Mount Saint Mary College students had the opportunity to hear from current interim president, Father Gregoire Fluet on Tuesday, October 10 in the Hudson Hall Auditorium.
The address from Fluet covered a range of topics that began with what went into his acceptance of the role. Following the resignation of his predecessor Jason Adsit, Fluet stepped into the position he was not interested in.
“It is absolutely something I did not want, I do not want, I was not looking for this, but I accepted. I accepted because someone needed to step in at this moment,” Fluet stated.
He proceeded to explain that the priesthood still takes priority beyond his current duties as president. He described these duties as a number of meetings throughout the day with internal staff as well as work with outside organizations in both maintaining relationships and furthering internship opportunities for students.
This highlights what can be seen as Fluet’s greatest strength as both a president and overall leader: his genuine care for the MSMC student body.
He expressed to those in attendance that, “We are still able to sit down, we’re still able to talk, I still make time for all of that. I will make time for you before some of this other stuff because I believe that you are more important.”
This commitment to the students of the college is what contributes to his passion regarding the college's biggest issue: enrollment. With enrollment sitting at approximately 1,652 according to Fluet, he claimed that this drop off can be largely attributed to a cyber attack in December of 2022 in which the college was unable to communicate with prospective students.
Fluet recognized that there are steps that need to be taken to address the issue. When referencing potential solutions, he claimed, “It’s not just what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years because that’s not working anymore. We have to come up with other ways of approaching students.”
In a question and answer period following Fluet’s address, assistant vice president for marketing and communications Dean Dimarzo addressed what these news ways are.
“We are doing social media campaigns across Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram and Tik Tok," Dimarzo said. "We are doing paid campaigns that are targeted to high school students, parents of high school students, making sure that we’re keeping that in sync with the same audiences that admissions is going out to.”
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