By Kyle Kern, Staff Writer
The Office of Leadership and Engagement (OLE) has been rearranged. The middle cubicle that used to be in the office spaces is no longer there and a new face has arrived on the small liberal arts campus in an adjacent office. Jill Franklin.
Franklin is the new assistant director of leadership and engagement within the department.
With a long title, comes a long line of responsibilities. Franklin is responsible for the department’s overall functions, attending conferences, managing On-Call Professional duties, the Outdoor Recreation center, conduct board duties as well as the lead advisor to Greek life.
Nick Spicer, the assistant dean of students, campus activities & leadership, had a hand in developing Franklin’s position here at Susquehanna.
“One of the things we looked at right before we hired Jill was ‘is it practical for Jill’s position [to only work] with Greek life?’” Spicer said. He said that in the end the whole department decided to bring in the various student life duties as well as residence life and Greek life.
Chip Cruz, the academic achievement chair for Susquehanna’s Panhellenic Council, is working hand in hand with Franklin as part of a group of representatives from the Greek community to put on Greek Week, a week-long celebration of the Greek community.
“She is very engaged already with our community and is very interested in learning more about us,” Cruz said, emphasizing that Franklin has already learned so much and has begun to vouch for the members of the Susquehanna community as students and leaders.
Even though the position has a lot of responsibilities, a coordinator for the department of student leadership and engagement, Beth Winger, believes that Franklin is the right person for the position.
“The side of residence life is new to her and being on call, but she embraces it and she’ll have a hundred questions to figure it out,” Winger said.
Franklin, however, was not a part of the staff at the beginning of the fall academic semester. She stayed at her position at Landen University until the entire recruitment and initiation processes were finished. Winger says that it is a statement of her ideals and commitment.
“That shows a lot of her commitment, and the community was really excited to meet her,” Winger said.
Winger said that they often work together on a lot of things as the whole office often overlaps and collaborates on things.
“She has experience outside of Greek life but also in her previous job she kind of did it all,” Winger said, which is something the office hasn’t seen in that position before.
With her young, yet experienced student affairs career under way, Franklin said she didn’t always think this is where she would end up.
Franklin grew up on a family farm in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. Her family consists of her two older brothers and her father. Franklin’s mother died when she was in 6th grade, which motivated her to continue on with her education.
“Work ethic, dependability, individualism and responsibility all of those types of things were very important in that type of area,” Franklin said.
Franklin was heavily involved during her time at Lake Lehman Junior/Senior High school with volunteer organizations like Key Club. Franklin eventually became the vice president of Key Club and was a cheerleader during her time at high school.
While in Key Club in 7th grade, she helped their school raise $2,000 for efforts to help rebuild communities in Indonesia.
The volunteering aspect started to become engrained in her.
“I don’t know why, because there wasn’t a lot of people who gave back to the community or who were involved in volunteering prior to that part of my life,” Franklin said.
Throughout high school, Franklin knew she wanted to go to college.
“I really didn’t want to work on a farm the rest of my life,” Franklin said. “But, I didn’t know what I wanted to do after college.”
Franklin decided upon Indiana University of Pennsylvania, or IUP, for the fall of 2010. She majored in pre-dental for her first year of college but changed to hospitality management.
“The first semester I got a B in Chemistry and my second semester I got a C,” Franklin said. The amount of tutoring sessions and extra studying, she said, showed that it was not her thing.
Franklin’s passion turned towards event management, and she had an internship with a wedding planning and management company later in her college career.
During college Franklin joined Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority and eventually became the president of her chapter as well as serving as her campus’ Panhellenic Council’s vice president of scholarship.
Even with her passion for service, this was not the driving factor in Franklin’s decision to join Greek life.
“I knew I had needed to make a connection to campus,” Franklin said because her best friend that she went to college with moved home and she didn’t know too many people at IUP.
Franklin said that her organization struggled fundraising money on the philanthropy side of activities. But Franklin said that Greek life needs to look really hard at why students do philanthropy and service projects.
“A lot of the students that I have worked with assume that philanthropy is equivalent to community service, but service is where you’re going out into the community and legitimately putting the man hours into things and not just sharing a link of Facebook,” Franklin said.
Franklin thinks it has to deal with how students schedules are right now. She says that students are over committed and do not necessarily have time to serve the community the way that we really need it to be served.
“The dollar amount is not the service amount,” Franklin said
With her leadership training, and after working for the IUP events office, Franklin began switching her focus on her career. Her advisers and supervisors at school began to give her advice about student affairs.
Franklin was too late to submit for many master’s programs by the time she decided to follow the student affairs path.
“I started working at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which I actually got that position before I graduated,” Franklin said, but it was more of a backup job.
However, Bloomsburg University is where Franklin found her fit for a student affairs master’s degree.
She graduated from Bloomsburg with a master’s in educational leadership and college student affairs. Then in 2016 Franklin assumed the position of director of fraternity and sorority life at Lander University in South Carolina.
Lander is similar to Susquehanna in that there are around 3,000 students, but only 1,100 students live on campus at Lander. Coming back to Pennsylvania does pose new challenges for Franklin, but also some familiar things.
One of those things at Susquehanna was a familiar face.
“I met Jill because she was the graduate assistant for the living learning community in Columbia Hall living learning community office,” Sarah Matter said, an area coordinator for the residence life department at Susquehanna.
Matter went through the Bloomsburg master’s program as well and has been with Susquehanna for four years this academic year.
They had a few classes together, and the connection was still there even after those years apart.
“When they said that she was interviewing for the position, I was super excited because I knew that she would be a great person to bring here,” Matter said.
Since fulfilling her position in September, Franklin has jumped right into her duties.
She has a board of goals she is starting to set up for the upcoming semester and year.
“I am a very goal-oriented person,” Franklin said. “It is the first year that I haven’t had goals posted on my wall yet.”
Along with her official duties, she enjoys knowing what is happening on Susquehanna’s campus. Franklin wants to be able to connect and be a resource for everyone, not just Greek life.
Franklin has been going through training for being on-call for residence life, which means whenever a resident assistant needs help or there is an incident that requires professional involvement, Franklin can respond to it.
“I took this position to eventually be able to be a vice president of student affairs,” Franklin said.
With all the time and effort, she puts into her work, Franklin still has time for the simple things in life.
“I have two dogs, Riley and Kalliopy, and I spend a lot of my time with them,” Franklin said.
She also loves to travel. Franklin went to New York for Thanksgiving and also travels to South Carolina frequently to visit her significant other, Scott.
Moving on with her career, Franklin is interested in going to law school or continuing in some sort of higher education.
“I don’t know if it is worth going to law school or just getting a certificate program in higher education,” Franklin said, “I know I will go back to school to some sort of higher degree.”
Franklin also likes to spend her time reading; in fact, on one side of her office, taking up half of the wall is a book shelf filled with educational readings and books of wisdoms.
“In my personal and professional life, I set myself out to read a book to better myself,” Franklin said.
Among dozens of books upon her shelf, she has a law and policy book, “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town” by Jon Krakauer as well as educational workshop books ranging from student workers to graduates from college.
While at Susquehanna Franklin would most like to make an impact on the students.
“For two weeks straight, it seemed like she was constantly in meetings with students,” Winger said.
In the end, Franklin would like to talk to everyone at the school eventually. “They don’t have to be ‘Greek’ to talk to me,” Franklin said.
For the future, she wants students to feel engaged and want to do things on this campus because they can, not because they have to.
“If you push people to do it, they won’t enjoy it,” Franklin said.
Along with that, one of the things that most describes her learning as a professional and a piece of advice she wants to leave for students is trying to always learn about a situation and try to understand more. This leads into how Franklin interacts with everyone in her life and the world.
Spicer says that one thing that Franklin has that shines bright is her passion. Her work ethic, Spicer said, combined with passion leads her to care a lot about the students she interacts with.
“I would encourage students to know that Jill is very approachable,” Spicer said, “even for things that people may not want to approach her about, especially in Greek life.”
Franklin’s passion and yearning for learning is driven by one phrase.
“You need to try to understand the perspective behind [student’s] ideas,” Franklin said.