SU’s chief operations officer outlines campus modernization plans at SGA
SU Chief Operations Officer John Papazoglou outlined campus modernization plans at Monday night’s SGA meeting. He discussed improving textbook access, repurposing South Campus and building new dorms and a dining hall by 2027. Lola Jeanne Carpio | Contributing Photographer
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John Papazoglou, senior vice president and chief operations officer, outlined campus efforts to modernize academics and dining facilities during Syracuse University’s Student Government Association meeting Monday.
He said these efforts — including building new facilities and making textbooks easier to access — aim to improve efficiency and quality of student life. Papazoglou emphasized the importance of a collaborative approach between faculty, students and staff, hoping to educate all on the complex systems and changes.
“That’s the single biggest thing that we’re working through academic affairs on, to help work with faculty,” Papazoglou said.
Papazoglou said syllabi are often complicated and can mislead students by not listing all required textbooks. He said only about 30% of students knew their class required a textbook before the first day of class in 2024.
To solve this issue, Papazoglou has been working on improving communication between students and professors. He said his team has been contacting professors, asking if their courses need a textbook or not, and using a statistic called “textbook adoption” to measure whether professors answered.
Last year, 30% of professors answered Papazoglou and his team on whether their class had a textbook, he said. The number is up to 86% this year. However, he said it’s still an “ongoing problem.”
“I would like to be over 90%, because once you get to 90% you can start doing more creative things like sourcing for more open-access materials,” Papazoglou said.
SGA President German Nolivos and assembly members raised concerns over the costs of these campus-wide projects. Papazoglou said that tuition money doesn’t go to these projects, and instead, the university takes on debt and pays it back.
Papazoglou also spoke about improvements to self-checkout kiosks in the Schine Student Center and Food.com in Newhouse 3, updating the machines and adding virtual ordering on SU’s OrangeNow app. He said this will allow students to schedule orders in advance, decreasing traffic in student centers and encouraging more students to use SU services. Papazoglou said these updates will begin in May.
“All these small changes, it takes a lot of infrastructure to do that, but we’re getting to a point where people actually use the service because there’s a lot of people that will not wait in line,” Papazoglou said.
He also mentioned the ongoing construction of three new residence halls and one new dining hall, all with modern amenities. The buildings are expected to be completed by August 2027.
The university hopes to get more students back living on the main campus.
“We need to repurpose South Campus,” Papazoglou said. “There’s third year, fourth year, graduate students, junior faculty that don’t have the type of housing that they need.”
Papazoglou also said he hopes to get rid of the brass keys that have been a staple of living in the SU dorms, hoping to add SUIDs to phones through a mobile app instead of a physical card.
Through his prior experience working at Penn State University, Papazoglou said these improvements are necessary for the future of SU.
Throughout the rest of the meeting, new bills were introduced to the assembly, including a modified version of the AI bill presented last Monday.
Authors Indrė Espinoza and Chloe Brown Monchamp reformed their previous bill. Which, if passed, would create an ad hoc committee aimed at reviewing AI software and communicating with the university to increase transparency.
Some assembly members, including Meghavarshini Iska, chair of the Academic Affairs committee, voiced concerns about lapses in communication within the committee. She claimed standard practices, as stated in SGA’s bylaws, had not been followed in the process of the bill going to the floor for a vote.
While Nolivos said no bylaws were broken, he said better communication should occur between the Academic Affairs committee and the ad hoc committee if the bill is passed.
The ad hoc committee, as well as bills regarding mental health initiatives, a toy drive and “ready jars,” will be voted on at next week’s meeting.
Other Business:
- SGA Comptroller Alexis Leach went over advanced allocations for the spring 2026 semester, reviewing 123 allocations. The requests totaled about $700,000, with only $380,000 approved, Leach said.
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