Endings and Exits

Editor's Note: An abridged version of this interview also appears in the Spring 2023 issue of The Connection, the HCC college magazine.

By CHRIS YURKO

Endings and exits are just as important as beginnings, says President Christina Royal.

Fittingly, when she announced last year that she intended to retire from HCC, she gave nearly a year's notice, enough time to tie up loose ends and help smooth the college's transition to its next president. Her last day is July 14. 

"It has been one of the greatest honors and privileges of my life to serve as the fourth president of this great institution," she said August 23 in a message to the HCC community, "and now is the time to prepare for the next chapter of my life." 

Royal, 50, made clear that she is not leaving HCC for another job and has no specific plans. Her choice of the word "retirement" to describe her actions, she said, was deliberate, marking a definitive break between her present job and whatever comes next. 

"One of the greatest responsibilities of any leader is to know when and why to lead an institution and also when and why it is time to leave it," she said. "I have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting about this life change, and my 'why' is simple and straightforward: I am seeking expansion and personal growth in the form of new learnings and experiences and an opportunity to pause and enjoy the present moments." 

Royal started at HCC in January 2017 succeeding William Messner as HCC's fourth president, and making history as the first woman to hold the position. 

In her announcement, Royal cited some of the milestones of her tenure: working collaboratively to develop HCC's first strategic plan, advancing equity across the institution; and investing in programs to support students' basic needs, such as creating the President's Student Emergency Fund (to provide grants to students facing immediate financial needs), opening Homestead Market (the first campus store in Massachusetts to accept SNAP benefits), partnering with Holyoke Housing Authority (to help students find affordable housing), and launching the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch program (to provide HCC student-parents access to free, shortterm care for their children.) 

Other highlights include opening the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute on Race Street; reopening the HCC Campus Center after a two-year, $43.5 million renovation; establishing El Centro, a bilingual center dedicated to the needs of Latinx students; weathering a global pandemic; and celebrating HCC's 75th anniversary as the oldest two-year college in Massachusetts. 

"President Royal has always known what needed to be done to take HCC to the next level, and she involved everyone in the process of moving the college forward," said Robert Gilbert, chair of the HCC Board of Trustees. "The work to advance HCC's mission, vision, and strategic priorities will indeed continue. Without question, higher education as a sector is in for a lot of change as we look to the future, but Dr. Royal has prepared our institution well and set HCC up for success far beyond her tenure." 

Earlier this year, as she prepared for her final semester at HCC, President Royal sat down to talk about her decision to retire, her plans, and her legacy as HCC's fourth president. 

Have you ever had the feeling that you're on a kind of farewell tour?

Last year, when I first announced that I would be retiring from HCC, there was an immediate reaction from people saying very nice things and offering their goodbyes, and I said, "I've got a whole year ahead of me; I'm not going anywhere right away." When I'm speaking, I just try to remind people that it's not my final day yet. It's customary in the field of higher education for presidents to give a full year's notice. At HCC, though, that hasn't necessarily been the case. Because there have only been three presidents before me, I think maybe it seemed a bit unusual for folks, but I wanted to give the college the respect it deserved in having a peaceful transition of leadership to the fifth president. 

Has your approach to the job changed since you made your announcement?

There is a shift that happens, but the shift is more about, how do I prepare the institution for a new president? How do I provide a good transition point for an incoming president to be able to pick up that baton and go in whatever direction she or he may choose to. On the macro level, I still have the same priorities that I had before in terms of aligning with our strategic plan, working on the core areas highlighted in our NECHE accreditation report, hiring a vice president of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, donor engagement, and fundraising for a capital campaign. 

Why did you choose this moment to move on?

It wasn't an instant decision. I put a lot of thought and reflection into everything I do. I have said multiple times that it's not so much about my leaving HCC as it is about starting my next chapter and being able to make space in my life for other things that I haven't had time to focus on. I wanted to make sure that the institution was in a stable place post-pandemic. That was very important to me, making sure that we would be okay and that we were far enough on the other side of it. 

Do you believe HCC is in a stable place?

I do. There will always be challenges; it doesn't matter what period it is in the college's history. There's always going to be challenges that an institution's facing or higher education is facing. However, with that said, I do think that we're in a good place, and we have a lot of external recognitions to validate that. We have a lot of new folks we have welcomed to the college. In responding to the pandemic, faculty and staff have had to completely rethink the work they do and how they do it. I think that we're at a place where people understand this shift and have acclimated to the ways their job roles have had to change to accommodate this new post-pandemic world, although I don't really like the term "post-pandemic." We are in a different place than we were in 2020, clearly. Even 2021 and 2022 felt like the start of another layer of transition. I'm optimistic about 2023. 

For most people, retirement means the end of their working life. You're only 50 years old. 

Retirement to me signifies a completion and an ending of sorts, and that's what I wanted to communicate. Oftentimes, when people make an announcement at my age, the focus is so much on where they're going to. I wanted to be very intentional about disaggregating those things because I want to take a break before I transition to something else. I really did want to create some space and time for me to enjoy another chapter. I've got a lot of big things happening in my personal life. All very good things. It's also taken a lot to lead a college through a pandemic, and I thought this would be a perfect time to take a short break. 

You must be fielding inquiries about possible new jobs.

I've pretty much said no to everything that has come my way, because I did really mean it when I said I wanted to have some space in between this and whatever's next. I'm putting my focus on having a break for the rest of 2023 and then starting something sometime in 2024. I have some personal projects that I just haven't had a chance to put as much time into, even decluttering my household, spending more time with family and friends. I want to travel a little bit more and just make some space for things that can be challenging with a job as intense as a college presidency. 

Do you have something specific in mind?

I might teach. I'm not necessarily thinking I would step into that full time, but teaching a class would be exciting when I think about that as a creative expression of my skill set and an opportunity to stay connected to students, which is what I really love. 

You mentioned big things happening in your personal life. You recently got engaged.

Yeah, there's a lot of big, big news. My partner Karen and I purchased a house in South Hadley. She's a designer, so she is fixing that up. I feel very grateful to be leaving HCC on a high when I feel like the college is doing good work. I feel I'm in a good space personally and professionally. 

Have you set a date yet?

Not yet. I wanted to be able to fully focus on HCC this semester, this first half of the year, and so we are talking about a date in the fall, so sometime after I'm finished at HCC and I can give that the attention it deserves as well. 

The two of you went together to HCC's semi-formal winter dance.

We really wanted to go and support students. I had gone down to the Campus Center for a holiday event, and a student was telling me about the dance and said that they had never attended any of their high school events because of the pandemic and that had really impacted them. That comment really brought to life another aspect of how people's worlds changed during the pandemic, particularly young folks at a key formative stage of life. They didn't get to experience some of the typical milestones others have, so there is a hole there. The semi-formal was a wonderful opportunity to allow them to experience something like that for the first time.

You broke a lot of barriers as president of HCC: first woman, first person of color, first openly gay. How did that feel?

I have spoken very openly and consistently about how important representation is. One of my very first HCC events was International Women's Day. I gave some remarks. People didn't really know me at that point. Afterward a lot of people came up to me and said how nice it was to have a woman as president, a queer person, a woman of color. All of these comments were about their being able to see themselves in leadership. Now, what you do in the role is also important; you have to be able to make a tangible impact by bringing people along, engaging people in the endeavors that you wish to lead. Not being able to see yourself in key roles really does limit your thinking about what's possible for yourself. I hadn't even started thinking about a college presidency until I worked for a president who was a woman of color. She said, "You would be good at this someday." 

Has HCC lived up to your expectations?   

It can be difficult when you're coming from outside the community. There's a lot to learn. You have to learn the college and the people in it, and you have to learn the community and you have to learn the history. And you have to learn where the region is going. You have to understand where the state's direction is focused. There's a lot of dimensions to really understanding what an institution stands for and what the needs are and how one can contribute. I felt like I had a pretty good sense of that coming in, and I felt like I had certainly had enough lived experiences that there were few big surprises. I felt prepared for what the experience would be. But, mostly, I could feel a sense of knowing where there was impact to be made. I tried to focus my time on impacting the institution in ways that I knew would serve the institution not just in the present but also in the future.

Early on in your administration you worked with the HCC Foundation to set up the President's Student Emergency Fund as a stop-gap for students in immediate financial distress. Since then you've donated money to the foundation to endow the Christina Royal Equity Promise Scholarship. Why were these important for you?

I'm proud of the work we've done collectively to elevate the equity agenda here. I'm proud of it not just because of the work I've done, but because the college is embracing that as a priority and recognizing that if we're truly going to be able to aspire to a promise of equity for all and to really help close the achievement gaps then we need to prioritize this at all levels. To do that we have to think about how we close the gaps that students experience that do not allow them to stay continuously enrolled in college. I wanted to be able to have a scholarship that allows us to help fill in those gaps as we continue to prioritize the equity agenda, continue to focus on how we can ensure that every student who comes to HCC with an aspiration to get a degree or credential to change their lives through the power of education has the ability to do so. 

I'm so proud that we have spent a lot of time over the last several years prioritizing the ways we can help close those gaps. We've focused on giving faculty new professional development opportunities so that they can get more deeply engaged in equity through a curricular lens. We have focused more on basic needs for students so that we can ensure we are able to meet those challenges head on instead of seeing students quietly withdraw because they are facing  some other barrier beyond the classroom that they can't surmount. We've been focusing on closing achievement gaps, and we certainly know that financial gaps are a big part of what many of our students' experience. It's like trying to smooth over the potholes in the student experience so that it's a bit smoother and they don't get derailed.

Food insecurity has been an important issue for you since you arrived, so it must have been satisfying to witness the opening of Homestead Market.

When we started our first strategic planning process, we wanted to conceptualize more tangibly what we were talking about as it related to basic needs, and we defined them as food insecurity, housing insecurity, transportation, and also childcare. However, during the pandemic, we also saw mental health needs emerge. We saw digital literacy needs emerge, and the definition of basic needs will continue to change over the years. So, it's about us being in tune with what students are experiencing at any given point. Addressing basic needs is fundamental to ensuring that students can stay focused on what they're here to do. They're here to change their lives through an education, and the purpose of the education for many of them is to create a better life for themselves and their families. And that's either through more job security, or a promotion or a career change, something to provide that stability so that they can focus on building futures for themselves.

You've presided over a lot of grand openings since you arrived in 2017. Is there any one that stands out?

I was really excited for all of them, but if I had to call one out it would be the Campus Center. I had toured the Campus Center when I was interviewing for this job and within weeks after starting we had to shut it down for reconstruction. It was such a difficult time because it was an area, even in its dilapidated condition, that was a focal point for students, and suddenly that didn't exist. And, so, we had to find other ways to create spaces for students to gather across the campus, and that was challenging. When we reopened the Campus Center, it was absolutely gorgeous. I knew it would be a space where students would congregate and it would do all the things we had wanted for a campus center. In February 2020, we invited Governor Baker and other key dignitaries to come for the grand opening. A month later we had to shut it down again along with the whole college. When the campus started to open up in the fall of 2021, I walked in there and it still had its new car smell, so to speak. I thought, OK, well here's our gift coming out of the pandemic. We have a brand new Campus Center. How are we going to make the most of this? It was a really great space to have to give students a sense of community again. 

What's been your most memorable experience at HCC?

I've had a lot of memorable experiences. Most recently, painting the crosswalk outside the Campus Center with rainbow paint was very exciting. I have really enjoyed my time attending plays and hanging out with the theater students, particularly when they invited me to participate in the 24-hour theater festival and I had a chance to run lines with them. I loved going to the Woo Sox game with students and alums of the college. One of the students said it was his very first time in a ballpark, and so it was fun talking to him about my experiences going to ball games, and especially since I had aspired to be the first female professional baseball player. Those types of experiences are just so joyous. 

The opening of the Homestead Market was a memorable event for me because it was birthed out of students. They asked for a place where they could use their SNAP benefits on campus. Being able to directly respond to a student request and meet that call and challenge was exciting. 

As someone who identifies as queer, raising the first Pride flag was a huge honor. To be able to represent our LGBTQ community and bring more visibility to LGBTQ issues felt very rewarding to me. Going into the radio station and talking with students as they practice their interviewing skills on me and hearing why radio lights them up. Those experiences bring a lot of texture and excitement to my job. What's your favorite thing about HCC? My favorite thing about the college is how well it responds to the community. All of the ways we work to support the community, even beyond direct education, such as events and activities, summer youth camps that bring students in early and help parents for the summer. Workforce programs that help adult learners make short-term career changes or leap into a new profession. Helping students transfer to four-year schools. These are all the ways that we make a huge impact in our community. 

And then, most recently, pickleball, which I'm very excited about. The community response has been amazing. It just shows you that there's a need for us. This college really does serve a key role in this community. We truly represent who we are. 

What do you want to be remembered for as president of HCC?

There are a few things that I hope people think about when they think about this period of HCC's history. Certainly, the fact that we have created a focus on more data information. Having a data-informed environment means that people are in a state of curiosity and  reflection when they look at data and they consider how they are making an impact. And it's okay to question the data. It's okay to think about the quality of stories associated with the data. But we need to examine what the data show us about how we're doing and how can we do better, and in what areas we are doing really well that we should be shouting from the rooftops.  

Another area is process improvement. That's one of the less sexy areas of the institution, but it creates good bones about how an institution runs. The more efficiencies we're able to create the better we're able to maximize our human capital, the faculty and staff at the institution, to better serve students. 

The equity agenda is also near and dear to my heart, and that's an evolution. Where the institutional will be at in five years will be different than where we're at today. But to elevate the equity agenda, to put serious commitment and financial resources behind it, is something that I'm very proud of. To be leaving the institution as we're creating a cabinet level position to focus on equity really speaks to how serious the institution takes this topic. 

I couldn't list memorable moments without also thinking about getting the college safely through the pandemic.

Surely, the pandemic was the biggest challenge you've faced as president.

There was a lot in my past that prepared me for the presidency. Nothing really prepared me or anyone to lead an institution through a pandemic. There was no playbook to follow. We were living through times nobody had experienced before. In that respect, it made it one of the most intense periods of my presidency, but I'm grateful for the decisions that we've made. I feel grateful that we were able to keep people safe. I was grateful we were able to keep students' educations going. There were a lot of people who needed stability and certainty and predictability during the pandemic, and faculty and staff, while they were experiencing being up-ended in the same way as everyone else, they provided that stability and comfort to students during a very difficult time. 

We have students now that have, without it being their preferred option, graduated from HCC without ever stepping on campus. Those were new experiences. Now we're in a period of people wanting to come back and experiencing that engagement again and reconnecting with people, reconnecting with community, whether that's through student clubs or visiting faculty during office hours, or music rehearsals, or experiential learning. There's so much we offer in terms of the bricks and mortar of our campus. It was a huge period of reinvention.

You came in with the idea of being an approachable leader, active and visible in the community. Do you feel you've lived up to that?

I think being approachable is important, but it can be a little bit challenging, because people often see you first as the president and second as human. I have the same day-to-day struggles as everybody else and it can feel challenging in terms of helping people to see you as a person and a person who cares about them as well. Because, at the end of the day, nothing gets done if it's not with people. I knew that we wouldn't be able to move initiatives forward if it wasn't for the support of the community. I really give the majority of the credit to the faculty and staff who have helped with different initiatives and moved them forward. But, as far being approachable, I've tried to share in presentations or in conversations things about my personal life, to show the humanity of this role. I think that helps people recognize that while I sit with the responsibility of keeping this institution safe and fiscally sound and forward thinking, it's just as important to be able to connect with people so that I can tap into what's important to them and help support their initiatives.

Student trustee Jay George said she appreciated the amount of time you've spent with her, talking about issues coming before the board of trustees. 

I believe that coaching and mentorship is really important. It gives me an opportunity to exercise leadership in a different way and also share ways that my experiences have helped me learn and grow. I have learned a great deal hearing stories of other people's successes and failures. If can pass that along I'm very grateful to do so.

What's the most important thing you've learned as president of HCC?

The most important thing that I learned, or I should say, relearn over and over is that, at the end of the day, it is really all about people. It's all about the relationships. It's about what we can do together. Even if I did have all the best ideas, and I have some good ideas and others have a lot of great ideas, in this role it's about how you're able to champion others and gain the support of others to move in a common direction. When you have an institution this size that has a wide variety of perspectives, that can be one of the most complex and challenging endeavors. It's also the one of the most rewarding when we can get everybody on the same page.  For example, creating a new shared governance model. This was huge. It was one of the areas that I spoke about when I first started, but there wasn't the appetite for focusing on that then, and I had to listen to folks . Even though I knew it was something that we needed to work on, the timing wasn't right. Later, there was a point where people were ready to work on that. And so then to be able to respond at that moment and work together to build a model that truly represents all of the people who represent our HCC community is very satisfying, because people have a voice now in the process of deciding the priorities of the institution and moving the institution forward. It starts with them having a voice and a seat at the table, to be able to help make change happen collaboratively. 

Your windowsill has quite a few more books on it than it did six years ago. Are you taking them all with you? 

I certainly believe that variety is important when it comes to reading, which is why you see books here on leadership and books on social justice and equity, and you see books on management and motivation, and books on data. They all  represent pieces of me. I haven't found one book that encapsulates everything. I enjoy a form of learning where I am constantly filling my head with different perspectives, because I can take something away from every single book and use it to inform my leadership. It's important to stay open and curious. I like to read because I love the idea of entertaining new ideas. The process of questioning is probably the greatest asset that I have as a leader, the willingness to entertain alternative pathways and ideas has kept me open and flexible. I think that was very important during the pandemic. So, I'd say they all have an important role. I've used as a lending library over the years and had different people come in and borrow books. I will leave many behind for the next president and also for the college, perhaps in the Center for Excellence. I will take a few with me.

I'm sure you'll be taking "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss. It seems particularly fitting now, given that you're leaving

Exactly. It's right here. This is one of the first books I received as a gift of congratulations for my presidency by a former colleague.

What are you going to miss most about HCC?

Working with faculty, staff, and students. We are in the people business, and I've talked a lot about that and reminded people that while automation is important, and new forms of disrupting the way we do business is critical to our future, we are in the people business. I love interacting with people. I love that aspect of my job, being able to have a chance to see our faculty in the classroom, doing what they do best. That's been so powerful. It's part of my job as president to share those stories with the community at large so they can see the impact that HCC makes and why this is the place they should send their students. 

U.S. presidents historically leave a letter for their successors with words of wisdom or advice. Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for the next president of HCC?

The advice I would share is that this is an institution headed in the right direction. With a leader who really embraces and supports and collaborates with faculty, staff, and students, the future is unlimited.

PHOTOS by CHRIS YURKO: Outgoing President Christina Royal holds one of her favorite books.