Being a physicist, Allen Lee Sessoms '68 likes to use equations to explain what it takes to be a college president:
“Nowadays, being the president of anything is sixty-five percent politics and instinct, twenty percent common sense and street smarts … and the rest is all guts.”
For just over a year, Sessoms has been able to put his formula into practice. In August of 1995, he became the eighth president of Queens College, one of
eight senior colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system.
In a profile in The New York Times, Sessoms explained that he had three goals for Queens-to make a first-rate institution greater, to put Queens on the cutting edge, and to move the school into the twenty-first century. What he's done to meet these goals has gotten quite a reaction from some members of the Queens community.
One of his first orders of business was to require all faculty members to justify their research projects or face an increased teaching load. Professors had to submit a one-page description of their current work, including, for example, grants they had applied for and received, book contracts they were working under, and art shows they were preparing for or had completed.
Returning to his numbers, Sessoms explains how the exercise turned out: “Eighty-five percent of the faculty justified their work in the first shot, ten percent had to work on it, and five percent are teaching more.”
He continues, “Most members of the faculty thought it was a useful tool for themselves and to find out what others were doing. It's something that we will be doing every year. We have to know what we're doing. As administration and faculty, we have to be held accountable. If we can't convince ourselves that what we're doing isn't frivolous, then we're going to have a hard time convincing taxpayers to pay their bills or students to pay tuition and fees.”
Another of his initiatives-fundraising-could fall into the “gutsy” category. Before Sessoms arrived, the college had never had a capital campaign. “We've really got to hustle and do some fundraising,” he says.
The need to search for funds is linked to one of Sessom's external challenges
dealing with the New York State Legislature, which provides (or is supposed to provide) the budget for all CUNY schools.
“Dealing with the legislature is a huge challenge,” he says. “Members of the legislature sometimes
forget the importance of higher education. They can't lose sight of education. If they do, it could be catastrophic.”
Sessoms is a staunch defender of higher education, and education in general. He sees his students as the most important and enjoyable part of his job.
“Without higher education, society atrophies,” Sessoms says. “The U.S. education system is the best in the world. It's the cradle of invention. There is no other place where people can learn to be techno-literate, creative, critical. The basis of this nation is allowing all people to become educated. It's what has allowed us to become a super power and viable democracy. Without education, there is no democracy.”
The importance of education was instilled in him by his parents. His mother, a practical nurse at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, sparked his love of science by conducting at-home science experiments. His father owned a bodega where he and his brothers and sisters worked part-time and studied.
His parents' encouragement paid off. After graduating from Union with honors, he earned a master's degree at the University of Washington, than another master's and a Ph.D. at Yale. All of his degrees are in physics, and all were earned on scholarship.
Sessoms took a one-year postdoctoral position at Brookhaven National Laboratory and then worked for the European Organization for Nuclear
Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Returning to the States, Sessoms became assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Harvard University. After five years there, he served as director of the Department of State's Office of Nuclear Technology and Safeguards, where he led nuclear nonproliferation and arms control negotiations with, among others, the former Soviet Union and South Korea. Then it was off to Paris, where he was counselor for scientific and technological affairs at the United States Embassy.
From Paris, he moved to Mexico, and it was while serving as the deputy chief of mission at the United States Embassy that Sessoms fell back into education. On a trade mission to Mexico, the governor of Massachusetts was accompanied
by the new president of the University of Massachusetts, who invited Sessoms to join his administration.
“It sounded very interesting, so I just decided to do it,” he says. He became executive vice president of the University of Massachusetts in 1993 and was named vice president for academic affairs a year later.
The experience as vice president of the five-college University of Massachusetts system-a very different public university system from CUNY, according to Sessoms-and his positions during his years “off” from education have all prepared him to take the reigns at Queens College. Being a college president, he says, means using all of the skills from a lifetime-from growing up in the Bronx and learning to walk with his back against the wall to negotiating with the Russians.
“It's not rocket science,” he continues. “It's learning to deal with difficult issues. It's practicing a lot, maneuvering, and using a lot of energy.”
Energy is obviously something that this physicist knows a lot about.