Dear Members of the Teachers College Community:
Greetings on my first official day as your Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of the College.
I join you with excitement and purpose. Although writing to you for the first time from Zankel Hall, I have felt a part of the TC community for some time. The same day President Bailey announced my appointment, I received emails from TC alumni far and wide welcoming me to this special place that changed their lives.
Throughout spring 2023, I visited campus several times to meet with President Bailey and other campus leaders. We discussed current projects and priorities, and I enjoyed a tour through each TC building with student leaders. I was also introduced to the outstanding scholarship of TC faculty, students, and alumni at the AERA reception of 200 people in Chicago. Likewise, I have been reading up on TC history and the important work of each of the ten departments, and had the opportunity to talk with several Board of Trustees members at their end-of-year barbecue.
From these interactions, I took away an appreciation for TC’s values of shared governance, diversity and community, and excellence and impact – as well as a commitment to cultivating a connected community of care. In other words, this spring I was offered – and seized – multiple opportunities to come to know more about TC, and to begin to develop relationships with colleagues in my new academic home.
Relationships are very important to me. They have always been the most important way I learn, grow, contribute, and lead; they were a key reason that I was at my previous institution for 16 years. I am grateful to President Bailey and so many TC colleagues for the care taken to welcome me into this community. I hope that you can tell from my engagement so far, I am inspired by TC's mission, and look forward to partnering with President Bailey, campus leaders, faculty, staff, and students to amplify and animate the incredible scholarship, teaching, and partnership work of Teachers College. I look forward to thinking creatively with you about how TC can continue to be one of the best places to learn, work, and live – and to finding new ways for TC to shape a more just world. I am ALL IN.
I know this message is reaching some of you during summer classes, workshops and institutes, study abroad trips, and conferences. Others are writing, planning, cultivating an idea, and/or writing a grant. Higher education has many seasons and summer is often a season of rest and renewal. I wish you the best of both.
If you are on campus, or see me in the hall or neighborhood, please do say hello. For those of you I have yet to meet or may not see this summer, I will create opportunities to get to know as many of you as possible this fall.
Thank you for a great beginning.
Warm regards,
KerryAnn O’Meara
Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of the College
P.S. I am especially grateful to Interim Provost Bill Baldwin who generously shared wisdom and history of TC initiatives with me, to Katie Embree and Amy Hawley Alvarez who have handled every logistical and administrative issue, and to Dewayne White who has made moving to NYC and Bancroft Hall seamless for me, my husband Dan, and our Newfoundland Ginny.