Vincent Boudreau and Tony Liss
Dear Faculty and Staff,
We write to let you know that our Dean of Science, Susan Perkins, will be leaving City College after the spring semester to become the Provost & Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at SUNY Potsdam, her alma mater. We are of course always happy for our colleagues when their talents provide them with new opportunities, but we will miss Dean Perkins at City College, where she has led the Division of Science with vision in supporting the vibrant research effort and has been a tireless advocate for our students.
Dean Perkins joined City College on January 6, 2020 as the Martin & Michele Cohen Dean of Science. Her previous position had been in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. Dean Perkins had only been with us a few months when the pandemic hit and the College went remote. It was, by any definition of the phrase, a trial by fire, and she proved to be a steady hand leading the Division of Science through an exceptionally difficult period.
Dean Perkins’ tenure has been marked by her keen focus on student success, in particular in the introductory math and science classes that are a significant hurdle for many of our students. In particular, she has championed new pedagogical models in Math 190, 195 and 201, along with the use of Navigate in these classes that have resulted in significant improvements in pass rates.
Dean Perkins has been a driving force behind making our Gaming Pathways Program a reality and our College and our students will benefit from a new major and career path that would not have happened without her enthusiasm. We are also indebted to Dean Perkins for bringing the Post Bac Health Professions program to fruition, for recognizing that the way a certain previous Dean of Science had set it up was sub-optimal and fixing it. Thanks to her, we now have a flourishing post bac program for students who want to go into the health professions but spent their undergraduate careers with other goals.
In tandem with all the administrative work that Dean Perkins accomplished, she continued doing her own research and she taught a class in her specialty, parasitology, every year. Despite attempts to cap the class at 20 students, Dean Perkins proved too popular of a professor and the class typically filled to more than 30 students.
Finally, along with all of these accomplishments, funded research in the Division of Science grew on Dean Perkins’ watch, and the Division was a major contributor to the College, reaching $100M in research funding this past year.
We wish Dean Perkins the very best at SUNY Potsdam. We will miss her at City College.
Please join us in congratulating Dean Perkins on her new role.
Sincerely,
