By: Summer Wu, Co-Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n
After a few months of absence due to her undergoing surgery, Dr. Sharp was finally able to make room in her busy schedule for an interview.\u00a0 Welcomed into her office, I was immediately struck by her warm persona and caring, almost grandmotherly, smile. Turns out, she indeed became a grandmother just under a year ago!<\/p>\n
Prior to joining the IMSA family, Dr. Sharp worked in a variety of administrative capacities, from serving as a hall director for undergraduates (similar to IMSA RCs) to running academic support programs (IMSA parallels include the Writing Center and IRC). After growing up in the rolling hills of rural Boscobel, Wisconsin, she received her Bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology and sociology at the University of Wisconsin Platteville. Seeking work experience, she spent a few years at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, where she came to realize that student development was her calling. Soon, she had earned a PhD in urban education at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Just before coming to IMSA, Dr. Sharp served as an associate Vice President at Harper College. No matter what her title, however, her goal has always been \u201cto bring together different people from across campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Q: When you came to IMSA, what surprised you? What were you prepared for and what were you not prepared for?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: They\u2019re mostly good surprises at IMSA. Some of the best surprises are the enthusiasm and spirit of the student body here, which just permeates every student I have met. You don\u2019t always see that at a school. The faculty and staff here are fantastic. This is one of those places that every person dreams of working, and likes to see things happen, because people carry their own load and go above and beyond.\u00a0<\/span>The things I was prepared for were some of the things people shared with me during the interview process, as to some of the accreditation things we need to work on this year. There are a variety of other pieces where you see the tip of the iceberg, but there\u2019s this HUGE amount underneath. I don\u2019t want to say it was surprising, but it\u2019s something that takes time to learn, especially when I\u2019m working with people who have been here for quite some time.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: What are some of the main issues you are currently working on at IMSA?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: Last year we had a visit by the Advanced Ed program, which is the program under which we\u2019re accredited, and we had some things that when they left they said, \u201cthese are some things we want you to work on.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0One of the things we\u2019re working on right now with a group from across the campus is a school improvement plan, where you look at \u201cwhat are we doing right now that in the next year or two, we want to make improvements on, usually in student learning.\u201d A big piece of it is the assessment of SSLs that the leaders of each of the academic departments are working on; they\u2019ve been working on it for some time, but now they\u2019re documenting it.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Where do you see IMSA in one year? What will have changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: I think the biggest thing with this plan is we really will have it on paper and know what we\u2019re doing and be taking the information and saying \u201cwhat do we learn from it\u201d and \u201cnow what do we want to do because we\u2019ve learned that.\u201d It sounds like a very slow process, but to go through identifying and laying that out in a document is hard work; it\u2019s thinking about \u201cwhat does it really mean\u201d and then \u201cwhat can we do.\u201d It\u2019s easy to say sometimes, \u201cwell, let\u2019s count this, it\u2019s easy to count,\u201d but then it doesn\u2019t help you get at what the real issues are underneath it that you need to change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: How will this trickle down to what the students see, for instance, the sophomores next year?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: We may have some new programs in place that we\u2019ll have them involved with. For example, one of the assessment things that we\u2019ve learned is that students who get a C or less in the SI Bio will always get a C or less in their next biology classes. Mastery of the materials in SI Bio is really important. This past summer, we had students who got a C or less in SI Bio take an online course to bring up their skill set. If it works, we\u2019ll expect all sophomores who get a C or less to take the program.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Where do you see IMSA in five years, or even ten years?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: Some days I feel so new at what I\u2019m doing and envisioning that it\u2019s hard to get to that point just yet. I would hope that by then we\u2019ve got some very mature things that we\u2019re doing, and that we\u2019ve made some leaps and bounds, changes that we feel will really make a difference for students and that we\u2019re seeing the results.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Are there any specific ideas or changes that you\u2019d like to bring to IMSA?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: Right now, no. My whole vision when I came was to work with folks here, see what they were doing, see where they wanted to go, see what boundaries or what pieces were thrown in their pathway that stopped them from doing what they do, and seeing what we could do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Last year there was a lot of controversy over the rules at IMSA. For example, one article published in the Acronym was called the \u201cIllinois Malnutrition and Sleep Deprivation Academy,\u201d which described the overbearing nature of a lot of the rules at IMSA, and later on in the year, there was an article published, called \u201cStudent Life, Student Death,\u201d which talked about stifling creativity. Many students and alumni think that IMSA over the years has changed from a school that encouraged creativity and exploration to where we are today. How can we help meet the school’s requirements and still encourage the mission statement that IMSA strives to accomplish?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: I\u2019d say as creative as you all are, there is lots of time for creativity, and it probably isn\u2019t between 2 and 5 in the morning. There\u2019s a lot of other things we can do in ways that are still honorable on both sides to be creative, to do those kinds of things, to get people together, and then to balance it, to figure out how much energy do we have to give to the many tasks we want to do and then how do we lay those out over the three years we\u2019re here to do them well, and do them well honorably for ourselves as a physical being as well as a creative mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Do you think it\u2019s fair for the entire student body to suffer the consequences of one person\u2019s actions?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: Probably not, and I would guess, but I don\u2019t know, that we probably didn\u2019t do some things based on just one. I\u2019d guess that there\u2019s a pattern, because people here tend to study a pattern and make a decision based on a pattern, and the legal ramifications.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: What is your honest impression of the class of 2013?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: You guys are fun; you have a lot of energy. I have a limited experience with the whole group\u2014 there was that one meeting at the beginning of the year\u2014 but I liked some of the ideas that came out of that, especially the ideas on how you would treat others. I really think that you are the leaders; people look up to you.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: What did you think about the comments on trolling?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: I had some questions about what was that exactly, well certainly the language is a little bit different from what I would understand. I think the one thing that struck me, was that after that meeting, I had three of your classmates come see me to apologize for the wild behavior and comments made because they had higher expectations of each other. There are always those rascal comments.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Summer Wu, Co-Editor-in-Chief After a few months of absence due to her undergoing surgery, Dr. Sharp was finally able to make room in her…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":8784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019],"tags":[1635,1031,1338,1636],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-imsanews","tag-dr-sharp","tag-imsa","tag-interview","tag-principal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8783"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8788,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions\/8788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8783"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}