Westchester's Most Influential Women: Kimberly Cline

the educator
Kimberly Cline

Photo by Stefan Radtke

Kimberly Cline, EdD, is the 10th president of Mercy College, a private, nonprofit college with more than 10,500 students over four campuses, including a liberal arts college in Dobbs Ferry. In 2008, when Cline joined Mercy, she immediately set forth a four-year strategic plan to put Mercy on the national map as an academic leader.

She began by expanding the academic programs at the 62-year-old institution. She recruited nationally renowned leaders to add to the staff and set up new academic and mentoring programs. She focused on the individual strengths of each school to give Mercy an edge in each of its programs. For the business school, Cline hired a former director of Merrill Lynch to be its new dean. Under her guidance, the School of Education won the largest grant in New York State in mathematics and had a faculty member named National Teacher of the Year. Cline also instituted a mentoring program, PACT (Personalized Achievement Contract), which assigns incoming students a mentor for their entire four years of study.

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Mercy currently boasts a more than 95-percent success rate in placing its graduates in health professions. This past year, Mercy has exceeded its target for enrollment with the main campus in Dobbs Ferry, and its three other campuses in the metropolitan area are almost at full capacity.

Cline serves as chair of the Westchester County Association’s Higher Education Committee and also serves on the steering committee for the Association’s Blueprint for Westchester initiative, which aims to attract businesses to Westchester and work with higher-education institutions to promote specialized training and job growth.

 

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