To continue the conversation about the MMC and Northeastern merger, a live interview with Dr. Ken Henderson, Northeastern’s Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning, was hosted by Katie LeBesco, MMC Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Professor of Communication and Media Arts.
The interview was held at 4 p.m. on Oct. 25 in the Theresa Lang Theatre. The public interview was promoted as a Homecoming Weekend event, open to the MMC community after the annual Apple Fest. About 70 people attended, and an option to join over Zoom was available.
“It is an absolute joy to be here on this particular day. It really gives you a sense and feel of the energy and vitality of the organization,” Henderson said.
Henderson and LeBesco discussed topics including Henderson’s role as chancellor, the integration of MMC into Northeastern University’s Global System and the alumni network.
With no updates to the state of the merger since the student town hall, both NU’s board and MMC’s board have agreed to the merger.
“Hopefully we should be done in a relatively short order. We cross our fingers and hope for the best,” Henderson said.
He encouraged current MMC students to get involved with the Student Government Association if they wanted to have a voice in the merger and highlighted the importance of NU’s growing global system – an American model of education.
“We are exporting that model to other locations, and it’s really reproducing what we do in the states in other locations,” Henderson said. “We want to have a network of campuses. We’ve got this rich tapestry, and each campus has a different flavor to it.”
Promoting the international study programs that will become available to current MMC students, Henderson believes that resources will increase substantially.
“This makes absolute perfect sense for the institute moving forward,” Henderson said.
Though confident in the merger itself, Henderson pointed out the difficulty of preserving MMC’s legacy.
“It’s easy for us to build our own campuses in other locations, but it’s much harder for us to do these mergers. The reason we are doing this the way we are doing it is A, because it’s more interesting, and B, because it really fits the educational model that is experiential education,” Henderson said. “For us, this is just an amazing partnership.”
NU has completed two other mergers including their London and Oakland campuses.
“There’s so much alignment when we have done mergers in the past,” Henderson said. “This is all partnership, this is all discussion over long periods of time to make sure the very basis or essence of Marymount is maintained.”
Though the merger is a slow process, Henderson foresees the first New York Scholars Cohort will begin Fall of 2025. This year-long program consists of NU students that will study on MMC’s campus for their first year, then transfer to NU’s Boston campus their second year. This cohort will add numbers to the MMC population – a concern of space – which was left unaddressed by Henderson.
To conclude the conversation LeBesco asked Henderson how the MMC legacy and alumni would be preserved.
“Post-merger there will be one alumni organization. All the assets will be tied to everything Northeastern has,” handerson said. “The thing we would love to see is the integration of Marymount alumni with Northeastern Alumni.”
A reception was held directly after the interview, available to all that were in attendance.
The full conversation is available on youtube. The event was also highlighted on the MMC website, available on the Student Development and Activities’ news page.
