By Jonathan Smith, Staff Writer

As the first idea-sharing meeting of the brand-new Office of University and Alumni Relations occurs this week, its staff is excited about the merger of three former offices into one.

Michelle Morris, formerly the director of Marketing and Public Relations, was named assistant vice president of the new office, while Amber Peck moved

from being coordinator of alumni inreach to director of alumni relations. Tim Johnston, formerly chief strategic enrollment officer, is now assistant vice president for strategic marketing and enrollment.

Although not a part of the new office, Johnston is expected to help enrollment and the new office work together.

“Some of the things we’re trying to do with enrollment is to enhance our presence in some cities that we’ve been in,” Morris said. “We’d like to create the ACU presence in more places in a bigger way.”

Peck said that through this merge, Alumni Relations will be more active with students and student programming by providing more mentorships and internships with alumni.

Morris said the divisions being combined have worked together on events in the past, such as Homecoming.

“We’ll continue to have that kind of teamwork, but we’ll also be working a lot more closely with Enrollment Management, admissions and also special projects they hope to work on in the next couple of years,” she said. “I think it’s just going to create a lot of opportunities because we’re on the same staff.”

Administrators said they hope that by having the three areas under the same leadership, they will work more closely together to create better and more unified event planning and outreach to the community, alumni relations and prospective students.

The office will have responsibility for ACU’s image management, publications about the university, coordinate on- and off-campus events, work with enrollment and plan events surrounding ACU’s centennial year in 2006.

This month, the office will announce task forces that will work on long-term campus improvement, bringing in high-level academic speakers and commissioning art and music as it plans events for the centennial year.