Hossler announces decision to resign

Donald Hossler, IU vice chancellor for enrollment services, has stepped down from one University administrative position and will step down from another this summer.\nHossler officially ended his term as the co-director of the Student Information Systems (SIS) project Jan. 1. Additionally, he will leave his position as IU vice chancellor for enrollment services -- a position he has held since 1997 -- July 1. \nHe will return full-time as a professor in the IU School of Education.\n"I like teaching, I like research," Hossler, 55, said. "I didn't want to retire as an administrator. I always said every year to the people in the office, 'You know, I'm not going to be doing this forever.'"\nHossler reached the decision to step down with the counsel of IU-Bloomington Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis.\n"In the fall (of 2004), he said he didn't think he could focus on both the Student Information Systems implementation and the Bloomington enrollment services," Gros Louis said. "We agreed the most valuable thing he could do was to focus on enrollment services for Bloomington."\nHossler he would have stepped down last year, but decided to stay on for one more year because felt he had an obligation to see through the installation and implementation of the Student Information Systems project.\nThe SIS project is a University-wide computer project for administering student information meant to neatly address campus necessities, according to an IU Web site outlining the SIS vision.\nBut then, the project stumbled.\nNow known with the notorious "PeopleSoft" moniker -- the name of the SIS project's primary computer software -- the rocky transfer caused headaches among incoming freshmen and enrolled students in the form of financial delays. Coupled with a recent 2 percent drop in Bloomington campus enrollment or 768 fewer freshmen this year, Hossler was forced to make his step down announcement early rather than supervise both until the end of the spring.\n"If we hadn't had the enrollment downturn or if the PeopleSoft transition had gone smoothly, this announcement wouldn't have gone out until March or April," Hossler said. "But the fact that PeopleSoft hasn't gone smoothly, 70 to 80 percent of my week has been consumed by PeopleSoft meetings. I'm really just not getting sufficient time to focus on campus enrollment issues."\nGros Louis said he and Hossler had spoken before any problems with the PeopleSoft system had been reported, and emphasized its problems did not factor into Hossler's decision to step down, only the timing of the announcement.\n"He'd come in before we knew we'd have a rocky situation (with PeopleSoft)," Gros Louis said. "I felt badly knowing now there would be a rocky situation with it, because I didn't want people to think he was at fault." A statement announcing Hossler's decision to step down said he will spend the remainder of his time focusing on "key planning for the future of the Office of Enrollment Services."\n"We'll be working with the enrollment downturn and with other issues related to diversity and quality that has become pressing issues to the campus," Hossler said. \nAlso on the to-do list for the rest of Hossler's tenure are working on a five-year enrollment plan, and considering the way offices in enrollment services have operated, including the way they are structured and staffed.\nBefore taking his administrative positions, Hossler served as a professor of higher education, studying enrollment and financial issues regarding colleges and universities, and as an executive associate dean for the School of Education. \nHe chaired, as he says in a tongue-in-cheek manner, an "unsuccessful search committee" for a vice chancellor to coordinate a newly consolidated department concerning admissions, registration, financial aid and orientation. When the committee's finalist turned the position down, Hossler accepted an offer to serve for one year that eventually turned into eight.\nNeither a full-time replacement nor an interim vice chancellor for enrollment services has been announced, and Hossler said he was not aware of any name surfacing as a possibility.\n-- Contact Senior Writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.