Interview with Dominican University of California President Mary Marcy

Today we’re talking to Dominican University of California President Mary Marcy.  Having spent many years at an array of public and private institutions, she’s retiring after ten years at Dominican University.  It’s the last week of the semester and Dominican has been virtual for the whole last year and a half.  President Marcy says last week they did their drive-through graduation ceremony, and it was powerful to be back together.  This is President Marcy’s last commencement as well, and she says it’s bittersweet.  Through this pandemic, President Marcy says her learning curve and relationship with the board has improved.  She says, in fact, the whole community has strengthened because of this pandemic. They still don’t know what things will look like next fall, but they are more certain about their mission of supporting students than ever.

President Marcy says that before the pandemic she saw her biggest strength as gathering more facts and voices before making decisions.  However, for purposes of the pandemic, this approach didn’t really work.  President Marcy says people need answers now, even if they’ll change in the future, they need something to go off of.  While her leadership has evolved, President Marcy says not all changes will remain after the pandemic ends.  For example, the ways in which they made decisions at the beginning of the pandemic won’t be how they continue.  Some things that will remain  are how much energy they’re putting into student support.  That’s the biggest positive from the pandemic, is the institution is now absolutely focused on student success.  President Marcy says to keep up student success, they also need to focus on staff and faculty success.  One of the biggest learning experiences they had been in taking all their energy and putting it into technology.

As President Marcy wraps up her time at Dominican, she has some advice for the next president. With a school of 1800 students, President Marcy says the real accomplishment has been in trusting each other and building each other's strengths.  She’s prepared a piece for her final board meeting that reflects on her time and outlines what's next.  She wants the next president to know how they were positioned, what allowed them to continue, and what key choices were made.  One such choice was that one time losses will be handled with one time funds.  Where they’re headed is a lot of program innovation.

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