Hunter’s new associate provost for student success has been helping students get the most out of their college experiences for more than 20 years.
Daniel Hurewitz, an associate history professor and public intellectual on the politics of LGBTQ+ rights, has counseled Hunter’s presidents and provosts for several years as a special adviser and member of presidential taskforces and college committees. He has worked with students, administrators, and faculty on diversity efforts, undergraduate retention, academic achievement, student mentoring, and career readiness. He assumed his present role on December 1.
“Daniel had been an invaluable part of our administration as we have transitioned from president to president,” said Interim Provost Manoj Pardasani. “He thinks deeply about the college experience from admission to graduation and beyond and brings students’ perspectives to every discussion.”
Hurewitz said that he looks to support students at crucial moments of their college experience.
He is working at building out a first-year seminar to give students a solid foundation in college study skills, the tools to navigate the Hunter system, and a sense of community and belonging.
Hunter’s scholar cohorts, Macaulay Honors College students, and SEEK first years already have such seminars.
This fall, however, the college set up a first-year seminar for 350 general-admission students and hopes to double that number next fall with the goal of expanding the program to all first-year students.
His second aim is to help students develop their intellectual interests and communities as they advance through Hunter. “Mid-career” cohorts, such as the McNair, McNulty, and Thomas Hunter Honors scholars, provide mentoring for some students based on their interests or backgrounds, but Hurewitz wants to build cohorts for other advanced students.
Finally, Hurewitz helps students connect their academic interests with post-college careers. He has been collaborating with Hunter’s Career Services Center and HunterWorks! program to expand their reach and training faculty to encourage students’ career-thinking.
Hunter also is hiring career advisers who work closely with academic departments on developing career pathways that match student interests and supporting career-education programming. It hired a team for the Department of Human Biology last summer, and we will add similar teams in Economics and Film & Media departments this spring. So far, 200 students have enrolled in the biology program and 30 have received job offers.
“These are exciting developments, and I’m eager to grow those teams,” Hurewitz said.
Hurewitz, who earned a doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles, teaches on 20th-century American history and the history of gender and sexuality. His research and writing center on the development of gendered and sexual identities, the emergence of LGBT politics, and the resistance to those movements.
He is the author of several plays and short films, many articles, and two books: Stepping Out (1997), which traces the history of LGBT life across Manhattan through a series of walking tours; and Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics (2007), about L.A. artists, leftists, and gay activists who helped birth the American gay-rights movement and identity politics.
