Ragno Excited About New Position

Kerry Ragno (second from left) her husband, Rich, and their children, Will and Maeve, enjoy traveling. This picture was taken at the top of a tower in Venice, Italy, last summer. (Photo courtesy of Kerry Ragno)

Dr. Kerry Ragno freely admits her role as vice president of Academic Affairs at Virginia Peninsula Community College isn't the culmination of a lifelong dream. She guesses not many people aspire to that position.

"I joke nobody wakes up and goes to kindergarten and says, 'I want to be an academic administrator when I grew up,'" she said. "It's not a very exciting sounding job."

However, that's where she is, and she is cherishing the opportunity.

"But what I have always been interested in doing is helping the people who support student learning," she said.

Rango, which is pronounced Ron-yo and is the Italian word for "spider," grew up in Northern California. She earned a bachelor's degree in child development from Chico State University (1997), a master's in education from San Jose State (1999), and a doctoral degree in education from Fielding Graduate University (2013).

Prior to joining Virginia Peninsula, she was at Tidewater Community College for 15 years. She started there in 2007 as an instructor and head of the early childhood program, then spent her last nine years as a dean (in what started as language, math, and sciences but transformed into arts and humanities).

"I have found, and even when I was a director of early childhood programs, I much more enjoyed training the staff than directly working with children," she said.

While she loves children, she finds it more fulfilling working with faculty.

"I love helping them to get what they need to be the best at what they do," she said. "That's what you do as a dean."

Being a vice president takes that a step further.

"You have some different opportunities to collaborate in the community, to bring some attention or some focus on the college," she said, while also supporting the president's mission, vision, and direction.

She's looking forward to immersing herself in the college community, and that's at both campuses, and figuring out student and faculty needs and how to get them.

"Whether it's the funds or the facilities or the processes and procedures together, or even the community support to really either scale up what we're already doing or start something new that maybe the community has needed," she said.

It's about doing better with what you have, while also getting more to do more.

As an administrator, she sees her role as one of offering support, vision, and direction.

"With any management position, your job really is to serve," she said. "So we serve faculty and staff, and we serve students in the community. So figuring out how do we do that."

That might include growing talent, and identifying those who are ready for the next step in their careers, or who have some skills but want to stretch themselves.

"How do we leverage that to benefit our students and the college as a whole?" Ragno said.

It comes down to looking at the bigger picture.

"And making sure we're all working to our fullest potential to get our students what they need," she said.

Her first order of business is to listen and learn, which she said is something she'll be doing forever.

"In the first 30, 60, and 90 days, it's just meeting people, understanding what it is that they do," she said. "Our faculty are the subject matter experts. So I need to go in there and have them tell me this is what we do really well."

She wants to know what is needed for them to do even better. It's then up to her to use her experiences and knowledge to formulate a plan to move academics forward.

"I don't have a specific goal right now, except to make sure that whatever programs we offer, and whatever instruction we are executing with our students, it is appropriate, it's relevant, it's immediately useful to our students, and we deliver top-notch instruction," she said, noting she's confident the College has the faculty to do that and is equipped to do that.

Ragno and her husband, Rich, recently celebrated their 19^th wedding anniversary. They live in Virginia Beach with their two children, Maeve who is a senior at Tallwood High School, and Will, a freshman at Tallwood. In their free time, they enjoy hiking, camping, and traveling. She's an avid runner, having completed half-marathons, and is looking forward to the Community Day 5K on Oct. 1.

One pleasant surprise with her new position is the commute hasn't been as bad as she feared. However, she is looking forward to the expansion of the Hampton RoadsBridge Tunnell.

"It is not that big of a deal at all. It's really not, so far," she said while knocking on her wooden desk. "But things change when carriers are in and when school is in. So we'll see what happens."

If she weren't in education, Rango said she would like to clean houses.

"Surprising, right? It sounds so relaxing," she said. "You start with the task, you get it done, and things look better when you're done."

She does see similarities to her current job.

"In both cases, you serve people," she said. "Each job also provides tangible results. For example, seeing students graduate means that you did your job. Seeing a clean house means that you did your job."

Neither position draws much attention in grade school career days, but that doesn't matter to Ragno.

"I've always just thought of making sure I'm doing something that is helpful and impactful for the people I work with," she said.