Margo DelliCarpini, chancellor of Penn State Abington, grew up on Long Island. She had a close bond with her grandmother, who supported her love of learning and inspired her to think about her future. Her summer job as a lifeguard gave her a sense of responsibility that she carried with her throughout her career.

DelliCarpini, a nontraditional student who had her first child at age 19, earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. She also became the director of the TESOL teacher education program field experience and clinical practice. Her desire to make a larger impact led her to leadership roles like the chancellorship at Penn State Abington, where she’s focused on community partnerships, inclusivity, and closing the financial gap. 

Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born the oldest of four children in Brooklyn, New York, in the Flatbush neighborhood. We moved to Long Island when I was a kid. My parents, at the time, thought a suburban experience would be better for us kids. 

What did your parents do?

My mom was a stay-at-home mother, and my father worked for the New York City Department of Sanitation. 

What memories do you have of growing up in Port Jefferson?

What stands out is our connection with family. My grandparents were always around, and my grandmother was a huge influence on me. As a single income household, we did not have a great deal of money, but we had a rich and full life surrounded by family and always able to do fun things.

You mentioned your grandmother – what influence did she have on you?

My mother’s mother, my grandmother was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life, but because of the time and place she was born — she was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York City as a child — she didn’t have the same opportunities that she would have had if she’d been born a hundred years later. But her intelligence, her inquisitiveness, and her belief in me had a huge influence in allowing me to think about my future in ways that I might not have thought about if not for her influence. 

What do you think she saw in you?

Well, I like to believe that I was her favorite! What she saw in me and what connected us was that genuine inquisitiveness and that spark of learning for the sake of learning, wanting to understand how the world worked and how things worked. 

She was also very creative. She started out telling me stories, and then she wrote me stories. I’ve picked up that tradition with my own grandchildren. I write them a story every year. 

Did you do any sports in high school?

I’m the most uncoordinated person you’ll ever meet! I did swim, but that was a solitary thing, and it didn’t require a ball that I had to catch. I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor as a summer job in high school.

How did you distinguish yourself in high school? 

It was the classroom. I was quiet, but I was genuinely interested in things like English and history and foreign languages, so that’s where I excelled.

You mentioned being a lifeguard. What other part-time jobs did you have while you were growing up?

That was it. From the time I was 16, that was my summer job. 

What lessons did you take from being a lifeguard that still influence you and how you work today?

The strong sense of responsibility for what was in front of me. I couldn’t turn my back on my job. I couldn’t slack off. I had a sense of obligation and commitment to what I did. Bad things could happen if I wasn’t paying attention and doing what I was supposed to be doing.

I’m a long way from summers on the beach right now, but thinking about my leadership obligations to those who work with me at Penn State Abington and across Penn State and our community partners — I take that seriously. 

What about music? What kind of music floated your boat growing up and in college?

I was a huge Rolling Stones fan. British rock — Queen, The Who. 

Now my music tastes are very eclectic. I’m a huge fan of early Baroque music, jazz, and swing. 

You were a good student. You could have gone anywhere to college. You chose Stony Brook University and stayed in Stony Brook for a while. 

I had a nontraditional pathway. I had my first child when I was 19, so I couldn’t go away in the traditional way. Stony Brook was a wonderful institution in my backyard, and I found a home there as an undergraduate student. 

I found the linguistics department — or the linguistics department found me. The faculty there served as mentors, role models, and then friends because when I became a graduate student, I went straight from my undergraduate degree to the doctoral program. I was able to get a master’s and get certified as a school district administrator. Later, they hired me as clinical faculty. I was directing the TESOL teacher education program ,field experience and clinical practice. 

Stony Brook will always have a special place in my heart because the linguistics department faculty supported and saw me. That’s another thing that I bring with me — we can, in higher education, completely change a student’s life trajectory. 

You could have gone down several career paths — public school, leading a private school, or university administration. When did the education bug, and specifically higher education, bite you?

I got my first tenure-track position at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York. I was an assistant professor in the middle and high school education department, certifying ESL teachers. I worked with a lot of amazing colleagues, we did a lot of collaborative research, and I eventually became the department chair. 

When I became the department chair, I was able to help orient the department in a particular way. For me, that way was, “What is the obligation of all teachers, regardless of the discipline, in their work with linguistically and culturally diverse learners?” At that point, I realized I could have a more significant influence than in a classroom.

I sat down and talked with my dean at the time, Deb Eldridge, who’s also an amazing mentor. She was hugely instrumental in helping me apply for dean positions.

Was that the first time realized that you could have a more significant impact?

As department chair, having a leadership role in higher education would allow for more impact. When I started, you impacted your students and the people in your program. Still, it was seeing that broader picture, saying, “There’s an ability here to work across stakeholder groups to have positive change.” 

My role as chair and my subsequent positions have underscored my belief that we collaboratively lead. It’s not a single person. It’s not “the world according to Margo.” It’s our leadership team. We’re drilling into bigger problems and figuring out how to solve them together to move the campus, department, or program forward.

Looking back over the past 20 or 25 years in your career, who are the people who saw promise in you and opened up doors, and got you to where you are today?

Definitely the faculty at Stony Brook and my dean at Lehman College, Deb Eldridge. And students are a huge influence on me because one of the best parts of my job is talking to them and hearing about what they’re experiencing, their needs, and how their paths are influenced by our decisions. 

Were there other people who opened doors for you?

When I was at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and then at the University of Texas at San Antonio, my colleagues and provosts taught me a great deal about higher ed leadership. At UTSA, I learned  about effective  leadership, management, and empathetic decision-making in challenging times from the then provost, Mauli Agrawal. 

And the provost at Morehead State University, Steve Ralston – we had some challenging times together. In addition to those other lessons, I learned from him how to focus on hearing feedback and input from people who your decisions will affect. I may not have a lot of latitude in making those decisions, but I needed to listen to the people who those decisions would affect and let them be heard.

How did you get to Penn State Abington?

I had been in Texas for about four and a half or five years. I got a call from a former colleague, Scott McBride, who was a fellow dean with me at Morehead State University. He had accepted a position as chancellor at Penn State DuBois. He called me and said, “Margo, there’s a job opening up, and I think you’d be great for it.” 

What excited me about the opportunity at Penn State was the land-grant mission. I’m very committed to access to higher education and public higher ed, and Penn State Abington was committed to providing access and creating an inclusive environment.

I’m also interested in how we leverage place for our colleges and universities. Being right outside of Philadelphia is an amazing opportunity. Great cities need great universities, and great universities need great cities. At Penn State Abington, we’ve got both! The question is, how do we open up the city to our faculty, students, and staff to use that as a learning environment? 

Here we are in the Spring of 2023. What are the challenges and opportunities that you’re focused on?

One very exciting thing is that we have a new president at Penn State, Neeli Bendapudi. She’s dynamic, she’s a thoughtful leader, and she’s inspirational. 

In my first couple of years at Penn State Abington, I spent a lot of time listening to people and hearing what people’s experiences, challenges, and hopes were. Several things emerged from those conversations. 

My areas of focus are to continue supporting student success. Everything we do has to answer the question, “How does this benefit our students?” We know about graduation rates and course grades, but how are we defining student success and measuring it, and using that data not just to hold ourselves accountable but to make positive changes and enrich the experience for our students?

For me, what happens inside the classroom is critically important, but what happens outside of the classroom is just as important. One focus for me is co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities. I’d love to see every student have a funded internship so that we’re making those strong connections with their futures, whether that’s an employer or graduate school. 

We’re also focused on closing the financial gap. Even with all of our aid, our students at Penn State Abington still have average gaps of $8,000 to $10,000 per year between the money they have and what the education costs. Closing those financial gaps is of critical importance. We can do that by raising more scholarship money — we have amazingly generous donors — but we can also do that by reducing time and cost to a degree through innovative partnerships like dual credit pathways and partnerships with high schools.

Our whole campus is focused on inclusive excellence. We are the most diverse Penn State campus in n terms of our student body. My question is, “What does that mean? How do we create an inclusive environment? How do we leverage that diversity, understanding the real strength that it is? How do we engage in equitable pedagogical practices?” I recently appointed our campus’s first cabinet-level director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. She’ll be looking very closely at our policies and practices that, quite frankly, put up roadblocks that we don’t even know we’re putting up, but by interrogating our practices and policies we can move towards an equitable experience for our students, faculty, and staff. 

We’re obviously focused on operations for the next three to five years. Like every other institution, Penn State is working through budgetary changes and transformation. But if we want to have an excellent experience for our students, faculty, and staff, we need to invest in our facilities. We’re working with Abington township on land development for a new academic building. We’re looking at how we leverage community partnerships to expand our ability to operate in spaces – helping those organizations by bringing campus expertise and helping us by expanding our footprint in the community. 

We’ve had some wonderful partnerships. One example is one of our faculty members had a boat-building class at the seaport in Philadelphia. Students went down there every week, worked with experts, built a boat, won an award, and it’s up at our gallery here on campus. Those are the kinds of opportunities we want to cultivate. 

Finally, one of my passions is to create partnerships. As a public institution, we have an obligation to partner and bring our expertise to the community in ways that benefit the community. We can amplify our impact by bringing together thought leaders in the community and campus to identify challenges and innovative solutions and serve as the Abington community’s cultural and intellectual hub.

What do you do with all that free time that you have?

I have two grandchildren in New York and four in Idaho. They range from ages 3 to 23. The grandchildren keep me busy. My family has always been important. 

I also got a sewing machine recently as a gift, so I’m taking sewing classes. I can sew a hem and a button — again, thanks to my highly influential grandmother, a gifted seamstress – but that’s about the extent. 

Do you read much?

I do. Obviously, I read professional books, but for my pleasure reading, I do a lot of nonfiction reading. I’m very focused on the Tudor dynasty of England, so I’m an expert on Henry VIII and his six wives. I’m also in the middle of the Harry Potter series because my son has started reading those to my six-year-old grandson. 

What’s something important you’ve changed your mind about over the last 10 years?

Growing up in the greater metropolitan New York City area, I had a particular way of viewing the world. I believed my way was the right way, and there was no question about it. 

I remember going to Kentucky, saying, “I’m going to bring a lot to them because I’m from New York, and we know everything in New York.” And I learned so much during my time there, especially that no matter where someone is from or what their past experiences, we all have a lot to learn. I carry with me the saying “ we are all teachers and we are all learners.” 

What I changed my mind about was that I needed to address challenges and solve problems, and that there were a lot of answers that we had to come up with together, and that even if people or stakeholders don’t agree, we can find common ground. 

What keeps you hopeful and optimistic? It’s a chaotic world out there. 

The joy I get from watching, hearing, and listening to our students. Every time I hear their stories, look at their accomplishments, and see things they’re doing on our campus, I look at them and say, “You are the next generation of leaders and policymakers and politicians and philosophers.” They will change the world for the better for us. 

Finally, Margo, what’s the best advice you ever received?

The best advice was more an extrapolation of what people told me. One is that in leadership roles, the right decisions are often the ones that are the most challenging for me personally. 

The easy decision is to say yes to everything or to not take a stance on things, but the harder thing is to engage in courageous leadership. The decisions you’re making in the best interest of the institution, of your students, of moving forward are not always the most popular ones. You have to be able to own that. 

The second one I say when I mentor people and to myself is, “There are doors that are going to open for you, and you should go through them. A door may not open for you, or it may get closed on you, but don’t close it yourself. Don’t diminish your potential.”

The third piece I take with me from the book Who Stole My Cheese? is, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” That’s important for us to ask ourselves. It speaks to courageous leadership because we know what the right decisions are. They’re just sometimes hard to make.