By Raeanne Raccagno
Copy Editor
Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Suzanne McCotter visited Student Government to talk about her current responsibilities and the improvements underway in Academic Affairs at the College on Feb. 26.
On Feb. 13, President Michael Bernstein sent an email to inform the campus community that McCotter will be leaving the College at the end of June to become the dean of graduate programs at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan. Before her departure, she discussed academic affairs’ accomplishments and what’s to come at the College for students.
This was the first time the provost was invited to a Student Government general body meeting. “I'm really excited to be here and talking with you today, so I'll be here for the first time and for the last time. So you’re it, you’re my everything,” McCotter said.
McCotter also leads the Council of Deans, which has been discussing scheduling and registration.
“Up until November, [course registration] might have sounded really boring to you, but I know that it doesn't sound boring anymore,” McCotter said.
One of the ways McCotter sees registration problems easing up is by having more advising resources. Students will be assigned to faculty and professional advisors to help even out the number of cases counselors are overseeing.
She said this will help the College more effectively forecast what classes are needed in the future to avoid registration issues.
McCotter also mentioned that they will not have the same scheduling constraints as they did in the past due to financial issues because “today, we're good for the next five years, we've got the money we need.”
According to McCotter, the budget hole came from the College not being efficient and holding themselves to a budget, so they would run multiple classes that had low enrollment, thus causing the school money.
“We overcorrected last year. We did not do a good job because we were told we didn't have enough money to do a good job and that hurt a lot of people,” McCotter said. “We fixed it…I think the biggest hurt was the anxiety that it caused when people went home for winter break because they didn't know exactly what their next semester was going to look like.”
Some of the methods Academic Affairs is using to fix any anxiety is having money ready to deploy for opening needed classes, getting accurate data for the demand of what and when classes are required and working on projects to have a centralized way of developing scheduling.
The department is also working on making sure the classrooms assigned to courses are the right fit to avoid classroom switches.
One proposal that’s gone through governance is giving majors and departments the option of reducing their requirements from 32 to 30 units, which still meets state requisites and may give more scheduling flexibility.
McCotter also sits on the Council for Strategic Plans and Priorities, which has been examining how to combine the College’s two strategic plans, one for 2027 and the other for inclusive excellence. According to McCotter, the group has also been looking at components that involve the College’s strategic priorities and external forces that may impact the school.
“There are headwinds for us so we'll just keep on fighting those headwinds as best as we can,” McCotter said.
McCotter told the general body to pay attention when the College reaches out for student opinions on what the new core curriculum should look like.
“One of the things that we need to get away from is separating professional preparation from the core. The core is professional preparation,” McCotter said.
Another provost project of McCotter’s has been nurturing the association between Academic Affairs and some non-academic units. She highlights how non-academic units, like the Center for Student Support, have a significant impact on students’ scholarly success.
She also stated that Academic Affairs has a close relationship with mental health counseling available at the College.
“If our students are not getting the support they need in terms of their mental health, then they're not going to be successful academically,” McCotter said. “So it's been a strong priority of mine to make sure that there are open lines of communication not only between myself and the other vice presidents of those divisions, but also among all the staff.”
McCotter also discussed math placement tests at the College after one general body attendee raised the issue of students not placing high enough and then having to graduate later. The provost said they are making sure that their placement tests are giving them accurate information and that they’re pondering a summer bridge program for students who are not “calc-ready.”
Other ambitions the provost has been a part of are digitizing forms for more swift processes and recognizing more efficiencies within the College. Additional changes are mergers of some departments to help divisions become bigger and have more resources.
