President Ramsammy wants to make sure students succeed

Zoe Deno

Editor-in-Chief

President Roger Ramsammy wants to use his time at Hudson Valley Community college to help students achieve their goals.

“We spend our days and nights in here strategizing on how to make the life of a student seamless when they walk through the door,” Ramsammy said.

Ramsammy is aware of the problems that every university has areas where they fall short. “Our job is to eliminate those barriers. We get a lot of input from students about what they face and we address it.”

In order to better connect with the students and faculty Ramsammy has started “Coffee with the President.” Once a month Ramsammy plans to host his own, “office hours” where students and faculty can come visit him to speak with him about their thoughts and concerns regarding the school.  

“What we want to do is take the things that we are doing and to make them better and more functional. We are studying all of the areas that need support and trying to figure out how we can get that support in,” Ramsammy said.

Ramsammy officially became the 7th president on July 1st. Besides adding “Coffee with the President,” to Hudson Valley schedule he has also added “Sunrise Classes,” to reach out to non-traditional students who may not be able to attend regularly scheduled classes.

Ramsammy is also very concerned with student retention. He plans to reach out to students who have dropped classes to figure out why they dropped out. He wants to know what support the school could have offered to make to so that the student who dropped could have reached their academic goals. “If we do not have [the support that student needed] we are going to create it for them so that they or another student will never have to have that issue,” Ramsammy said.

This year Ramsammy will also be in charge of appointing new presidents and vice presidents to all of the departments. “No matter what I appoint, they have to have their eyes on the prize which is student success,” Ramsammy said. He says that he is building a great team and that he hopes he will have it completed sometime next year.

Education has not always been a passion of Ramsammy’s. “I grew up on the mountainside without his mother, she left when I was 11. I was one of those wayward kids, education was not my high priority,” Ramsammy said. “As a poor kid you never have the opportunity to leave the country, but I did because of sports.”

Ramsammy recalls that his struggle to get an education often left him without food and warmth, the little money had gone toward the bus to get to his school. “It was a life where I was fighting to become someone no matter what,” said Ramsammy, “The easiest thing I could have done was to have turned around to go back where I came from.”

Eventually, Ramsammy won a full scholarship and his life took off from there. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of the District of Columbia. He earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and a master’s degree in Genetics from Howard University. His research lead him to be awarded the best minority researcher in the country.

“I can count every single professor who helped me my journey. I call them my angels because each one of them held my hand at a different time to take me to the next point,” Ramsammy said.  “My philosophy is no one gets to where they need to be without the support of others. That’s how my journey led me here. I want my life to be dedicated to making others lives the best that I can.”