Mercy adapts and thrives
New president and upped health, science studies
By MARY SUE IAROCCI

In the hypercompetitive world of attracting students, Mercy College puts forth a straightforward pitch of broad academic opportunity and affordability.

As her first three months as dean of Mercy College winds down, Kimberly Cline has been busy keeping the equation on track.

Cline and her administration have increased enrollment of incoming freshmen for fall 2008 to the highest level in a decade.

As far as attracting students, Mercy’s 10,000 students on five campuses have more than 90 undergrad and graduate program options, “so the benefit of that to students is that they have a lot of choices,” Cline said.

Cline said when students come into a college undecided they tend to change their majors two or three times, so that abundance of choices serves the students well.

In addition to the main campus in Dobbs Ferry, Mercy has campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan, White Plains and Yorktown.

“Mercy has one of the oldest honors programs in the state, and that certainly is a draw to students because they know they’ll be challenged with professors and take not only their base courses, but interesting courses that stretch their intellect,” Cline said.

Education is a popular field of study at Mercy; graduates are the fourth-largest number of assistant principals in New York City.

The school of health and natural science is becoming increasingly popular.

“Right now health care jobs are too many for the few people that are graduating,” Cline said. “I’ve met with a lot of CEO’s of hospitals recently and they all want more grads. We were the first in the country to offer a physician’s assistant program, and all of those folks when they get out are 100 percent job placed.”

Cline said a “very caring faculty” is one reason Mercy is special.

“They could be at larger places, but they choose to be here because they care about who we are and what we’re about, and that is educating students,” Cline said.

Cline said the economic downturn can be an advantage for Mercy, which offers tuition rates of under $15,000 “probably $10,000 cheaper than a lot of the other schools locally.”

“We’re probably one of the most affordable private institutions in New York state, and we do that by choice because we don’t want financial need to be a barrier to coming to school,” Cline said. “We want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity for education.”

Cline said the college’s marketing plan is grassroots.

“I think at Mercy we’ve been very humble,” Cline said. “We’re reaching out to all the different high schools in the area. We want to be able to present Mercy in the best light, with a broad array of programs, with affordable-by-choice pricing, so that hopefully they’ll choose us. We get our message out by talking about the good things we’re providing, providing stats and showing that we have unique programs.”

The college currently has one residence hall with a couple hundred students living on the Dobbs Ferry campus, but “I think long term there will be another residence hall.”

Cline said one important initiative she will spearhead is making administrative services for students more efficient.

“Right now, I’m looking to put together out bursar/registrar/advisement function,” Cline said. “I think a student should be free to learn and we should provide a challenging environment, but all the administrative bureaucracy we should be able to streamline. What we want to do is cross over that so that a student will be able to talk to one or two people and not five people in five offices at five different times.”

As for innovative business programs, “we had the first corporate homeland security business program in New York state, so in these uncertain times, corporations certainly need to know everything’s going to be secure.”

Cline grew up in North Carolina. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She subsequently earned a master in business administration, a juris doctor degree and a doctor of educational administration at Hofstra University.

Her first job was in the pharmaceutical industry in marketing/sales/ public relations position.

She has also worked as assistant vice president for business affairs as well as university attorney and assistant treasurer at Hofstra University, vice president for finance and administration at Seton Hall University and vice president, chief operating officer and chief of staff at SUNY at Maritime College, where she was instrumental in doubling enrollment and balancing a 20 percent deficit budget.

She eventually got involved in admissions at Seton Hall admissions, then moved on to become vice chancellor and chief financial officer of the State University of New York, where she was responsible for all financial and administrative functions and oversaw SUNY's $10 billion budget, which supports 64 campuses throughout the state.

“I think everything that you do in your life has something to do with where you end up,” Cline said. “Somebody gave me some advice a long time ago: It’s really about trying to work hard and when you get leadership opportunities, take them and learn from them.”

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