Cathy Leaker, Ph.D

Fiscal Stewardship & Strategic Resource Management

• Executive Budget Oversight: Exercised fiduciary authority over a $46M annual operating budget, strategically directing investments toward equitable transfer pathways and workforce education while maintaining 100% audit compliance.
• Instructional Margin Optimization: Engineered a data-driven course scheduling framework that accelerated enrollment growth and streamlined operations, generating a record $17.8M instructional margin for the 2024–2025 academic year.
• Transparent Budgetary Reform: Collaborated with the VP of Finance to overhaul the college-wide budget development process, fostering stakeholder engagement and ensuring total alignment between fiscal resources and strategic priorities.
• Federal Grant Administration: Spearheaded Title III SIP and Perkins V compliance and expenditure strategy, aligning Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs with regional labor market demands to enhance program quality and student equity.

Institutional Strategy & Accreditation

• Organizational Modernization: Realigned instructional leadership structures to optimize program effectiveness, faculty support systems, and long-term fiscal sustainability.
• Shared Governance Leadership: Designed and implemented a comprehensive, cross-functional shared governance model, establishing a deliberative body supported by functional standing committees to ensure inclusive decision-making.
• Accreditation Leadership: Served as Accreditation Liaison Officer, successfully directing the Year Six and Year Seven evaluations; secured full reaffirmation of accreditation from the NWCCU through Fall 2031.
• Strategic Enrollment Planning: Partnered with the VP of Student Success to develop a Comprehensive Strategic Enrollment Plan (SEP) utilizing Achieving the Dream’s (ATD) momentum framework.

Student Success & Academic Innovation

• Guided Pathways Excellence: Provided executive leadership for Guided Pathways initiatives, resulting in a 5% increase in fall-to-fall retention and a 3% improvement in overall completion (2020–2024).
• Academic Credit for Prior Learning (ACPL): Expanded the ACPL infrastructure (policy, systems, and resources), tripling the number of credits awarded within one year, with 50% of awards benefiting veteran students.
• Strategic Process Improvement: Transformed scheduling protocols to increase aggregate fill rates from 78% to 92% and reduced course cancellations by 67% (from 347 to 114), significantly increasing degree pathway reliability.
• Student-centered Systems and Learning Design: Secured a $2.54M federal Title III grant focused on institutional redesign to improve affordability, flexibility, and credit mobility.

Learning Support & Organizational Strategy

Academic Leadership & Faculty Relations

• Strategic Faculty Development: Directed administrative oversight for faculty initiatives, prioritizing evidence-based instructional strategies that directly improved student success metrics.
• Digital Transformation: Modernized the tenure and reappointment process by transitioning from a paper-based system to a streamlined digital framework, enhancing transparency and efficiency.
• Labor Relations & Mediation: Resolved complex faculty disputes through formal investigation and mediation, ensuring compliance with collective bargaining agreements and CUNY policy.

• Strategic Integration of Support Services: Orchestrated the merger of three independent tutoring centers into the unified Kingsborough Learning Center, reducing operational costs while increasing service responsiveness and quality.
• Non-Traditional Learner Success: Launched KCC Flex, a targeted delivery and support model for adult and stop-out students, resulting in measurable increases in retention for non-traditional populations.
• Integrated Success Programs: Provided oversight for high-impact programs including CUNY Start and CUNY ASAP, driving institutional goals for student access and degree completion.
• Academic Master Planning: Led the development of the college’s inaugural Academic Master Plan, defining the vision for program

Change Management and Operational Strategy

• Institutional Restructuring: Facilitated a large-scale transition from regional to statewide functional administrative structures; secured staff buy-in through collaborative design of new reporting and service models.
• Enrollment Transformation: Reengineered recruitment from fragmented local efforts into a comprehensive statewide strategy driven by shared KPIs and data-informed outreach.
• Business Process Modeling: Championed the assessment and improvement of critical student touchpoints, including orientation, advisement, and academic probation processes, to bolster retention.

Partnership Development

• Workforce Alignment: Cultivated strategic regional partnerships with industry and union leaders with a focus on creating innovative Health Care Pathways, expanding enrollment pipelines and workforce alignment.

Faculty Development and Success

• Designed and facilitated faculty development initiatives,focusing on the following: blended learning pedagogies, scaffolded assignment sequencing; embedded academic skills development; approaches to formative assessment; and learning outcomes design.
• Directed multidisciplinary faculty teams in the strategic scheduling and development of face-to-face and blended curricula.
• Provided leadership for recruitment, hiring and development of new faculty. Supported faculty from point of hire through award of tenure, oriented them to ESC's mentoring model and its foundations in theory and practice of andragogy.

Student Success

• Supervised regional Directors of Academic Support and Student Services to ensure the provision and continuous improvement of comprehensive, responsive and equitable support and services across three New York City locations (Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island)
• Initiated and coordinated continuous improvement of the Metropolitan Center's ACPL practices and processes with a two-pronged focus on faculty development and equitable student access and success.

Teaching and Advising

Teaching and Advising

• Designed and taught a range of lower and upper division composition, literature and cultural studies classes across a range of modes (face to face, online and blended).
• Acted as mentor/advisor to a student load of 90-100; mentored advisees on registration, individualized degree planning and prior learning assessment.

Faculty Leadership and Growth

• Earned tenure and promotion according within SUNY 7-year tenure clock and according to SUNY policy and ESC Collective Bargaining Agreements.
• Served multiple terms as co-chair of Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Policy; served on College Senate; chaired task forces on Assessment of General Education and faculty orientation/development.
• Represented faculty on Labor/Management negotiations regarding faculty evaluation procedures for tenure and promotion. Jointly developed S.A.L.E (Student Assessment of Learning Experience), the first college instrument used across modes, programs and locations for students to assess faculty contributions to their learning.