In honor of Women’s History Month, the Student Life Media Team has taken the initiative to highlight some of Kean’s prominent ladies for their “Women in Action” series. 

In the second installment of the series, Courtney-Joy Breeden, SLMT Writer, had the opportunity to touch base with Katherine Gallagher, Senior Vice President for Student Success.

Q: Before joining Kean University, you served as Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE). What skills and experiences have you been able to transfer to your position here at Kean?

A: So, as Deputy Assistant Commissioner, I oversaw branches of the Division of Field Services of the Department of Education, and Field Services is really focused on engaging directly with schools and districts to support students. So, I would say the throughline of my career is really, it’s about removing barriers to student success at all different levels and all different ways. And so much of what I’ve done in my career before is heavily applicable to what I do day in and day out here and it’s about systems thinking, it’s about being able to put yourself I think in a student’s shoes to really understand what the barriers are and more importantly engaging with students and hearing from them directly about what their concerns are, what they’re struggling with, what’s holding them back from being successful as they want to be. We want every student to persist to graduation, what I did in the K-12 world is similar to what I’m doing now in a higher-ed context which is really just, trying to create opportunity for students.

Q: What inspired you to work in "student success," and what life occurrences led you to this role?

A: So I always knew I wanted to advocate for students and young people in some regard and what draws me to student success work was I think partly it is a natural extension of what I had been doing in a slightly different context but I also, I can relate to our students in many different ways. I was a transfer student myself, first generation, I made not every mistake in the book but close to it and so I think that drives me to really find innovative ways to support our students in their path to graduation. There are some straightforward ways we can do that like advising but we’re always looking to find new and innovative ways to meet students where they are, the world changes quickly and we want to make sure that we’re in touch with our students and really helping them get to the finish line.

Q: As the Senior Vice President for Student Success, how do you approach students that may feel isolated or challenged by the pressures of achieving a college education?

A: We try to individualize our support to students as much as we can and of course, we identify some common themes, [and] some challenges students are facing, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to stay in school and to get to the finish line and so the ways that I try to relate to students is sometimes telling them some of the stories of what I faced as a first gen student. I attended a state university that was not within New Jersey, I didn’t fully understand the implications of paying more for tuition, I wasn’t there for a specific reason, so that was one of the things that kind of tripped me up a little bit in my educational journey, I did transfer I took some time off and when I was driving home for thanksgiving I was pulled over, I might have been speeding a little bit, but I got pulled over and got a speeding ticket, it was a 300 dollar speeding ticket, I’m going to date myself, there were no cell phones so I drove to the nearest rest stop and honestly just cried my eyes out in my car because I didn’t have 300 dollars and I was pretty sure I was going to transfer anyway and that was sort of the moment where I realized, I didn’t really have any other options at that point right? So I’ve been through those moments, where you’re kind of wondering am I going to be able to complete this journey, and just feeling the weight of everything can kind of fall in the way of successfully completing…so I think empathy and relating back to some of the struggles I had and just letting students know that they’re not alone, it’s a challenge for everybody to get to the finish line in their education and many of our students have extraordinary challenges but we have a whole world of alumni out there who have overcome those challenges and are successful today and that’s a model for our students I think.

Q: What has been the most rewarding experiences and the most challenging? How do you position yourself to produce a positive outcome from a challenging situation?

A: I think the most rewarding thing for me is when we’re really able to help students resolve a situation that keeps them on track to graduation, it’s wonderful to see all the students at graduation, of course, we celebrate those moments but we have teams working within the division all day every day just to try to help keep students on track and remove any barriers to their success and so, you know, seeing and hearing stories about students who are in situations where they might not be able to continue if not for what we’re able to provide, which can sometimes be a mini-grant, sometimes it can be helping students find more scholarship funding, that’s the most rewarding piece is just watching students be able to stay on their journey and make progress and go out in the world and do great things.

Q: What have you learned from working with students in the university? What do you hope students learn from you in return?

A: What have I learned from students? I am consistently impressed doesn’t begin to cover, I’m blown away by our student’s commitment and resilience, some of the stories students tell us about the challenges that they face and they still continue to find a way to be here every day is just, it blows me away so part of what I learned from our students is just that that commitment to learning it really can help move you through if there are appropriate supports available can help move you through any challenge and kind of stay on your path and I sort of knew that but I see that reinforced all the time and that’s really beautiful so I’m grateful to our student for that. What do I hope that they’ve learned from me is just to never give up, when I was overseeing field support teams, I was at the Department of Education… we sometimes had tough days, there were a lot of barriers, so what I used to tell my teams was it’s okay to fall down, it’s okay to go home feeling defeated, I had a lot of end of the day phone calls with folks who had kind of been through it that day and I said feel everything you’re feeling it’s totally fair to be there, you got to get up tomorrow and start again and fight another day and I preached that to them because it’s a mantra that I live by so I hope that that comes across to my colleagues and our students as well.

Q: How does the Division of Student Success and Retention collaborate with other departments at Kean University? What initiatives or programs are in place to ensure students are aware of the resources?

A: We do very little in the division that is not in partnership with others across the university, as our President [Repollet] reminds us, student success is everyone’s responsibility, that means literally every single person who is a part of the campus community and so we’re all about building bridges and working with our colleagues to try to supplement all of the great work that they’re doing and kind of galvanize everybody around a common mission to help our students persist to graduation. We’re very fortunate we have wonderful colleagues across the university who are just as committed as we are to helping every single student get to the finish line. Let me think of some of the key collaborations that we’ve taken part in we had an advising task force that generated a report on making recommendations for what advising should look like at Kean moving forward  CAPS is our advising center, the Center for Advising Persistence and Success and it does sit within the division, but the advising task force is composed of folks from all across the university and as we work toward implementing those goals, we’re still midway through implementing the recommendations that were included in that report and the implementation has included stakeholders from all across the university and that’s the way that we prefer to do things because we really want to make sure that that’s part of how we spread the word about what we offer right? It’s about making sure that all of our colleagues are aware but also when we collaborate with our colleagues, we are able to sometimes identify barriers for students that we might not otherwise and so that’s a critical part of our success.

Q: How does this Division keep pace with current trends in technology and academic learning?

A: I’m not going to lie, it can be tough, things move quickly and things change quickly and AI  is a perfect example of that so we are always focused on professional learning we try to make sure that everyone in the division has access to attending professional learn events bot on campus and off campus and in other locations, and we sure resources with each other every day so we all read what’s going on, if we can’t get out to a conference we may participate in a webinar on something like AI right and how it applies to our work and then we try to share that information amongst ourselves its hard sometimes in the business of day to day to stop and focus on the professional learning but if we don’t keep up with what’s going on then we’re not going to be as effective for our students… we try to share information the best ways that we can and we try to just make sure that everyone is engaged in that professional learning and that everyone has opportunities to engage in different ways in that learning.

We would like to extend a big thank you to Senior Vice President Katherine Gallagher for participating in our Women in Action series. We acknowledge her success and commitment to the betterment of Kean’s student population and for being a spokesperson for students who face obstacles during their college careers.

Stay tuned for more empowering stories featured on Women In Action at Kean in our series throughout the remainder of the month.