Elmont Online

Jill Lansing

Director of Education Pipeline Strategies

What she does: Working under Senior Vice Chancellor Johanna Duncan-Poitier, Lansing is implementing the "Cradle to Career" initiative, which unites businesses and nonprofit organizations to support public school students. This includes managing Albany Promise, the pilot project here in the Capital Region. It will launch later this autumn.

How she got here: Lansing, a Green Island native, graduated from Russell Sage College in 1994 with a degree in communications and public administration. She spent five years working in the college's admissions office before taking a position with the State Education Department. She followed Duncan-Poitier to SUNY in 2009.

Personal: Lansing lives in Clifton Park and recently celebrated her 40th birthday. She enjoys taking her nieces and nephews to museums and the Albany Symphony, and also takes spin classes. Last week, she traveled to the National Book Festival, something she has done every year for the last decade.

What exactly is the cradle to career program?

Chancellor Zimpher is a dynamic leader, and has a proven model for this that she started in Cincinnati called the STRIVE model. We bring together partners from across the community from the earliest age -- when kids are babies. We have nurses that work with moms in the pre-natal stage, and we bring together people through pre-K, elementary, secondary schools right up to college. What we have is the local school superintendent sitting at the table with the United Way, other local organizations, and cultural institutions. Last month we had a meeting with over 60 people from the Albany community, all dedicated to making sure students have success from cradle to career. It's a model of shared accountability, which is very new: everyone from the higher education system to the K-12 system, to community and government leaders, business and industry leaders, is responsible for the success of the students in the community. For every single child.

When this is up and running, what will students see?

In Albany, we have a situation that the chancellor describes as program-rich and system-poor. So one of the first things we're going to do is asset mapping, figuring out what programs exist where, and who's providing them. There are lots, and we're trying to strengthen the connection among them. For example, if a student needs financial information on college, the guidance counselor at the high school would be able to pick up the phone, call someone here at SUNY, and make sure they could get their questions answered immediately and get personal help. Also, if a child isn't learning because they're having difficulties with vision, we can call the vision providers who are at the table. The idea is to connect the dots.

Part of this is changing the way we measure progress for students, moving beyond just test scores and graduation rates. What else are you looking at?

We're looking at educational indicators as well as health indicators, economic indicators in the region, job opportunities -- it's not just about education here. We're working on the report card already, and it's amazing to see people thinking outside the box about what's going to be there. What are the employment rates? What are our student success rates with getting a job in high-need areas? There's an indicator related to supermarkets, and how much fresh food is available. We're talking about asthma.

How did you get passionate about this?

My mom was the receptionist at the Office of Admissions at Russell Sage for years. She was literally the first person who would meet a person when they came in through the door, and said they would often come in as nervous high school students and would leave excited about the opportunity to go to college, and all the wonderful options available to them. My mom saw so much potential in these students, so I've always felt that as an admissions counselor, I would help to make them succeed. When they walked into the admissions office and saw people who actually believed in them, their faces lit up. And these were kids who were in the office -- we want to make sure we can get more kids there. We need to get to them early to make it a viable opportunity for them.

-- Jimmy Vielkind