Leadership

James McCarthy began a two-year term as interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs in August 2019. He previously served in these roles from June 2007 through January 2012, before becoming president of Suffolk University in Boston.

Dr. McCarthy began his career at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research, followed by nine years on the faculty of the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, where he also served as director of the Hopkins Population Center. He was then appointed director of the Center for Population and Family Health at Columbia University and as the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of Public Health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Following that, he served as dean of the School of Health and Human Services and professor of health management and policy at the University of New Hampshire. In recent years, McCarthy has served as a consultant to colleges, universities, and university systems throughout the United States, and as a faculty member in the Program in Higher Education Administration at Baruch’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.

Dr. Price joined the College as Associate Provost for Academic Administration and Faculty Development on June 26, 2017. She oversees the Office of Academic Administration and the Sponsored Programs and Research Office. The VPAA & FD provides leadership, guidance, and support across all aspects of faculty scholarship, development, professional advancement, and appointments at the College.

Prior to coming to the College, Dr. Price served as Dean of Academic Affairs at Guttman Community College, City University of New York. There, she was the sole academic dean at a startup educational institution focused on student success. She developed initiatives promoting faculty scholarship, recognition, and professional development. The full-time faculty increased 68 percent under her leadership, and she implemented an innovative First Year Sponsor and orientation program. Price oversaw the budgeting development and management process in Academic Affairs. Price provided guidance and support for the mission-critical areas of experiential and global learning. In addition, she led the area of external partnerships for the College, including the Early College High School.

For 19 years before her arrival in New York, Dr. Price was a Professor of Geography at Florida International University in Miami. At Florida International, Dr. Price served in the Office of the Provost as Faculty Fellow from 2011-2013, where she was primarily tasked with piloting an integrated suite of faculty success initiatives. In addition, she held a seven-year appointment in FIU’s Division of Research, as Chair of the Institutional Review Boards overseeing human subject research. Price was an American Council on Education Fellow (Class of 2013-2014) and spent her fellowship year working with the presidents of Claremont Graduate University and Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

She has obtained significant federal funding for her research from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Price is an internationally-recognized urban and cultural geographer whose scholarship explores Latino/a neighborhood dynamics, critical geographies of race and ethnicity, and diversity in higher education. She has authored four books and numerous journal articles.

Price was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington and received her PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is an avid distance runner, having completed over 30 half-marathon races.

Associate Provost Slavin received his PhD in Historical Musicology from Princeton University. He joined the music faculty of Baruch College in 1986 and also serves on the faculty of the PhD Program in Music at the Graduate Center of CUNY. He has published articles on 15th-century music in international journals, including the Journal of Musicology, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Early Music, Studi Musicali, and Musica Disciplina, and has contributed to the Journal of the American Musicological Society, the new MGG (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart), Leading Notes, Notes, and the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. He was co-organizer of the First International Conference on Binchois (Fall 1995), is co-editor of Binchois Studies (Oxford University Press, 2000), and is editing the songs of Binchois for a new edition of the composer’s secular music. He is past-president of the Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society.

Associate Provost Slavin monitors the college’s curriculum, supervises the college’s academic assessment efforts and the offices that provide support for student learning, and coordinates initiatives in the areas of faculty development (specifically related to teaching) and faculty engagement.

Dr. Rachél Fester joined Baruch College as Assistant Provost for Assessment, Accreditation, and Institutional Effectiveness in August 2017. She also serves as Baruch’s Accreditation Liaison Officer to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Dr. Fester holds an BA magna cum laude from Harvard University, an MA from the University of Chicago, an MSEd from the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she was a U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Interdisciplinary Methods for Field-Based Research in Education.

Dr. Fester’s research focuses primarily on access to and success in college for underserved, low-income and/or first generation students, and has also included work on pre-college outreach programs, civic engagement, healthcare education and the healthcare workforce. She has been published in Educational Policy, Enrollment Management Journal, the Journal of Black Studies, and the Journal of Student Financial Aid. Her research has been presented at several conferences, including the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the American Educational Research Association, the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, the Student Financial Aid Research Network, and the Association of American Medical Colleges Workforce Research. Dr. Fester has also been invited to give talks at the National Board of Medical Examiners as well as the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing.

Dr. Fester has over twenty years of experience in higher education administration. She​ has held progressively responsible roles in areas of institutional research, assessment, strategic and operational planning, institutional effectiveness, accreditation, data management, and data analytics, and has extensive applied experience in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research.

Dr. Fester has served for several years as an adjunct assistant professor in the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs of Baruch College, where she has taught Access and Equity in Higher Education, The History of Higher Education, Student Development Theory and Practice, and Management and Leadership in Higher Education.

Dr. Fester is an active member of the CUNY Assessment Council, the CUNY Institutional Research Council, the CUNY Middle States Accreditation Council, and the CUNY Coordinated Undergraduate Education Council. She is a co-project manager of the CUNY Assessment Council’s systemwide online assessment curriculum known as Assessment 101, and has served on planning committees for the annual CUNY Middle States Symposium as well as the annual Joint Retreat of the CUNY Assessment and Institutional Research Councils.

Dr. Fester is a trained Middle States Peer Evaluator, and has been invited to co-facilitate workshops for the annual Middle States Self-Study Institute.

Dr. Fester works across all academic and administrative departments at Baruch, collaborating with faculty, administration, and staff on a broad range of assessment, planning, research and accreditation initiatives. Her scope of work entails providing a mix of leadership, training, consultation, support and facilitation on alignment, collaboration, assessment and planning across system, institutional, division, and departmental efforts, in support of student success, as framed by both the CUNY and the Baruch College mission and goals.

Ann Clarkson is the Associate Dean of Continuing Education of Baruch College. She has approximately 50 full-time employees and 350 faculty. Her program boasts close to 12,000 registrations annually. Each semester, close to 1,000 sections are offered to the public, corporations and academic partners. The program’s subjects cover 50 non-credit certificates ranging from finance, accounting, and project management to English as a second language (ESL), modern languages and test preparation.

Ms. Clarkson’s career began after graduating from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She began her career in education as a high school teacher in English and moved on to teaching English as a foreign language at Bratislava Technical University in Slovakia. Upon her return to the United States, she attended Columbia University’s Teacher’s College and obtained my MA in Instructional Technology.

Ms. Clarkson’s next career move was with Simon & Schuster where she developed textbooks for the secondary education market. She specialized in the history and special education markets, publishing several national bestsellers. Ms. Clarkson was also a member of Simon & Schuster’s initial team of online technology specialists and developed one of the first web sites offering lesson plans and online support for teachers in the field.

Drawing upon her pedagogical design and online experience, Ms. Clarkson joined Securities Training Corporation (STC). STC is a leading test preparation and continuing education company for the financial services industry. Ann led STC’s team in the development of a complete suite of computer-based training modules and an online university that services approximately 40,000 professionals a year.

Ms. Clarkson’s next move was to New York University to create an online program and develop an Instructional Design division. Her role expanded when she was promoted to Director of Academic Operations where she was responsible for the development and management of several academic areas in non-credit, undergraduate and graduate programs. The program areas represented approximately 1,500 courses annually and included instructional design, digital imaging, graphic design, information technology, film and broadcasting, the virtual college, corporate training, and interior design.