by AUTUMN BIPPERT//Editorial Assistant
South Plains College recently appointed Dr. Lynne Cleavinger as the replacement for the new dean of students.
Dr. Cleavinger had been serving as the Director of Health and Wellness at SPC, a position she will continue to hold until a replacement is found.
“I have a really, really solid Health and Wellness group,” said Dr. Cleavinger. “The Associate Director of Health and Wellness is amazing, which is our nurse. And then I have great clinical staff, and all of the other staff at Health and Wellness do really, really well. I try to work a little extra and take care of their needs whenever and try to give them whatever they need.”
Dr. Cleavinger says that she took this new position to get closer to the student body and work with them more to improve the student body as much as possible.
“I think that, for me, it was an opportunity to be able to work with students in a different way and be involved in a different way,” said Dr. Cleavinger of what intrigued her about the dean position. “Use situations that can be seen as not good, in terms of discipline, to help students get on the right path, to be able to reach their potential and where they want to go.”
“It’s a different avenue for that, and that was interesting to me exciting to me,” she adds.
“I think there are so many things that Student Services can do, and this is just one other way for me to be a part of that in a lot of different areas.”
With this new position, Dean Cleavinger says she wants to continue with the work that the Students Services office had been doing, and work with all of student services to improve as much as possible.
“Dr. DeMerritt had a lot of initiatives and things going,” Dean Cleavinger explains. “I want to continue improving every student’s life. That’s the main thing we want to do. There’s some policies and procedures that need to be worked on, that we’re continuing to work on. So there are multiple irons in the fire right now”
“As a group with all of students services, we’re really wanting to implement the Step Up program,” Dean Cleavinger explains.
The Step Up program was developed by The University of Arizona C.A.T.S. Life Skills Program, along with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and national leading experts. The program teaches people about the determinants of pro-social behavior and makes them more aware of why they sometimes don’t help. As a result, they are more likely to help in the future.
“We want to be able to use this to help our students, help our students make good decisions, and protect our students as much as we can,” Dr. Cleavinger said.
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