Hofstra's new president looking to start a new conversation — about the future 

Susan Poser, Hofstra University's ninth president and first woman to lead the 86-year-old institution, wants to start a conversation that could shape the school's direction for years to come.

Poser assumed office at the Hempstead campus on Aug. 1 as Hofstra prepared to welcome its more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, vaccinated and masked, to in-person classes in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her inauguration was Friday in a ceremony in the Mack Sports Complex, Hofstra's arena.

In her inaugural speech, Poser, 58, said the pandemic offered a moment for people to rethink what they will take with them into the future, and what will be left behind, quoting from an essay that said pandemics have "forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew … it is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next."

While not imagining such a drastic change, she wants to examine how and in what ways Hofstra can evolve. An initiative she describes as a series of conversations with administrators, faculty, student government, alumni and the board of directors about "how they would define Hofstra and what are their ambitions for the future" will begin by the end of the month, she said.

Poser hopes a consensus will emerge by the end of the spring semester to help shape the next strategic plan and refocus allocation of academic resources.

"Hofstra sits at this very interesting place in higher education," she said, being neither a small liberal arts college or a huge research university, but rather an institution with numerous graduate and professional programs with liberal arts at its core. "It is kind of like a unicorn in that it doesn't have that many peers that are like Hofstra, and I think we need to figure out how to articulate who we are and more importantly where we want to go."

Poser had been at the University of Illinois Chicago, serving as provost, vice chancellor for academic affairs and chief operating officer, when she was chosen to succeed Stuart Rabinowitz, who retired July 31. During his 20-year tenure as president, Hofstra added a medical school, a separate engineering and computer science school, and programs in nursing and the health professions, among others, while expanding its endowment tenfold.

Faculty is enthusiastic about Poser's initiative, said Elizabeth J. Ploran, an associate psychology professor and president of the Hofstra chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Ploran, who has spoken with many faculty members, said, "Hofstra’s expansion over the past two decades has greatly reshaped the nature of the university, but we have not stopped to consider the impact of that expansion as a community. Faculty members are ready and excited to dig into the work of who we are, what our mission is, and where we are heading.

"It is a great first step in building institutional trust between the faculty and our new leadership in Dr. Susan Poser."

'I'm a big believer in the liberal arts'

Long term, Poser said, more support is needed for academic research and scholarship "to do more justice to the fact that we have all these graduate programs," and to increase the diversity of the university's faculty by "including broad and diverse pools of candidates."

She acknowledges there is a crisis in the liberal arts as students and their parents look to education as a means to a good job and good career. "I'm a big believer in the liberal arts, but I think we need to better articulate how you get from there to a career," she said.

At the same time, there is a need to better articulate to students in preprofessional programs such as engineering, communications or nursing why "it's so important for them that they do participate in the liberal arts core and how that's going to help them in their careers," Poser said.

"It's not that we have to do something major to the liberal arts to make it good career preparation. We just have to articulate better why it is such good preparation," she said.

Internships, or mentorships with alumni, could give liberal arts majors a taste of a possible career while demonstrating the value of the skills imparted by their education.

"They'll be able to see how using their ability to think critically and write well will help them in whatever it is they think they want to do," Poser said.

Poser, who grew up in Manhattan and now lives in Syosset, received a law degree and a doctorate in jurisprudence and social policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia. "I majored in ancient Greek and I was never going to go to grad school in classics," she said.

She noted that the conversations on the school's future must involve faculty. "There has to be that buy-in — it's the faculty who do the work," Poser said. "All I can do is help get that conversation started and help move things forward, but they have to be committed to any changes that we make."

Meanwhile, she believes her first short-term goal — helping oversee the reopening of the campus this fall semester, as many more students returned for in-person classes after more than a year of COVID-19 restrictions and protocols — has been a success. Nearly all students and faculty are fully vaccinated and following masking protocols, she said, with a low COVID-19 positivity rate of .3% in surveillance testing.

"It's been very busy, but great," Poser said. "I love it here."

By Carol Polsky

Carol.Polsky@newsday.com

Carol Polsky writes news and features on wide-ranging topics, from superstorm Sandy, 9/11 and presidential elections to health care and the economy.