At the start of this semester, Angelo Herrera was set to take on the role of advising fraternity and sorority life. However, due to personal reasons, he had to step down from the position and is no longer with Simpson College.
Steven Strope, director of student activities, is taking over the work that Herrera set out to do, and plans to work with Greek life while the college searches for someone to permanently fill the position.
“Before Angelo was hired, I was working directly with the FSL groups anyway,” Strope said. “And then we kind of turned things over to Angelo, because that was what his full-time role was – working directly with them.”
Heidi Levine, vice president for student development and planning, said that the position will be reposted as soon as possible.
“I anticipate that posting will go live probably within the week [while we] get all the paperwork and things squared away, but we will get that posted again both internally and then advertise nationally as we did with the initial search,” Levine said.
They plan on reconvening with a similar search committee to the one they used initially, which will include a representative from a fraternity and a sorority to ensure both voices are heard.
“When we get to the point of doing interviews, [we want to] make sure we have plenty of opportunities for students to meet with any finalists that we bring to campus,” Levine said. “So I think the main takeaway is we are completely committed to refilling the position and getting it refilled as quickly as we can.”
Heather Emery-Cunningham, the associate director of residence life, and Strope will be co-chairing the search committee for the position, as they represent both sides of Greek life.
“She’s the res. life supervisor for them and then the FSL side for me,” Strope said. “We are [also] working with Andy English in the alumni office to identify some alumni to be a part of the search committee. There will be more alumni involved when we actually get to the interview process.”
While it was a sudden departure, this has not halted any plans the FSL had as they come off recruitment season and start planning for Greek Week in the spring.
“Everything right now has basically been ‘okay, how do we get through this initial, like, figuring out some scheduling things,’ but it’s still kind of full go ahead with let’s get to all of our priorities and goals for the year,” Strope said.
Greek life presidents meet bi-weekly as a team, and also have bi-weekly one-on-ones with Strope, which will continue going forward.
“Are things going to be 100% the same as they would have been? No, they won’t, because we have gone now from somebody who had their full-time position working both as the advisor to FSL, but also on the Residence Life side, working directly with the houses; to now, this is something I’m doing in addition to all the other things I’m doing. So there is going to potentially be some drop-off,” Strope said. “I would be naive to say that maybe there won’t be.”
“At the same time, I’m gonna work as hard as I can to make sure that our students are still getting the support and everything that they need in the interim, because as soon as we can hire somebody and go through our hiring process, we’re going to get someone in as quickly as we can because this is a very necessary position. Both for supporting students and also for meeting strategic goals that the college has. And so we really want to make sure that someone is in this position that can give that full-time attention to it,” Strope said?
Nobody has seen or been in contact with Herrera since his departure on Monday, Sept. 25. The reason for his departure is of a private nature and is only known to a select group of people.
