Dr. Kathleen Kerr, who has a doctorate in educational leadership, has been hired as SUNY Oswego’s Vice President of Student Affairs after working in residence life and housing (Res Life) at the University of Delaware for over 30 years.
Kerr started her career in Res Life at Indiana University when she accepted the position of residence assistant after getting her Bachelor’s from the institution. After deciding she loved the job, Kerr said she knew she wanted to continue that line of work.
“I called my dad back in New Jersey and I said ‘how do I keep doing this RA thing,’” Kerr said. “He said, ‘well you get a Master’s degree in college student personnel administration,’ and [Indiana University], where I was, has a very good program, so I stayed and applied there.”
After finishing her master’s, Kerr and her husband moved to Delaware where she started a job working in Res Life at the University of Delaware. Kerr said it was not their plan to stay there for more than a few years, but the promotions kept coming. She also had the opportunity to get her doctorate and after, began teaching undergraduate, graduate and doctorate level courses.
Kerr and her family lived in Delaware for 31 years and said that COVID-19 gave her the chance to look at other colleges for new career opportunities.
“My husband retired because of COVID,” Kerr said. “Because of that, it really freed me up to do a job search.”
Kerr originally applied to three schools last spring, then withdrew from one and between the two that were left, she “ended up here at SUNY Oswego.”
“I did a very limited job search,” Kerr said. “I really wanted to find a vice presidency at a school that was smaller than [University of Delaware] and allowed me to have more contact with students.”
At her previous job, Kerr was the associate vice president for student life, which is the same position she has now at SUNY Oswego, for four years.
“Student affairs provides a really essential part of the educational experience of students,” Kerr said. “Students need to graduate college knowing more about themselves, be able to interact with people who are different from themselves, know what’s important to them, not just what’s important to their parents or the family that raised them, but who they are as an individual.”
SUNY Oswego student affairs includes counseling services, residence life and housing, health services, campus life, auxiliary services, athletics and the dean of students’ office, according to Kerr, and “encapsulates a student’s life outside the classroom.”
Kerr said one of her hopes as vice president of student affairs is to be able to provide students with support in their personal lives, for example if they are feeling homesick or had a fight with their roommate, they have someone to reach out to for help. Her other goals are to strengthen and support student wellbeing and to “re-enliven the campus post COVID.”
Ultimately, Kerr said, she hopes to “make this a place students don’t want to leave for break and can’t wait to come back after summer.”
Though Kerr has only been at SUNY Oswego for a few months, she said she has been impressed with how the college prioritizes its students
“My perception is that SUNY Oswego is a very advanced institution in terms of what it provides to students,” Kerr said. “When I interviewed here on campus, what I heard over and over again is ‘we work together as a staff collaboratively to support our students, we do what is in the best interest of our students, our goal is to make sure that every student succeeds and graduates’ and that’s what I want to do.”
Along with the other goals she wishes to accomplish as vice president of student affairs, Kerr said her main hope is that all students, “not just make it to graduation, but to make it healthy, happy and thriving.”
After many years of experience helping students, Kerr is enjoying her transition from Delaware to Oswego, but the only thing she is unsure about is the weather.
“We get very little snow in Delaware,” Kerr said. “So we’ll see about that.”
Photo via Oswego.edu
