Diana Rogers-Adkinson began her tenure this month as the 13th president of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, replacing James Birge who stepped down this year after a decade in the role.
Rogers-Adkinson comes from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, where she served as senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs and chief academic officer for almost 80,000 students.
She told Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes that her scholarly work around mental health and emotional disorders have already come to the fore as she gets settled on the MCLA campus.
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Rogers-Adkinson: I've had to apply it already in the neighborhood. Things happen, and you know when we have to respond as community members to anyone who might be having mental health challenges, learning how to respond, not overreact, and also not shame that population.
I mean, it's a medical condition, and behavior is often interpreted with intent, where with many folks with mental illness, there's a real disconnect with their experiences and the reality that they're experiencing that we can't see.
Helping normalize what it means to have these conditions - just like somebody has diabetes or any other condition, and how we can help communities better accept these members of our community because there's a lot of fear and stigma.
That can even happen on our own college campus. When a student has a mental health crisis, how do we make sure that our first responders really understand the best ways to respond? How do we help keep that person safe while we keep our community safe?
The biggest challenge I always see is there's always reluctance on understanding that person's need for safety and what they're experiencing over the needs of the safety of others, and some assumption that that person is much more dangerous than they really are.
I think that me as a partner, us as a partner in the community will be really helpful - just helping our students who do have mental health conditions feel like we can help them make sure that they're getting the right support they need to be successful here as well.
Landes: We're speaking at a time where a lot of smaller, usually private liberal arts colleges are really struggling in the Northeast or outright shuttering. When you think about the role of the liberal arts in higher education right now, there's been a lot of effort to shift focus to vocational training to bring in more technical support. How do you pitch the world on why liberal arts matter and continue to be you know worth investing in and supporting in this day and age?
Rogers-Adkinson: I think the first thing is when we look at what our employers are saying. They are very pleased with our students because they can communicate well. They know how to work in a team. They know how to write effectively, and those are the pieces of the skill set for most areas of employment that are how you're measured on a daily basis.
Do you have the knowledge? Yes, but can you then maintain the appropriate relationships to work with your vendors or to work with other people in the workforce?
Those are the skills that you get through your liberal arts. How do you think about the problem? There are a lot of problems we have, but if you don't know how to dissect a problem, then you can't problem solve on the job. I think the other piece is really important to remember. Nobody is staying in the same career their entire lifetime. I started out as a classroom teacher. I'm not a classroom teacher now, and there's no career that's called how do you be a future president of a college or a university. You have to have all of those liberal arts skills to be able to apply in almost any leadership role, so I really think that is the piece folks really need to think about as our students are learning the skills toward a degree as well that will take them into you know nursing, but if that nurse can't communicate with others, that's the number one complaint a hospital is going to hear is this person has a bad bedside manner, not that oh they gave a really nice shot that I didn't feel too much you know and we felt really good about the person's ability to do the nursing care side if that person didn't feel respected while they were being cared for so that's really the beauty of what a liberal arts degree does and as those other schools are maybe not as successful right now, we're one of the cheapest state schools in the state. We really provide students the opportunity to get that deep ability to be both intellectually engaging, competent, productive workforce member, while also having those skills and knowledge that everybody's saying everybody needs.
Landes: Coming into this role right now, how do you feel that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is supporting public higher education right now? Are you concerned about funding? Are you satisfied with funding? Are there areas where they could do more or more effective avenues?
Rogers-Adkinson: Massachusetts is one of the better supporters for higher education in the nation, and so for me, making the transition to Massachusetts that is a positive.
There's a lot of ways that the state does support us that other states don't get. So, I would never criticize them on that on that point. Do we always think we need more? We're out here in the Berkshires. We make sure that that the state understands all of our needs because we serve a very unique area, and I keep hearing everybody talk about the divide of the mountains between the rest of the state's needs and our needs, so really I see it more as my role to make sure I'm communicating what's unique out here that we need support from the state that maybe they aren't always hearing or seeing because we're kind of over on the other side of the mountains.
Landes: What are some of those characteristics you're trying to communicate?
Rogers-Adkinson: I think one of the pieces is, even though we're small, how much investment in us and our infrastructure is equally as important as the larger state schools. Many of our students are very place-based, so if we weren't here and we cannot provide them the quality of instruction, because for example, our facilities are in need of upgrade, then these are students who probably would never get a degree, and economically for the western half of the state that's a big deal, so that would be one example of how I can start helping them understand here are investments that we could use from the state that will make sure that our students are on par to the rest of the students. Our labs and are beautiful over here, but there are other areas where we need to make investments to make sure all of our students get the same quality experience in their education.
