Pan, who walks Brown's children home after the program, sits with them in the kitchen of their small apartment--about the size of a large Weld Hall suite--discussing the kids grades and keeping up on their attendance.
Challenges
Pan will need all his persistence over the next year.
"It's basically a full time job," says Scott McCue '96, Pan's co-chair for the Mission Hill program.
Pan has his own plans for improving the PBHA system, especially in terms of what he calls "enhancement of programming quality."
"We are working for more training that would be useful, both for volunteers and committee chairs," Pan says.
One of Pan's main goals as PBHA president will be to improve communications within the sprawling organization.
"Because PBHA is so large, we have problems," he says. "The thing we lack most is utilizing each other, as people."
Pan will work to step up contact between the four PBH directors of programs and the individual committees. The PBHA board of directors is working on a packet that all the co-chairs will have to work through, then submit to the directors of programs for review, he says.
In Knowles' new recommendations, Pan finds possibilities. "I guess I consider it a victory, for now," he says.
In his position paper, Pan sought a strong role for the president in implementing the new recommendations.
"The PBHA president should seek to ensure that the right person is picked for the [new deanship]," he wrote. "We must guarantee that PBHA has the adequate means to operate safely and responsibly" in the wake of budget restructuring.
Pan also noted a need for PBHA fundraising, led by the new president, and strong community involvement.
"For all PBHA programs, we have to remember that we always have to keep the community involved with our decision," Pan says. "We need to remember that they are our clients, and we serve them."
Though it will be a lot of work, Pan's co-workers say he has the dedication to carry out his plans.
McCue recalled an emergency camping trip that Pan made last summer to help out the Mission Hill Summer Program when Dawson, its director, got bronchitis.
After all the kids had gone to sleep and McCue had forfeited his sleeping bag to a participant who didn't have one, he and Pan sat outside and discussed the program.
"We sat there for hours, talking about PBHA, and I could see how inspired he was about what's going on here," McCue says. "We stayed up almost all night and that's when I realized how much he cares about it."