Dr. Carole Berotte Joseph, the new president of Bronx Community College, or BCC, has been training to lead an institution of higher education since grade school, taking on the role of master teacher since she played on her parents’ stoop with the neighborhood children in Brooklyn.
“Growing up, I didn’t play with dolls much. I played with real kids,” says Joseph. “Bad weather, snow, whatever, we’d line everybody on the stairs, and they would be my class. I loved to teach. And I loved the whole idea of organizing and taking charge.”
Joseph, who moved over to BCC in July from Massachusetts Bay Community College, or MassBay, is enjoying coming back to New York City, where she earned a bachelor’s from York College at the City University of New York, a master’s from Fordham University and a doctorate from New York University. Joseph became the first Haitian-American president of a U.S. college when she was selected in 2005 to lead MassBay.
“I am very happy about being back in New York,” says Joseph. “I was a student here. I was a faculty member at City [College] for more than two decades. And then I worked as an administrator at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx, so it’s a place that I know, and it’s a place that I love. It’s a place that I really understand.”
During her days as a college student, Joseph taught at a day care facility. She was then a bilingual (Spanish) elementary school teacher and a junior high Spanish and French teacher. She recalls helping a child read her first word. “When you see that connection occur, and they get it — it’s such satisfaction.”
Joseph was drawn to academia when she realized she would reach more students by teaching teachers. “In higher ed, I could have 30 teachers that I could impact,” she says.
She says that CUNY’s policies are still very much in line with her own values as an administrator. Deans and department heads had to have taught to reach those positions, she notes.
