WSA Profile: Chief of Operations Eric Pacifici

Meet Chief of Operations, Eric Pacifici.

Photo courtesy of Eric Pacifici

Born in San Diego, Calif., Eric Pacifici went to high school and grew up in Livonia, Mich. Over the last two years, he has spent a lot of time in Orlando, Fl. working with the Walt Disney Company.

Pacifici attended Schoolcraft Community College in Livonia, Mich, before transferring to WMU in the fall of 2008. He is pursuing a degree in Organizational Communications.

Last year, Pacifici was the student body representative for the Western Herald’s Editorial Board. He is also a Student Ambassador, where he facilitates campus tours, has teleconferences with prospective students and hosts various events across the state.

In addition to being the Chief of Operations for WSA, he will also be the Programming Coordinator for the Honors Student Association.

Last year, Pacifici took on the role of a student senator for the WSA representing the College of Arts and Science.

Western Herald: What does the role of Chief of Operations entail?

Eric Pacifici: In my opinion it is the best role, and here’s why: in the constitution of the WSA, if you read the description, basically the gist of it is to facilitate the day-to-day operations of the WSA. It [the constitution] doesn’t really detail what that entails. So from the Operation’s standpoint, basically, the way I see it, overseeing the executive cabinet, the speaker of the senate, PR chairs, spirit committee, make sure that everyone is doing their job.

I’m in charge of correspondence, what people write to WSA, that’s me; check the mail, listen to voicemails. There is a lot of secretarial stuff that’s involved with it that keeps the big gears spinning that keeps the flow. But at the same time I have the ability to kind of innovate, its the most innovative position because it is an ambiguous position – it doesn’t have a defined role, so I am going to change and do a lot of things this year – different initiatives to better the WSA. And I’m excited about that.

Western Herald: What are you thinking about doing?

Eric Pacifici: I have a lot of ideas. At this point there are not many detailed and developed enough to speak on them. The reason why I say that is because the position is so ambiguous that I want to take the time to get into the groove of facilitating the day-to-day operations – make sure that the A, B and C of my job is mastered before we start getting carried away with different things. But we have some really cool ideas coming up. One of them-this one is my favorite-involves Wikipedia. I’m a Wikipedia mad man. When you search Western Michigan University on Google, or when you search it on Yahoo, Wikipedia is the third thing that comes up on Yahoo and the fifth thing that comes up on Google. For prospective students, from a Student Ambassador’s standpoint, who works with prospective students a lot, I know how difficult it is to interpret different universities’ Web sites, to interpret the information that is on there. So I know a lot of kids are turning places like Wikipedia for information. When you search Western on Google and Yahoo and go to that Wikipedia page…it is very much a poor representation of Western. Check it out. It’s bland, there is misinformation on there, it’s not very thorough. When you go to Michigan State [University's] Wikipedia, when you go to [University of] Michigan’s Wikipedia, when you go to Central [Michigan University's] Wikipedia, you have a through, in-depth representation of those universities. And I feel that we need to start seeing things like that. And I feel like the student government needs to have their eyes open and pay attention to things like that. So, that’s one of the first things I want to do this year. We’re going to put together a committee to work on Western’s Wikipedia page and that might seem ridiculous, but it is things like that we can build on to help the University grow and recruit.

Western Herald: So you’ll get the Brown and Gold yearbooks and go at it?

Eric Pacifici: Yeah, we will look at a bunch of different stuff. I know a lot about Western and thought I could do it on my own. But then I thought no, I don’t know all the intricate details of the engineering campus and what they have to offer, I don’t know a lot of different programs. So we have to get the best of the best from student lives and save it in the WSA office and if someone messes with the site we can change it back so that we have a strong representation of Western on a site that is viewed very often. Little things like that we are working with to do some really purposeful things.

Western Herald: How did you first get involved with WSA?

Eric Pacifici: I started about beginning of second semester. After hearing a lot about WSA I wanted for a while to get involved, but I worked during the meetings. But it actually was that I had class with President [Nate] Knappen three days a week, and each was three hours, so I was in class Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and I was working with him on Tuesday and Thursdays and him just talking about his presidential stuff I said “I better check this out,” I came in and was like, “alright, this is cool, I like the WSA, the whole student government thing.” It is important to represent, like the newspaper, the concerns of the student body because a lot the time the administration can’t.

Western Herald: So what role do you see WSA playing on campus next year? How do you see it changing as a representative voice?

Eric Pacifici: I feel like it is on the right track, they have done some incredible things in the past year. I look forward to growing the WSA this year. The number one thing for us, if we are truly going to fulfill our goal of representing the full voice of the Western student body on campus, then we need to grow as an organization. We need to represent all 25,000 students on campus. I feel that the role of WSA this year is going to be one engaging the entire the whole student body, getting more student participation than has been done in a long time. I think one of the amazing things happening this year is the transition to the Bernhard center it’s centrally located, and can engage students of a wide variety, and we can grow the WSA.

As to specific goals, A, B, and C, those are going to be laid out in two weeks, we are going to head to the WSA retreat where we are going to sit down as a committee and put together one solid voice.

Western Herald: What do you think you will add to the cabinet?

Eric Pacifici: Hopefully a lot. I wouldn’t have applied to the position if I hadn’t believed in my heart-of-hearts that I was going to be really good at the position.

I spent the last three and a half years working for the Walt Disney Company. One thing I am excited to inject into anything that I do these days are the experiences that I’ve had with the Walt Disney Co., its an incredible company that is renowned for its service, its image, and the way they do things. And as Chief of Operations I am going to be able to take the amazing attention to detail that the Disney Company instilled in me and put that into the WSA and just make the organization a lot more…polished.

Western Herald: How would you see it done to engage more students who are not apart of an RSO?

Eric Pacifici: The biggest thing for a lot students, and I hear this all the time, is “Eric, how are you so involved? I don’t know what to do.” Engaging the students on day one, when they come in as freshmen, is vital. We have Fall Welcome, which is mandatory for all students, which is incredible, and orientation. It seems that after that day ends, its really easy for students to get involved if they are in the right situation and really easy for them not to get involved. We need to educate the student body here at Western Michigan University, we need to really engage them and educate them on what their opportunities are.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=6681

Posted by heraldstaff on Jul 13 2009. Filed under Breaking, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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