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Date: 9/6/2022
HOLYOKE – Holyoke Community College (HCC) President Christina Royal has announced the upcoming 2022-2023 school year will be her last as she plans to retire.
Royal, 50, started at HCC in 2017 and is the fourth president in the school’s 75-year history. She is not only the first woman to be in the position but is also the first openly gay and biracial person to serve as president.
While she has no specific plans for retirement life, Royal said this was the right time for her to step away and evaluate her life.
“It’s been such an honor and privilege of my life to step in and serve the region, the college community and HCC in this capacity as president,” Royal said. “Now I’m really looking for an opportunity to pause and really take in this present moment. The [coronavirus] pandemic has impacted everyone and certainly in different ways, but I think the greater message is realizing life is very short and we want to continue to find ways we can compassionately give back to our communities.”
Royal added she hopes to take her retirement as an opportunity to pause and reflect on the current moment while cherishing her career and taking everything all in. While she is retiring next summer, Royal said she won’t rule out returning to work through positions of advising, mentorship or a future position in higher education while she is in retirement if she feels like it makes sense for her.
She noted she did not want to limit herself with future opportunities but that retiring after the school year would give her the time away that she needs at this point in her life.
Royal said education had impacted her all throughout her life growing up in poverty and being a first-generation college student. As a young child, she and her family were evicted from their apartment and had to move in with her grandparents who lived in “a more affluent” neighborhood, leading to new opportunities in education for Royal.
“There was an opportunity to start to see what education did to affect people’s lives. I had a chance to interact with a lot of college-educated people and I said to myself, ‘education is the ticket out of poverty,’ so I decide to go to college,” Royal said. “That’s how it started to impact me early in life. I really started to think about it and look at the data, and there aren’t many other pathways that can more profoundly impact a community at large than education. I wanted to be a part of that change in society.”
Reflecting on her time at HCC, Royal said what she is most proud of is her and other school leaders work in furthering equity for students. During her tenure, Royal has been a part of the development of HCC’s first strategic plan, advancing equity across the institution, and investing in programs to support students’ basic needs.
Royal helped create and establish the President’s Student Emergency Fund to provide grants to students facing immediate financial needs, opened Homestead Market, the first campus store in the state to accept SNAP benefits: partnered with the Holyoke Housing Authority to help students find affordable housing and launched the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Program – a program providing HCC student-parents access to free, short-term care for their children.
Royal added that the focus on making bold investments on basic needs for students has benefited many through COVID-19 and will continue to do so going forward.
“Any legacy that I might leave in the institution will probably be told by the ones who were there, but I certainly on a personal level feel I have been humbled by the work we have done to be able to further our work in equity,” Royal said. “Having an opportunity to influence the consciousness around our purpose of higher education and how in order for us to positively set students up for success in their academic journeys, we also have to invest in other aspects of their lives and looking at the whole student rather than just the academic side.”
As she prepares for her final school year at HCC, Royal noted she is still focused on the upcoming year and looking forward to continuing support of students and graduating another class. In the meantime, the search for the next school president will begin immediately.
“President Royal’s understanding of higher education and the management of higher education has been invaluable to the board and to me personally,” said HCC Board of Trustees Chair Robert Gilbert. “Without question, higher education as a sector is in for a lot of change as we look to the future, but Dr. Royal has prepared our institution well and has set HCC up for success far beyond her tenure.”
Royal said as for the next HCC President, she hopes they take the time to appreciate and get to know the community, so the voice of the people is heard.
“I feel my job as president is really to lift up the voices of others and help bring their ideas to the light so we can make progress,” Royal said. “It truly is a collaboration. The success of HCC is because everybody has joined together in a common direction and the passion to be able to create positive change.”