On my first day of work, as I walked onto the 19th floor of SLU’s campus, I was pleasantly struck by Helen Keller’s famous quote displayed on the wall: “It’s a terrible thing to see and have no vision.” The quote made me pause and reflect on my mission and vision as SLU’s “micro-provost,” as my colleagues here call my new role as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer.
I am so excited to carry forth the vision of social justice, inclusive excellence, and public service at SLU, the 25th of CUNY’s 26 colleges and systemwide schools. It’s a thrill to join in this effort with SLU’s guru, Founding Dean Greg Mantsios, the talented faculty, the dedicated academic and student affairs staff that my role oversees, and the diverse cohorts of SLU’s students that we serve.
In my new role, I hope to make a transformative administrative and intellectual contribution to the school’s dynamic curriculum, providing unique interdisciplinary, applied and experiential learning opportunities for students in fields such as government, labor, social justice, policy, and public service.
I will also work to advance the school’s well-deserved reputation for public engagement and engaged research, as a community hub for discourse and debate among scholars, policymakers, and organized labor and allied organizations from all over the city, state, nation, and world.
Originally, I hail from Nigeria and the U.K., but I consider myself an immigrant New Yorker. Now I am a returnee, a CUNY alumna of Brooklyn College in the 1980s who began her career 30 years ago as a workforce training teacher and director at Middlesex County College in Edison, N.J. My passion for higher education, teaching and administration started there. I went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations at the New School for Social Research here in Manhattan.
The New School gave me a roadmap to lifelong learning, scholarship, and teaching. Our professors showed us how to pursue knowledge by traversing and navigating concentric circles of local, national, regional, and global community sites of analysis. It was always about applying the knowledge: They would say, “Don’t just take knowledge; give back!”
With these beginnings, I would go on to launch an academic career in public service higher education as a teacher-scholar, faculty leader, and an academic administrator at three great universities – Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Michigan State University’s James Madison College of Public Affairs, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s John W. McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies.
My roles as lecturer, professor, director, associate dean, and interim dean prepared me for my current role at SLU. Now, daily, Helen Keller’s quote guides my vision to support scholarship for engaged public impact and transformation.