When Tracy Newton stepped onto campus 20 years ago, she immediately felt like she belonged. As the executive director of student success and academic advisement who oversees CAASS and the Student Success Unit, she wants students to feel the same.

Her staff under CAASS and the Student Success Unit work with first-year, transfer, and continuing students to ensure that they map out their courses, connect with the right faculty members and programs, know their degree requirements, and more. As November’s College-Wide Advisement Month wraps up, Newton has been working as hard as ever.

A native Long Islander for whom the four-hour daily commute is more than worth it, Newton received an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree in political science, sociology, and women’s and gender studies. It was during her undergraduate studies that she discovered a love for higher education.

“I worked in residential life and was involved with student activities. I loved being on a college campus, and I felt like I didn’t want to leave,” says Newton, a first-generation student. “I realized it’s where my passion lies.”

After earning an M.S. in counseling education, she ended up as a site administrator in an undergraduate nursing program. But with her background and devotion to inclusion and accessibility, she was drawn to CUNY’s mission.

“I was researching CUNY as a place to work and thought, ‘Wow. There are a lot of things here that align with my personal values’,” says Newton. “CUNY is what I believe that higher education should be for all students.”

After working as an academic adviser at Queensboro Community College, she started at Brooklyn College as a senior academic adviser. Within the past two decades, she has grown and learned through holding the positions of associate director, co-director, and now executive director—and she hasn’t looked back.

With her knowledge and experience, she is a mentor and a friend to the associate directors that she works with each day, but she never takes sole credit for the work.

“I don’t think I could be more fortunate to work with such an amazing team,” she says, pointing out how the CAASS staff and Student Success Unit have not skipped a beat for the students during some trying times.

“Our students’ sense of safety was shaken after Hurricane Sandy,” says Newton. “It was so important to me that we make any process or procedure related to their academic advising or appeal to policy due to extenuating circumstances as supportive and seamless as possible. Experiencing these students rebuild not only their basic needs, their homes and neighborhoods, but also their academic paths, was truly inspiring.”

Little did she know, this tragedy helped prepare her office for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We immediately went virtual on March 16th, the next day,” she says. “My team was committed to making sure that they were available for students during a scary time. We wanted to remove any obstacles for them and give them a sense of stability during a scary time.”

It was also a time when the office was just trying to launch its Transfer Student Success team, to help remedy the previously unmet needs of transfer students.

“There are unique challenges to being a transfer student and our team has dubbed this ‘transfer turmoil’, which includes ‘transfer shock,’ a dip in a student’s GPA, loss of momentum toward completion, and a general sense of being unmoored,” she says. “But it’s not just about their GPA—it’s about being there to support their transition to a senior college or a new senior college.”

The Transfer Student Success Team works closely to support current students, whether through referring them to the Learning Center, connecting them with resources like the Food Pantry or Personal Counseling, helping them get advisement on the Navigate app, or encouraging them to explore student life.

Outside of empowering students and elevating her teams, Newton is an adventurous, creative people-person at heart. Though she hopes to someday become an expert ukulele player so that she can jam out to her favorite songs, for now, she enjoys paddle boarding, baking (and putting exciting twists on recipes), spending quality time with her family, and health activism.