Staff and Cabinet

Dr. Eileen DeLuca
Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff

239-590-1061

edeluca@fgcu.edu

Colin Hargis
Director of Intercollegiate Athletics

239-590-7007

chargis@fgcu.edu

Jennifer Goen
Director of Government Relations 

239-590-1020

jgoen@fgcu.edu

 

Bill Foster
Director of Internal Audit 

239-590-1709

wfoster@fgcu.edu

 

Daniel Hoover
Ombuds 

239-590-1022

dhoover@fgcu.edu

Precious Gunter
Chief Equity, Ethics, and Compliance Officer and Title IX Coordinator

239-745-4366

pgunter@fgcu.edu

Dear FGCU Employees, The university is embarking on a new method of managing, collecting and evaluating the work we are doing in each of our units. This is key to ensuring we are meeting the goals and objectives of the university’s new strategic plan – "Innovating for Student Success: FGCU’s Journey to Excellence.” To ensure all individual goals feed into academic and administrative unit goals, managers will be attending mandatory workshops with Human Resources September 10-20. Your direct supervisor will then share more information on what to expect from this year’s goal-setting process. From there, each unit and individual will have until October 15 to set their goals for the year. Looking ahead, our year-end evaluation and report process will culminate on June 30, 2025. For now, please review the strategic plan and think about how your individual role fits into the larger goals of the university. We know this is a change in how we talk about performance and goal setting at FGCU. If you have additional questions, please contact your divisional vice president for assistance. Aysegul Timur, Ph.D. |  FGCU President Mark Rieger, Ph.D. |  Division of Academic Affairs Tony Barringer, Ed.D. |  Division of Academic Affairs Eileen DeLuca, Ph.D. |  Division of Student Success & Enrollment Management David Vazquez |  Division of Administrative Services & Finance Kitty Green  |  Division of University Advancement Lisa Jones |  Division of Legal Affairs

Good afternoon, Eagles.

In June, President Aysegul Timur announced the news that FGCU received the final piece of funding necessary to move forward with the construction of Academic Building 10, our next facility on campus. Today, we are excited to share that we have selected a location for this building.

AB10 will be built in Parking Lot 7 in space currently occupied by the Student Health Services modular and Modular 4, which is home to the Campus Food Pantry. Site work has not been scheduled at this time, but when it does the modulars in this area will be temporarily staged in another area of campus. This will be communicated broadly ahead of time. An image of the initial site plan is attached to this email.

AB10 is meant to be an extension of our successful health sciences program through the Marieb College of Health & Human Services. The facility will become home to Student Health Services, the Shady Rest Institute on Positive Aging and several other programs and initiatives on campus.

The location for AB10 was endorsed by FGCU’s design committee and affirmed by the executive committee overseeing the facility’s development. A memorandum outlining the committee’s recommendation to Cabinet is also attached.

FGCU Cabinet sends its appreciation to the committee members who have worked diligently on this project, and we thank our staff, faculty and students who have been part of this process.

Construction of the building will take about two and half years, and we are now moving forward with finalizing the building design to ensure it meets the needs of the programs and offices that will be housed in AB10. We look forward to providing our campus community with additional updates.

Dear Eagle Family,

At FGCU, we believe that our employees are our greatest asset. Your commitment and contributions are the driving force behind the university’s success, and every member of our workforce plays a critical role in our Journey to Excellence.

As part of our commitment to enhancing our work culture, we are thrilled to announce the launch of a new Employee Milestone Recognition Program. The revamped program launches in January 2025, and it is designed to celebrate the incredible dedication and hard work of our employees as they reach significant milestones in their careers at FGCU.

Here’s What You Can Expect:

• Milestone Years: FGCU employees will be recognized at key milestone years, beginning at their first-year anniversary! The milestones are celebrated at years 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30. Employees will receive certificates from their supervisors, and the envelope will include instructions on how employees can pick up their milestone gifts.
• Personalized Recognition: Each milestone year will be celebrated with a specially selected, branded gift and acknowledgment from the university. FGCU is keeping the milestone gifts a surprise for the first month of the Employee Milestone Recognition Program, so be sure to follow the directions provided with your certificate so you can pick up your gift. (Details on the gifts will be announced in February.)
• Timing of Gifts: Milestone recognitions will occur by the anniversary month of when you were hired. Because this is a new initiative, FGCU will be retroactively awarding milestone recognitions during the first month of the program. Employees who reached a milestone between July 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024, will also be recognized with our January milestones.
• Previous Year Recognition: We understand the importance of recognizing all our employees’ milestones, including those who have recently reached a milestone year. Starting in February 2025, we will honor employees with a special gift that represents the most recent milestone they have achieved. For example, an employee who has reached their seventh year with FGCU would receive recognition for their fifth-year milestone.

Thank you to Human Resources and Business Services for taking the lead on this wonderful employee recognition initiative. We look forward to celebrating many more milestones with you!

If you have any questions, please contact Jana Sabo at jsabo@fgcu.edu.

Hello, Eagle Family!

Our executive leadership team has recognized the hard work of our staff and faculty throughout the year, and we want to reward you with an extra paid holiday. Monday, December 23, is now considered a Presidential Holiday on our Human Resources’ calendar for 2024.

For those who have approved time off on this date, please have your supervisor correct your time off. Supervisors, click here to access a Workday Job Aid to guide you on the process for correcting time off for an employee (see page 4).

As a reminder, we are already observing the following holidays:

• Presidential Holiday: Tuesday, December 24
• Christmas Day: Wednesday, December 25
• Winter Break: Thursday, December 26, through Wednesday, January 1. We return Thursday, January 2, following the observance of New Year’s Day. 

We hope you will use this extra day off to rest up and enjoy time with your family and friends. Thank you for all you do for the FGCU community, especially our students.

Good morning,

As you may recall, the FGCU Board of Trustees approved in September the first phase of a workforce housing project near West Lake Village. As part of this project, FGCU is conducting a survey to evaluate the current housing market and identify opportunities to better support our faculty and staff.

All FGCU employees will receive an email from noreply@qemailserver.com with an invitation to participate in this voluntary survey. The survey will take about 10 minutes of your time, and the questionnaire will remain open until January 10.

We want you to know your feedback will remain confidential. The survey is being administered through Brailsford & Dunlavey, a nationally recognized, independent consulting firm.

We appreciate your assistance in providing feedback on this important topic. FGCU will use the information collected to assist us in addressing the current needs of faculty and staff while planning for the future.

If you have questions about the survey, contact survey@bdconnect.com.

Hello, Eagle Family!

About two months ago, President Timur announced our next steps forward related to the feedback received from the “Great Colleges to Work For” survey about our work culture and environment. Since then, president’s cabinet members and campus-wide leaders, including the deans of our colleges and schools, hosted conversations about the survey results in their areas. Based on feedback from these conversations and the data supplied by our ModernThink consultant, FGCU’s executive leadership team has identified four focus areas for our improvement strategy:

• Develop institutional values to guide our daily behaviors and expectations of how others should act
• Build trust, connection and supportive pathways to senior leadership to provide an inclusive and supportive workplace environment
• Enhance our shared governance across campus to increase faculty and staff participation in campus-wide decision-making
• Engender employee well-being and job satisfaction with Human Resources’ programs, the expansion of professional development opportunities and a communications process that addresses how information in shared.

This leads us to our next phase in the process: action planning. The primary goal of this phase is to learn how to transform abstract goals or objectives into tangible, actionable steps. This empowers FGCU to turn aspirations for workplace excellence into concrete achievements with systematic planning, the execution of those plans and evaluation.

In the coming weeks, our college and school deans, as well as our campus leaders, will participate in action-planning training, which will then filter down to our academic chairs and department leaders. Collectively, they will learn about the process of action planning and how we can make our campus environment the best it can be for all employees.

We are also launching three working groups that will assist in the work ahead:

• Taskforce on FGCU Governance: An advisory group that will work on more fully promoting the accomplishments of the university’s unique vision and mission through shared responsibility and accountability among stakeholders. This group will build on the successful work of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) Shared Governance Work Group, increasing the scope of the effort to include the staff and faculty perspective.
• Taskforce on FGCU Values: An advisory group that will focus on defining, through campus engagement efforts, the behaviors we expect of ourselves and one another as members of the Eagle Family.
• Employee Engagement Collective: An advisory group that will bring together the insights of the Internal Communications Committee, Human Resources and other employee advocacy groups from across campus to discuss elements that can be added to our work life to make FGCU a better place to work.

If you would like to be considered for a taskforce position, let us know by filling out the Employee Experience Champion form online by February 28. Those who have already filled out the forms do not need to take further action, and we thank you for raising a hand in helping build a better workplace at FGCU.