New Hunter President May Be “Interim” But Has Strong Ideas She Wants to Implement

When I asked about the challenges you answered, specifically, ‘at the Hunter Level.’ Was that an acknowledgement that there is also a CUNY level?

New York State is more generous than many in supporting higher education. But the graph definitely shows a downward trend. And the cost of instruction, the cost of faculty etc. is significant. So I think it is extraordinarily important to support higher education as a public good. That said, I think it’s also important for us to do things with as much care and efficiency as we can. We live in an era where public higher education is under siege. Because it’s expensive. Investment in the future is expensive. So we have to make that case powerfully to legislators. And we also have to look to our own house and make sure that we’re being as frugal as we can...We also need to do a better job in communicating the importance of this place to New Yorkers.

Why do you think that is?

Look at the newspapers and they’re full of stories about kids who can’t get into Ivy League schools. And that represents what, two or three percent of the college population. I mean, it’s nothing. So I think there’s a bit of snobbery in it. I think there’s maybe some of the wounds of the open enrollment era. A growing public concern about the value of higher education certainly is contributing to it. Maybe it’s just too much familiarity. ‘Oh, yeah. CUNY the college down down the block.’ But this is the aspirational dream of immigrants and I’m a child of immigrants. And the only reason I didn’t go to CUNY was because I had a burning desire to get out of New York. So I went to SUNY, went all the way to Buffalo. Public higher education is the jewel of American education. But we better keep polishing up that jewel, because it needs attention.

Do you feel better about the state leadership’s attitude towards CUNY than perhaps a few years ago?

I leave that to the Chancellor, who does an extraordinarily good job at representing CUNY. I remember Richard Ravitch, the late, great, Richard Ravitch, coming to a CUNY meeting and talking about the students of CUNY as the seed corn for New York City. And how we better sow those seeds, because they are the future leaders of New York. Something like 85 percent of the incoming class of Hunter lives in the city of New York, and about that same percentage, maybe even slightly higher, is going to stay and work in New York. This is a New York institution. And it’s vital to the future of the city.

What is the difference between running McCauley, an institution that was specifically targeted at the very top of the class, if I can use that phrase, and Hunter, which is certainly an elite institution, but is a more general student body.

The first difference is one of scale. Right? So 2000 students versus 24,000 students, 2100 faculty members, 1600 staff, 49 elevators, 18 escalators and 2.6 million square feet of upper Eastside real estate. That is just an explosion of scale. A lot of what we focused on with Macaulay was creating an enriched academic experience for students who were going to go into great jobs and law school and business school and medical school. It was all about feeding their aspirations with opportunities. And they are the ones for whom the New York City public schools were enormously successful. Hunter casts a much wider net. And we have lots of students who didn’t come with great preparation. And yet, given the right opportunities and the right academic program, they’re going to come up and match or exceed anybody in any school in the United States. So our task is broader.

What’s Hunter’s relationship with the neighborhood and what do you need it to be?

We have constant conversations with the neighborhood. We have terrific outreach. I met with the community board. It was one of the first meetings I had. We don’t do any sort of outdoor activity without making sure all the neighbors know about it. So we try to be really good members of the community. So what I hear is that the vitality of the student community actually charges up the neighborhood. You can feel it in the morning as students come streaming out of the subway, and as you see them walking across the sky bridges. I think our neighborhood relations have been very good. And that’s not by accident, that’s really by design. And I’m very proud of that. These are 24,000 students in the middle of the Upper East Side. It’s really quite astonishing. We opened the subway downstairs a couple of weeks ago. I think it was the second week that I was here. And as a New Yorker, I was just overwhelmed by the fact that we have a subway station. That sort of texture of the city runs through our veins. So I think, you know, to the community, I would want to be as warm and welcoming as we can be, there might be some things that we can do to be even more welcoming, particularly to seniors in the community, we have a program for seniors to audit classes. I’ve been looking at that out of the corner of my eye and thinking, ‘maybe that’s something that could be improved’. But I think we are symbiotic in all the right ways.

What else would you like the larger city to be thinking about Hunter College?

I want you to think about hiring Hunter students. Where first generation college students have the hardest time is not excelling academically, it’s entering into the workforce. First generation college students tend to have somewhat limited career horizons. They know being a doctor or lawyer, a pharmacist, a teacher. Tangible careers that they’ve had role models for. They’ve seen people who do that. What about being a software engineer? What about being a journalist? What about being an artist? What about being a software coder? These are not necessarily something that they’ve had direct exposure to. And yet, these are the jobs of the future. So one area that we’re focusing very much on this year is an even greater emphasis on career services. And so one thing I want to say to the businesses, the private sector of New York, which of course is what I come out of, is let’s develop internship programs together. Let’s look at apprenticeships. Hire our students. You’re not going to find a less entitled, more aspirational, better work ethic group anywhere in the world.

What proportion of the 24,000 students are first generation?

Of Hunter College’s undergraduate students, 49 percent are the first generation in their families to attend college and 13 percent of Hunter College’s students were born outside the U.S. Another 13 percent are the children of an immigrant or immigrant parents.

The experience of being a first generation college student, and knowing that there are many others in the same boat as you can be just so powerful. I think CUNY has historically been the engine of social mobility. And that is a national treasure, and it’s certainly a city asset. When you think about people pulling themselves out of poverty the number one way to do it is through education. And not through education that’s going to put you so much in debt, that you then have to worry about servicing your debt instead of getting on with your life. That’s the beauty of Hunter College.

...We have an an astonishing faculty that is equal to the faculty of any great research institution in the country. With one huge difference. They are far more diverse, and they have a commitment to undergraduate education to our students.

And migrant families continue to arrive every day in New York City.

And guess where they’re going to go to college? They’re going to come to CUNY. They’re going to come to Hunter College. We’ll have the welcome mat out for them.