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More than three months after the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, the university has created a new office to enhance coordination and centralize communication related to the tragedy.

Expected to be operational for as long as it's needed, the Office of Recovery and Support will coordinate the dozens of on-campus offices dealing with the shootings' aftermath and, perhaps more importantly, serve as a point of contact for victims and their families.

Jay Poole, a former rector of the Radford University Board of Visitors and one-time vice president of corporate communications for Altria Group, has been tapped to serve as office director.

Poole will be joined by seven or eight case managers and faculty members, including representatives from student affairs, the provost's office, university relations and the president's office.

"Jay's top responsibility will be to address the needs of the April 16 victims ... families, injured students or students closely connected with the event," Tech President Charles Steger said in an announcement about the new office. "He will report directly to me and be our person who works daily with the many ramifications of that terrible day."

Previously, much of the university's contact with victims and their families was made through a fleet of liaisons who worked one-on-one to answer families' questions, provide updates and help with logistical needs.

Ed Spencer, associate vice president for student affairs, said these liaisons were assigned to victims' families soon after the shootings, and, in the weeks following, many called, e-mailed and even visited families.

In his contact with victim Mary Read's family, Spencer said he "really gained a sense of her and what they lost."

"You never quite fully can appreciate all that they are going through, but you do have a sense of it," he said. "You do begin to put yourself in their shoes."

In the first couple of weeks, Spencer said he communicated with the Reads often, helping them with questions about commencement and funeral reimbursement. Recently, however, "it's sort of slowed down to once or twice a week."

"It takes a lot of time to deal with all these matters, and I think a lot of us realized we couldn't continue doing this and do our jobs," he explained. "But I think probably, the relationship between the Reads and me is strong enough that that relationship will continue in some way."

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said that while many liaisons remain in contact with their families, others "weren't able to keep up with the intensity of it."

The establishment of the Office of Recovery and Support, he noted, will help ensure all families receive the same amount of contact.

"When you're working with however many liaisons we have --30, 40, 50 of them -- you realize you're going to have varying degrees of effectiveness," Hincker said. "Here, the idea is to keep it in a central office."

Sitting in the Office of Recovery and Support's near-empty suite in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center on Thursday, Poole said he hopes within the next week to be in touch with the families of victims who were either killed or injured.

"Hopefully we can build the kind of relationship they deserve," Poole said. "They have expectations, and they're not unrealistic."

On Wednesday, Holly Adams-Sherman, mother of victim Leslie Sherman, said she had yet to hear about a new communication plan, but hoped once one was adopted, it would be similar to the liaison structure "where there's some familiarity, some continuity -- where we know we'll be talking to the same person each time."

Adams-Sherman had nothing but praise for her family's liaison, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Richard Ferraro.

"He was the perfect fit for us," she said, "extremely, extremely devoted to us when it came to answering questions and relaying information."

So devoted in fact, that she said Ferraro would often communicate with family members three to four times a day, even when he had little new information to share.

Since mid-June, however, Adams-Sherman said her communication with university officials has stalled and any contact she and her family now have with Ferraro is informal.

The Springfield resident said she believed this was because the university was "shifting gears," moving away from family liaisons to another structure of communication.

Asked if there had been an earlier attempt to switch to a new method of communicating with families, Hincker said, "we had wanted to do what we're doing now sooner."

The Office of Recovery and Support has been open since Monday, and Poole said it was established in such a rush that the university has yet to set its budget -- or his salary.

Perhaps it's a matter of priorities.

"The one thing that we absolutely must do and will do is to improve our communication with the families," Poole said.

"Especially with families who have lost the most, we need to be more effective in how we communicate about the things that we are doing here on campus, about the things we are trying to do with them and about the things we are doing to honor those who have been lost."

Staff writer Greg Esposito contributed to this report.