Last of her kind

Last of her kind

By Braxton Johnson-Price

As you all may know President Ruby Curry will be signing off as the last president of Florissant Valley Community College. Ms. Curry started her journey here at Florissant Valley July. 1, 2014 and will be ending her journey June. 30, 2016. I caught up with the ever so busy Ms. Curry to ask her a few questions.

What is going to happen now that you are gone?

 Our College went to a new academic structure, so what we will have here is a provost who will act as chief academic officer on campus.

What will the provost do?

Provost will basically do what the Vice president does , they’re going to be over academic matters and the pulse of the campus, and serve the community as the same role of Vice president.

Who will become the provost?

We don’t know, there was a search but unfortunately out of that search there was only two successful candidates out of that search, one went to Meramec community college who was Dr. Carol and Dr. Larry Johnson who went to Forest park community college. So Florissant valley and Wild wood community colleges are still looking for someone to take the provost position. The searches will be closing May 20^th

How did you like being the president of the school?

Well it’s been fun working on this campus, we got great faculty, great staff and awesome students. It’s been really a joy to have been the president of this campus you got your hand in a lot of different pots and if you can be part of the mix too help young people it’s been all good.

What would you say was the hardest part about being the president?

I got 3, when I started my tenure, I had only been here a month before the Michael Brown Ferguson incident so trying to keep are campus together and at the same time be a place where the community could have dialogue without being threatened because you know some of the issues surrounding the Michael Brown incident where highly volatile, a lot of emotions and a lot of passion but things we needed to talk about so I wanted the campus too be that place.

The second one is the death of the Vice President of Student Dr. Joe Worth trying to keep the campus together because he was very well liked, very well respected collogue and just trying to keep going.

The third most difficult thing for me since I been acting as the Vice President of student affairs so when I have to discipline students because of behavior and having to say I think you need a semester or a year off that has really been difficult because my job is not to suspend students my job is to see you walk across that stage, to encourage you to be the positive and not the negative

What would you say has been the easiest part?

The easiest part has been coming to work and working with the great people here and Florissant Valley.