By David Wald
Last week, long time Students’ Union employee and Facilities Director Kelly Hutton resigned, to move on to greener pastures with the university. He is one of many SU staff members who have recently given up their positions in a major SU reshuffling.
“He left to take an opportunity made available through the university,” said SU Vice-President Operations and Finance Greg Clayton. “It is a good opportunity for him.”
Corporate shuffling in the business world is very common. If things don’t seem to be running very well it may be time to mix things up a bit in order to get the results needed. In fact, restructuring allows organizations to better respond to change and unexpected pressures. The SU is an important service to the student body, making it imperative that the internal workings are in order and running efficiently. But are they?
“We’ve had quite a bit of staff turnover, and are looking at restructuring,” Clayton said. “We are looking at hiring a new Facilities Director and expanding that role to take on a broader function in redevelopment.”
Clayton also said that the SU is looking at consolidating the roles of directors to ease the duties of the general manager and spread out the chain of command. Restructuring and rearrangement of the SU staff is a common ordeal. There are a lot of young people who work for the SU, and many are still in school, have other priorities or simply moved on to bigger and better things.
Hutton has been with the SU for over nineteen years. He says that he hopes to be remembered for the great things that have gone on for these past years; everything from two large MacEwan Student Centre development projects to major wheelchair access implementation to fighting for the flag pole on the south lawn.
“I couldn’t have done it without the cooperation of the people at the SU and the university,” said Hutton as he sat back with an easygoing demeanor. “I’m pretty melancholy about leaving… I’m going to miss working with the students.”
Hutton admits that the SU is an awesome place to work and that it wasn’t always about the job he had to do, but about the impact it had on the students.
“The job has not been about the bricks and mortar,” said Hutton. “The job has been about the people.”
Hutton’s last day with the SU is Fri., Nov. 5. He will soon be with Campus Infrastructure. Hutton is very excited to begin work with the university.