Local college presidents share coffee and ideas

Item Reporter Cyrus Moulton sat down for coffee and conversation with Dr. Patricia Gentile, president of North Shore Community College, Dr. Denise Hammon, president of Marian Court College, and Dr. Patricia Maguire Meservey, president of Salem State University, who discussed everything from “swirling,” being a female college president, and the financial costs and obligations of higher education. Dr. Denise Hammon – I really think of our relationship as a partnership in everything that we do and feel really comfortable speaking with both presidents, and as Pat indicated, students move around a lot, we sort of call it swirling…the students swirl, the faculty swirl, the staff swirl?Dr. Patricia Gentile – We share a lot of faculty.Dr. Patrica Maguire Meservey – A lot of faculty, yes.PG – Yes, we do.DH – We share a lot of resources.PG – For me, especially, anytime that we need to solve a problem that can’t be solved, pick up the phone, email each other, and always found both Denise and Pat very responsive, so it’s good to have that relationship and can count on each other to work to the best needs of our students.DH – It is.PM – It does help us each do our work in a better way, because we have more depth and I enjoy the conversation sometimes, when you have a thorny issue, being able to call a friend is very nice, and thinking through how that can work.PG – And I’ll have to add that I already feel (Gentile was inaugurated as president in Sept.) like I can trust both Pat and Denise to give me their best opinion, their best information. I don’t feel any hesitancy to “this is our area and you can’t know about it, or share information about it” and so both of these presidents are very dedicated to their students’ needs and I think that really helps. There doesn’t seem to be any ego issues, any competition issues, we recognize that as collaboratively, we can do a whole lot more for the North Shore than individually.PM – I think your openness, Pat, as you have come in, the CommUniverCity notion, and inviting certainly Salem State into that process is something we are quite eager to do and to have a presence in Lynn, working with you, not competing with, but looking at what’s the blend of the institutions. And Denise, you have so many students from Lynn as well, the swirl that you’ve mentioned is an important element and making sure that we are leveraging our resources in such a way that the students are getting the best education possible.PG – And I think the other thing we have in common is none of us have enough resources.So it’s scarce resources we’re dealing with all the time, so trying to figure out how to leverage each other to help really provide that kind of comprehensive educational opportunities for this area for a lot of people who can’t travel out of the area, don’t have many other options. You know I’m so impressed that even though Marian Court is tiny compared to the public higher education, your dedication to ? the Catholic mission, to helping people who are in poverty get what they need to learn. That’s really noteworthy, it’s very valuable to this area.DH – Thank you. I think one of the things you brought up was that how comfortable we feel talking to each other. You’re both from the public sector, I’m from the private sector – I’ve always worked in the private sector – and it’s interesting that we don’t think about that when we talk with each other, it’s all about the students and that’s very refreshing. Because I’ve worked in the association of independent colleges and there was a lot of sort of “protecting your territory” ?and sometimes it, well, don’t want to go too far with that but, it’s different …PG – There has to be trust, there has to be collaboration, you have to find the win-wins so that no one’s worse off ? I think that, because we’re three women, we tend to collaborate more than possibly more than if it were three men, to be honest.DH – Yes.PG – My background was in some parts Girl Scouts and my kids ha