Erica Amato, counselor at the Grant Campus, is the feature of Faculty Profile: Episode 6. FA Social Media Manager Carl Coulanges has been profiling FA members over the past few years to help showcase the good work these union members do for SCCC every single day.

The decline in student enrollment, Erica Amato says, has been a challenge. But it also has brought opportunities.

“It lets us be creative and think outside the box, like what are we going to do to get more students into the college other than just from our high schools,” Erica says.

“We’re constantly thinking of new things and new places to go. In more recent years we started to go to different community events that we hadn’t really participated in in the past. We will go to a street fair over the summer and just set up a tent and a table and hand out information to everyone. We go to the Department of Social Services and to the Department of Labor.”

Erica is the sixth FA member that I have profiled in the new video series I have produced over the past couple of years, called FA Faculty Profiles. These are posted on the Faculty Association YouTube site, and we plan to develop and post many more in the years to come.

In each one you get a glimpse of each FA member I am profiling not only from a professional standpoint but also from a personal standpoint. Erica, for example, talks about the important role she and other admissions counselors play at the institution but she also shares some personal challenges that she has faced as a mother. Erica has two sons, and the older one was diagnosed with autism at 22 months old and did not really communicate until he was six years old.

In each video I try to ask the kinds of questions that let each individual truly shine. Here are the videos I have produced already:

1. Faculty Profile Episode 1 Fabio Montella (Librarian/Associate Professor, Eastern)
2. Faculty Profile Episode 2 Christina Johnston-Eustace (Specialist II, Information Technology Services, Central)
3. Faculty Profile Episode 3 Kathleen Flynn-Bisson (Adjunct Assistant Professor, Addiction Studies, Grant)
4. Faculty Profile Episode 4 Dr. Mark Tse (Assistant Professor, Music, Ammerman)
5. Faculty Profile Episode 5 Frank Vino (Counselor/Instructor, Campus Activities, Ammerman)
6. Faculty Profile Episode 6 Erica Amato (Counselor, Admissions, Grant)
   

Please watch, like and share on your social media pages. These FA members do a great job representing the good work they do at the college. Also it is important for us to better get to know one another and better appreciate what our colleagues in other departments, areas and roles are doing to help the institution succeed.

In addition on the FA YouTube page, you can access some of our JEDI Resources: Colleagues Share videos as well as JEDI Journey episodes, in which colleagues who are active in the JEDI Institute talk about why they believe that being JEDI is the right thing to do at the college.

1. JEDI Journey Episode 1 Christina Vargas (Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator; Co-Founder of JEDI Institute with FA Secretary Cynthia Eaton and VP Student Affairs Patty Munsch)
   
2. JEDI Journey Episode 2 Melissa Adeyeye (Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Grant)
   
3. JEDI Journey Episode 3 Thomas Flesher (Assistant Professor, Economics, Ammerman)

Please visit, like and share our FA YouTube page! Help us spread the good word about our members’ good work at this great institution.