Back to Leading at the Helm

Last week, we welcomed new and returning students to Urban College of Boston (UCB). I started the day wishing students, faculty, and staff a successful new year. It is our second year as an affiliate institution of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). It is my first year back leading at the helm. I thought my hiatus from that level of leadership would last longer, perhaps until after my kids started college, but there I was starting a new academic year with much vigor and optimism for what the new year will bring.

At UCB, I have great colleagues who, along with our students and partners, are imagining with me who and what we can become as an institution that educates mostly low-income students of color in the post-pandemic era and during a period of growing income inequality in our country. We are a designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and Asian-American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI). The majority of our students are immigrants aspiring to achieve the American Dream. They are DACA students. They are adults starting or returning to school, single moms, recent high school graduates, dads, and entrepreneurs. They are all dreamers. They have a dream that a college education will transform their lives as it did mine. Their hopes for the future, their dreams extend beyond themselves and to their families and communities. Our students are my raison d'être, the reason why I am back leading our institution as president.

I spent the last two years like a sponge at SNHU, learning a lot from an extraordinary group of colleagues. I learned how SNHU transforms lives at scale as a leading international institution of learners who are mostly online and distributed across the globe. While SNHU has a beautiful campus in Hookset, NH, few people know of the work the University does in places like Rwanda or South Africa, and how it helps refugees from places like Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere in the world. The extent to which SNHU harnesses the power of analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to improve learner outcomes marveled me as a former leader of public institutions bounded by limited budgets. I saw how SNHU invests in its learners and those who educate and support them, and it was invigorating.

Returning to the presidency and at UCB is a privilege. With one teenager studying abroad and another with so many extra-curricular activities that I barely get to see her now, my family was supportive of me returning to lead at that level. As a mom and a woman, I am grateful for being able to balance working and being there for my children in the ways that they need me now as growing young adults.

Child care continues to be a barrier for so many women longing to start or get back to their careers. The pandemic exacerbated both the availability (or lack thereof) and the cost of child care. The mission of institutions like ours is even more important today, as we aim to achieve gender parity across so many domains.

As the leader of UCB, I am proud of the work that my colleagues and I do educating all genders, especially women, for careers in early childhood education and in the human services professions. The research on early childhood consistently points to higher outcomes for students who attend formal programs versus those that do not. Women are overwhelmingly represented in PK-12 education and the human services fields. These also tend to be careers that are underpaid and where professionals are overworked. That is why I feel an urgent sense of responsibility to advocate for better financial support of people going into these careers and better pay for them.

Prime-age women are driving the post-pandemic recovery (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/prime-age-women-labor-market-recovery/ ). Let’s continue to support them by having more child care available and paying them what they are worth and what they merit.

As for me, I am honored to once again be serving as president at an institution whose values mirror mine and whose power to transform lives I know first-hand. I wish all my colleagues in academia a wonderful new year!

(The attached picture is from our first informal college visit with our not-so-but-will-always-be our baby girl).