A community college president visits students across New York City

Claudia Schrader, President of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, prepares for the day’s meetings. She puts on a pair of light blue trainers, a casual accent to her professional black shift dress, and a navy blue mask with the college logo in orange. She leaves her office flanked by two security officers, her manager for communications and governance relations and her manager for special projects.

Schrader sits in the back seat of one of the two minivans she and her entourage packed into, chatting with the driver about the best route to their destination. Three off-campus meetings are scheduled for that day, all with students who will be entering college next fall.

These trips have become a routine since Schrader started visiting incoming students last summer amid the pandemic when they couldn’t attend classes in person on the Manhattan Beach campus. Since the students couldn’t come on campus, she decided to bring some from campus with her. Schrader calls these visits their “welcome car”.

“It’s a great way to connect with students, and it’s a great way for students to connect with college before they even hit campus,” she said.

She meets students outside of her home or work place, usually during lunch break. After a personal introduction and conversation – she asks them why they chose Kingsborough, how they chose their degree, and what their plans are after graduation – she gives them a Kingsborough swag: a thermos, a Mask and t-shirt in a navy blue drawstring pouch.

The sessions last between five and 15 minutes. She met with 50 students between June and September last year and hopes to meet as many new students as possible before the fall semester starts.

In recent years, university administrations have found various ways to give their work on campus a personal touch. Michael Lovell, president of Marquette University in Milwaukee, is known for inviting students to his daily runs. Edward Burger, the former president of Southwestern University in Texas, drove around campus in a golf cart chatting with students. Zach P. Messitte, President of Ripon College in Wisconsin, sent approximately 100 personalized, handwritten letters to prospective students in 2016. Debra Schwinn, president of Palm Beach Atlantic University, arranged in-person Zoom calls with students.

These efforts to connect with students – and be seen as more approachable and accessible – are becoming all the more popular and valued at a time when many students say they feel isolated from their campus.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said campus leaders have increasingly embraced this hands-on approach over the past decade.

“We’ve talked a lot about the importance of intrusive advice in education and making sure students have visible mentors all the way,” said Pasquerella. “One step towards this is for the leadership to say from the start: ‘You are important to us and we are there for you in your community. Not only at our home, but also at your home. ‘”

Pasquerella noted that the pandemic made administrators even more aware that student involvement is “everyone’s responsibility”, not just student life or the admissions administrators. Efforts like the welcome cart are “emblematic” of this all-hands-on-deck attitude, she said.

Schrader came up with the idea for the welcome car towards the end of the 2019/20 academic year. She said she saw news of college staff across the country visiting graduate homes when personal admissions ceremonies were canceled and she thought why not do the same for prospective students?

“I was just very worried about our new students because they didn’t know what autumn would bring,” she said.

Schrader, who has headed the college for nearly three years, usually greeted students on the first day of class at the campus front door. But the students started the fall semester online last year. She saw the welcome car as a “bridge between the unknown and the institution”. As the only community college in Brooklyn, Kingsborough Community College serves large numbers of first-generation students, she said, students who feel like in the best of circumstances, they don’t know what to expect from a higher education, let alone during one global pandemic.

The institution also caters to many colored students, groups severely affected by the health and economic consequences of the pandemic, and those older than the traditional college age of 18-22. The student body consisted of 35.8 percent blacks and 18.2 percent Latinos as of the fall of 2020, and 25.6 percent of the students were over 25 years old. About 65 percent of students receive financial assistance, and 51 percent of students are eligible for the federal Pell Grant.

Schrader also feared that students might postpone their studies because of the pandemic, put off by the thought of a full online semester or stressed out by losing jobs and lost income. As with most community colleges, enrollment in Kingsborough declined during the pandemic. Total enrollments for full-time and part-time students fell from 15,433 in autumn 2019 to 15,284 in autumn 2020. In autumn 2020, 8,849 students were enrolled in courses, compared to 9,936 students in autumn 2019, a decrease of more than 11 percent.

“Many of our students lost their jobs because they were in the food industry or other places affected by the pandemic,” she said. “Maybe part-time work was really difficult. Many of our students were faced with the decision of whether they should perhaps secure and care for their families or go to school or not, the choice was clear. “

Schrader said she hoped the welcome cart will serve as a recruiting tool in a time of uncertainty and fear.

She didn’t know how the first welcome car visits would turn out, but “the students were really happy” about the personal exchange, and that spurred her on.

“It was just nice to see. After the last visit, I said, ‘That was really great … When are we going to do this again? I want to do it next week. ‘”

She said she was too ambitious at times and the special project manager had to slow her down and told her, “Really, you can’t see five people in three hours with the traffic in New York City,” “she laughed.

As they drive through Brooklyn, Schrader lowers the car window to take pictures of the classic red-brick buildings and colorful murals that line the streets. She has visited students across Brooklyn and in all five boroughs of New York City. Once she went to a shipyard to visit an incoming shipping student. On another visit, a student was afraid to speak outside her building due to frequent drug deals on her block in the Bronx, Schrader said. Sometimes Schrader brings other administrators to visit. For example, she invited John Jay College President Karol Mason, who also brought Swag from her institution, to visit with three incoming criminal justice students as the two institutions have a transfer path in this area.

Reactions to Schrader’s visits vary. Some students greet them with big smiles and bubbly conversation; some invite them into their homes. Others are calm and shy, standing in front of their houses with hunched shoulders and lowered eyes, embarrassed. Sometimes parents pull out their cameras, said Schrader. “I never know what I’ll get.”

Dillon Rust, an aspiring computer science major, looked puzzled last Thursday to see the college president with her two colleagues on his doorstep taking photos and two plainclothes public security officers waiting by the vans. Rust told the college president that he didn’t like all the attention, but in response to their questions, he shared a little about himself. He said he was from Jamaica, had a knack for computers and hoped to move to an institution in Florida after his time in Kingsborough. He asked her about the college’s vaccination guidelines before rushing back inside.

Jose Albino, 40, met Schrader outside his Crown Heights apartment wearing jeans and a black baseball cap with “Brooklyn” in big white capital letters on the front. He was eagerly trying on his new Kingsborough Community College mask. The father of six said he was a housewife and only graduated from high school in September last year. In the fall he wants to go to college for the first time as a business administration degree.

He told Schrader that his wife had an education, a bachelor’s degree in computer forensics, so that his children would learn from his “mistakes” and his wife’s success.

“And your success,” replied Schrader. “I think you are already successful because you decided to return and you are an example of that.”

Albino said the visit made him feel “important”. The two of them clashed with their fists at the end of their conversation, and then Schrader was on his way to the next house on the welcome car list.

Renelsie Lenesta greeted Schrader enthusiastically in front of the radiology office, where she works at the reception. The 35-year-old said she was starting a nursing course in Kingsborough this fall to motivate her son to go to college one day, and she was “so, so excited” to sign up for classes.

“It’s been forever and a day,” she said of her desire to graduate from college. “It pelted behind me. But I never put my foot in it. I’m ready. My whole heart is in it and I am ready. “

Schrader peppered Lenesta with questions about what motivated her to go to Kingsborough and what kind of nurse she wanted to be. Lenesta described her work in radiology and a previous job in a dermatology.

“I hear nurse, but I also hear doctor,” said Schrader.

“No, no, no, no, no,” laughed Lenesta. “That’s a bit much.”

“Just never say never.”

In those brief moments when Schrader hands incoming students their swagbags, she talks to them about all sorts of things: her path to college, her vaccination status, or her attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines. She asks if they need anything before the start of the semester. She is happy to email them when they start class to find out about the course of the semester.

She wants the welcome cart to become a Kingsborough Community College tradition that will endure the pandemic – and she believes this could go a long way in making students not only feel more welcome, but more invested in their education .

Schrader said she didn’t even know who the university president was when she arrived at Rutgers University as a student in 1986. But she was visiting a friend at Spelman College in Atlanta and saw the president walking around the campus addressing the students by name.

“I remember telling myself that if I were ever to be college president, that would be the kind of college president I want to be … The welcome cart is an extension of that too. As long as I am here, it will continue. “

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/a-community-college-president-visits-students-across-new-york-city/