For Mathew Hall, coming back to Ohio University to fill a new role in Student Affairs was like “coming home.”
Hall started working in July as the new assistant director of health promotion and will earn $43,500 this academic year, according to information obtained via a public records request.
“My primary responsibility is power-based personal violence prevention education,” Hall said. “We spearhead all the prevention education efforts in the division of Student Affairs.”
The position was eliminated six years ago due to budget cuts but has returned this academic year, Charlene Kopchick, assistant dean of students for Campus Involvement, said.
In 2014, OU President Roderick McDavis established the Presidential Advisory Committee on Sexual Misconduct, which recommended that the university reinstate the position.
“We went and we looked at currently what we were doing from a prevention, risk, reduction standpoint, and we could do as much as we could do in health promotion without a staff person being responsible for doing and developing the outreach program,” Kopchick said. “So we made a recommendation that we get our assistant director position back, and we’re really excited that we have the position back.”
Hall spent his undergraduate years at Miami University and graduated in 2011 with degrees in political science and history. After graduating, he worked at Nationwide Insurance for a couple years.
“Working in a completely unrelated field taught me how much I valued not only student affairs work, but also work that focuses on wellness, particular in the prevention realm,” Hall said.
Hall received his master's from OU in college student personnel and graduated in May 2015. He then lived in New Orleans for a little more than a year and worked at Tulane University.
“OU stays with you, and there was an opportunity when the job opened for me to come back to a community that I felt was very special," Hall said. “It’s part of a greater dialogue within the community. It was like all these perfect things falling into place for me.”
Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones said it is helpful having Hall’s position filled.
“We had a lot of people around the campus and community who care about (power-based personal violence) and would carve out pieces of their job to do this work,” Hall-Jones said. "But to have somebody who is trained in doing this, who can go around the state and find out what other people are doing and act on recommendations and work with our students every single day, that’s great."
Originally from Chagrin Falls, Hall said his first semester in the new position is going well.
“I kind of had a sense of what it would be like because I was actually a graduate assistant in this office when I was in grad school doing very similar work,” Hall said.
In addition to power-based personal violence prevention education, Hall said his job includes advising student organizations and engaging men in their role to help end power-based violence.
“We know men have a very vital role in ending violence on campus and in our communities,” Hall said. “So we have been working on finding the formula for getting men engaged on our campus.”
Part of his role at OU is working with the Dean of Students' Office, the Survivor Advocacy Program, the Ohio University Police Department, the Women's Center and the Equity and Civil Rights Compliance.
He said an element to his job is having to pace himself.
“I think anybody who is really passionate about their work wants to solve all the world’s problems in, like, a week, so I think it’s really important for me to remember … that sort of slow and steady wins the race because it’s always going to provide better results than if we burn ourselves out,” Hall said.
