Guiding College to Greatness
(12/24/2009) A lot went on at Stony Brook Southampton this past semester, with a high-profile roster of guest lectures in a series of free,
Mary Pearl has settled into her new role as a college administrator after her first full semester at Stony Brook Southampton.
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public presentations by award-winning local authors and top researchers from around the country. It’s not uncommon these days to see a couple of United Nations ambassadors at the tiny public college, like the ones who led a discussion this fall on sea level rise in their places of origin, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives.
In October, the first lady of Japan put on a musical, along with 50 other members of an international dance troupe, which later stopped to deliver the same performance at the United Nations.
Jonathan Weiner, the Pulitzer Prize- winning author of “The Beak of the Finch,” graced the same venue. Dr. Mary Pearl, the college’s new dean, had assigned the book to every new student as summer reading.
“I’ve got an international Rolodex, so when people visit New York I nab them and they come out here,” said Dr. Pearl of the recent influx of high-profile visitors.
In an interview at her office last month, Dr. Pearl said that she had every intention of turning the tiny campus into a globally renowned research center and haven for the arts. “This is going to become one of the most competitive schools in the State University of New York system,” she said.
Earlier in the decade, Southampton College was a nearly abandoned campus managed by Long Island University, as well as host to a well-regarded graduate writing program that has been retained, faculty and all. The biggest changes have been an influx of funding to expand the program, along with its annual summer writers conference. There has also been a significant drop in tuition.
Marine science facilities nestled on Shinnecock Bay made the campus especially attractive to state university officials, who spent $35 million on the campus in 2006. It seemed that if the state university system were to have a campus devoted to the burgeoning field of environmental sustainability, this would be the place.
While the college opened quietly in 2007 with about 200 students, it took about two years to find a dean who would fit the institution. Enter Dr. Pearl, who arrived midway during the college’s spring semester.
“By the time the [first] semester was over I was like a deer in the headlights,” she said of her initiation to academia. “Nothing prepares you for being the dean of a college but being the dean of a college,” she said, laughing.
University officials made the unusual move to select a dean who had never worked in the capacity of an academic administrator before.
With a doctorate from Yale University and decades working as an administrator for nonprofit groups, most recently Ms. Pearl spent 15 years as executive director of the Wildlife Trust, an international network of scientists and educators dedicated to the conservation of endangered species.
Her goal at the college is not only to turn out a crop of new talent with training in areas that have to do with sustainability, she also wants graduates to leave the school well equipped to think with a global perspective.
“Really, I think we have failed in higher education in not knowing how systems operate. People are good at math, but don’t understand how a financial system could collapse,” she said.
“I think happiness comes from attaching yourself to significant problems,” she added. “There is a relationship between deer overabundance and Lyme disease.” These are the types of things her students will be trained to think about.
Despite the state university’s apparent focus and Dr. Pearl’s résumé, she has no intentions of ignoring the arts, recognizing the significant role they play here. “There is a fragile culture of arts on the East End,” and it is her intention to “create a very strong institution that trains, sustains, and provides refuge” for that culture, she said.
Along with concerts at the Avram Theater and her own “distinguished lecture series,” Stony Brook Southampton is fast becoming an educational and cultural institution that local residents are welcome to reap the benefits of.
“There are so many people who would like to come here for continuing education and master’s programs,” she said, insinuating that bolstering the school’s professional development programs in the future is a very real possibility.
Dr. Pearl said she was confident that under her direction the university will grow and that she expects an undergraduate population of 2,000 students in years to come. There are now 500 students enrolled. The school will attract them, she said, from near and far, and if she has anything to do with it, the Long Island Rail Road will stop at the Southampton campus once again.
In a weakened economy, in which state budget cuts have meant doomsday for educational facilities, how does she expect to accomplish this?
“Private fund raising hasn’t been something that state universities have done so much in the past,” she said. “Being a nonprofit head for 15 years, you learn a thing or two about fund raising.”