Posted by Scarlet Olivia in Question for Parker Ticket and All Candidates
This election has been an unusual one for me, just when I think only one person is going to run, two people slip right in. I’ve stayed mostly quiet, but this first question is to Parker.

Snipping out the question that wasn’t for me.

For all candidates this is my question. What are your plans to keep the Academy active and to deal with the high turnover rate of activity that oft leaves the Academy struggling to keep going and worse, struggling to get more than say, one or two new members staying in the club?

Hopefully my questions are okay, this election seems to be so much more subdued than what I am used to lol.

—Scarlet

More than okay, it’s a good question.

From a quick look at the master roster and the last Academy Report it looks like there’s two very well staffed ships right now. That’s important for the Academy staff to monitor, but even when the ships are staffed well the cadet turnover rate in the Academy tends to be pretty high.

WIth new members joining the Academy they are trying something new by joining our club, so it makes sense that they decide pretty quickly that it isn’t for them. The trick is to minimize that to the degree we can. As anyone who’s spent a decent amount of time on an Academy ship will tell you, a lot of new members disappear before they make a single post. That can’t be eliminated, but there are things we can do that will hopefully help.

• We should have a well staffed Personnel Department that has at least three active people doing placements so that cadets get placed more quickly. I very nearly never participated in STF after I wasn’t put on a ship in the first couple days. If the Personnel Department is primarily relying on one person to do placements, it’s going to fall behind sooner or later no matter who that one person is.

• These new cadets need to be reached out to by their mentors, which at times hasn’t been happening as often as it should. With mentorship now under the Academy, hopefully there will be improved follow up and accountability when mentors aren’t doing the bare minimum of making initial contact.

• Right now there is effort being put into creating more community events and more of a sense of community. The more this continues, the more likely new members will be to want to stick around.

There was another answer that suggested making joining the Academy mandatory, which is a suggestion I’d like to touch on. First off, that would cause there to be more participants in the Academy. But the problem is you would be sending people there who don’t want to be. As the rules are now they’d be limited to one ship. There’s plenty of people who join this site who feel confident and want to head straight to the main fleet and join a couple ships. If we start forcing people into the Academy then we have cadets there who’d rather not be and then we may also need more staff to accommodate them. That’d be more strain on administration and make retention more difficult. I think it’s wonderful the Academy is an optional program, an aspect of the Academy I’ve fought for in the past.

Thanks Scarlet!

Adam
Adam W / Thomas B