Around 15 Mercer students gathered on the WWC campus Student Center for “Pizza with the President,” on April 2, an event advertised as giving students the opportunity to share their experiences and ask questions directly to the college’s president, Dr. Deborah Preston.
The event, organized by Coordinator of Academic Operations Victoria McCormick, was advertised through posters on Mercer bulletins and online flyers on the Blackboard home page.
Dr. Preston said to attendees, “I love it. They never let me talk to students. I’ve always sort of missed having day-to-day contact with students.”
Coming in, everyone was invited to grab a slice of pizza. The students attending had a variety of different questions.
One of the many topics that was brought up was how the college is adapting to rapid changes in technology.
Abubaker Ahmadi, a mathematics and computer science major, asked why courses still focus on Java instead of more widely used languages like Python, especially in fields such as Computer Science.
Dr. Preston directed the student to reach out to Professor Valdez, head of computer science at Mercer to get more information, joking, “because honestly, a python is a gross thing that lives in the jungle as far as I’m concerned.”
She clarified, “No, I’ve heard of python, and especially for data science, I know that python is really a key skill,” she continued. “…In computer science, data science, our degrees, if you’re getting an associate’s degree, they’re only valuable if they transfer.”
Another topic discussed was campus improvements and the college’s collaboration with local government. Dr. Preston described ongoing efforts with the county executive to improve facilities, including adding parking space and creating new sources of funding.
She said, “The county executive is trying to help us improve our facility’s bigger picture. For example, we’ve been wanting to build a field house on this campus with a track inside…he has not spent a lot of money so far on the West Windsor campus. But if we get that field house…It’s going to be a source of revenue for the college.”
Throughout the session, multiple students asked about the recent tuition increase. One student asked about potential benefits saying, “In what positive ways is the tuition raise going to impact us? What can we expect?”
The president answered, “So I would be lying to you if I said that your tuition increase was going to get you a bunch of new stuff at the school. Because it’s not.The tuition increase is basically allowing us to keep the lights on, keep the doors open, keep the classes running.”
Asked by the VOICE about the amount of student input solicited regarding the tuition issue prior to the board vote, the president said that “student input absolutely matters,” but also said, “There’s a point at which we’re going to have to make hard, unpopular decisions, even with student input.”
Financial concerns extended beyond tuition. Abygail Cousins, a second-year Computer Science major and international student from Jamaica, pays all her tuition out of pocket and asked Dr. Preston about the tuition raise.
She said in an interview after the event, “when it [tuition] increases like that, you know, there’s a lot of things that I have to take into account, like rent.”
