Kelly, [dean of the KSAS], about the possibility of developing a similar program for Kakos, and the idea is to encourage students to attend events on campus, to become involved in the culture on campus, but also to reward them in some way for experiential learning and internships,” Chalk said
OMSB has run its Passport Program for more than a decade. The program was started by professor Aileen Farrelly, former assistant dean for career development at OMSB, someone Shah credits as the driving force behind its success.
“We had an assistant dean… Aileen Farrelly,” Shah said. “[She] developed the program and ran it. She’s really the brains behind it… I was very excited that the Kakos School was going to start something very similar to the Passport program. Imitation is the best form of flattery, and it [did] demonstrate how successful our program has been.”
The KSAS Student Advisory Board helped kickstart the program with its feedback, according to Kelly.
“We formed a student advisory board last year,” Kelly wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “They mentioned that they never knew what activities were going on around campus. [Students] felt that the MU email [and Moodle announcements] that used to come into everyone’s inbox each morning was not helpful… [Eventually] we asked the students if we created an app, how we could get more students to attend events… it was through that conversation that the Kakos Compass was born.”
Ruya Afridi-Dennis, a sophomore biology major and member of the KSAS Student Advisory Board, described what was specifically asked of the board.
“In one of the first meetings, [we were] asked what are the problems we have with our school in our respective situations and majors within Kakos,” Afridi-Dennis said. “[There are] other students who came from history, English, [and various majors] who said, ‘Oh well, the engineers get a lot of funding, they have a lot of events and a lot of alumni connections, and we don’t.’ It’s really important that we advocate for our school and make this ourselves so that we have equal opportunity.”
For Shah, that spirit of collaboration is the through line connecting Kakos Compass to the broader direction MU’s schools are heading.
“I think that overall, in the university, there’s just more ‘reaching across the quad,’ as they would say,” Shah said. “I think we’ve all realized that we [administration] have a very common objective, which is to provide the best experience for our students, and we know that having incentives [and] having programs that bring students to events and get them engaged on campus leads to a really good student experience.”