Timothy L. Hall looked faintly surprised and smiled when a jacket-shedding visitor to his president”™s office at Mercy College mentioned the oppressive heat of the summer day on the Hudson. A native Texan who spent 18 years as a college administrator and law professor in Mississippi, Hall said he is enjoying cool summer mornings in New York after 58 years of living in the sweltering South.
“Tennessee has been my furthest north,” he said of an academic career that last May brought him much farther north, to the main Dobbs Ferry campus of Mercy College as the 12th president in the private nonsectarian school”™s 64-year history.
It has been a change of climate though not a change of focus for Hall, who arrived in Westchester after seven years as president of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn. The state college”™s enrollment numbers are similar to Mercy”™s, which has approximately 5,500 full-time undergraduates and about 11,650 undergraduate and graduate students in full-time or part-time studies. The conversation at Mercy also is shared at Austin Peay and on many campuses across the country, Hall said: How do we help more students get a college degree?
“There”™s a kind of tool kit of ways for helping more students succeed,” he said.
At Austin Peay, the newest and most widely touted tool has been Degree Compass, a course recommendation system developed three years ago by the college”™s former provost. Applying predictive analytics, the program compares every student”™s academic record at a college to past students”™ grades to accurately predict success in a particular course or study major. The proprietary program, which Austin Peay last year licensed to Desire2Learn Inc. a Canadian educational technology company, has helped improve graduation rates at Austin Peay and other universities that have adopted it.
The innovative system and Austin Peay have been praised by philanthropist Bill Gates and by President Barack Obama. As Austin Peay”™s president, Hall last October was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee on the university”™s tools for student success.
“I”™m a big believer that technology offers the promise of making higher education more higher-touch ”” making it more personal,” Hall said. “We don”™t want our students to be numbers. Technology offers the promise of letting us make things more personal than less personal.”
Hall indicated he has no immediate plans to implement Degree Compass at the metropolitan college he now leads. He noted that Mercy has a similar program to keep students on track to graduation in PACT, the college”™s Personalized Achievement Contract, which he described as an “intensive mentoring program” wherein students work closely with trained professional advisers who typically are themselves not long out of college.
“That”™s already a game-changing program that Mercy has,” Hall said. Previously offered to students entering Mercy from high school, PACT will be extended to include transfer students, he said.
At Mercy, which has three other campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Yorktown Heights and an online degree program in which about 10 percent of its student body is enrolled, Hall faces a similar demographic challenge to that at Austin Peay. Many of its urban students are from low-income families and the first in their families to attend college. Most Mercy students receive no financial contributions from their families toward their education.
Of students who enroll at Mercy, 34 percent graduate in six years, Hall said, well below a national six-year graduation rate that is above 50 percent. The difference in graduation rates at colleges “has a lot to do with the demographics,” he said.
“The core of the national conversation is how do you help students who don”™t come from families who”™ve been to college? One of the ways to help them is with the kind of advice you do give them.”
Adult students “have probably the greatest jeopardy of graduating,” Hall said. “Because life gets in the way and takes them out of their way” to a degree. Adult students are four times less likely to graduate than traditional students entering college from high school, he said. “Time is the enemy for adult students,” many of whom hold full-time jobs while pursuing studies part time. Hall said the college gives those students information on resources available to allow them to move to full-time studies.
At schools like Mercy, “We”™re working overtime to defeat demography,” he said. “There”™s a real difference in these student populations of what it takes to help them succeed.”
The college president brought north a personal style of leadership that earned him praise from faculty, administrators and staff at Austin Peay. Public Agenda, a nonprofit organization that engages citizens to find common solutions on public policy issues, last year focused on Austin Peay and Hall”™s leadership there in a case study titled “Seven Practices of Enlightened Leadership in Higher Education.”
While staff and faculty on many college campuses distrust and feel disconnected from senior administrators, “Austin Peay State University is an outlier,” the study”™s authors wrote. “No other campus we have encountered has a similar climate.” Faculty and staff members credited Hall for creating a climate of openness and shared governance on campus.
As Mercy”™s new president noted, Austin Peay in 2013 and again this year made the nation”™s top 10 honor roll of Great Colleges to Work For, an annual survey of campus work environments by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“I don”™t think it”™s uncommon that there is a we-they kind of relationship between faculty and administration at many colleges,” Hall said. “I”™m convinced that if you want to provide great services to students, you provide a great workplace. The two go hand in hand.”
Hall said he already has begun the “listening sessions” on Mercy campuses that were the hallmark of his presidency in Tennessee. “I have pages of notes already,” he said. Having arrived in May at the close of the academic year, “I”™m actually chomping at the bit because I haven”™t heard much yet from students and faculty,” he said.
Mercy”™s president said he and his wife, Lee Nicholson Hall, would continue here their practice of dining in the college cafeteria once a week. The president”™s new home adjoins the Dobbs Ferry campus and is a short walk from his office in Verrazzano Hall, he said. Though the college has maintained a more distantly located residence for its presidents, “I told them I preferred something right out by the campus.”
That walk between home and office could get more challenging for one long accustomed to a southern climate. Hall has heard harrowing stories of the last stormy winter in metropolitan New York.
“In the summer it”™s been delightful,” he said. “As for the winter, I”™m just waiting.”
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