Victoria Orner of Colchester was named in August as Saint Michael's College associate director of admission. With the principal assignment of recruiting ALANA students for the college, Ms. Orner brings Saint Michael's an award-winning history of success in reaching out to minority student groups.
She was director of the NUCLEUS (diversity recruitment and advising) program at the University of Delaware from 1993 to 1998, and was director of minority and special programs in the College of Science at Utah State University from 1991 to 1993. She also taught Utah State's psychology department course in University Survival and Study Skills, during those years, and received the strongest student course recommendations both years. She won the University of Delaware's Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Advising Award and the NUCLEUS Program Founder's Award.
A ten-year resident of Vermont, Ms. Orner said, "I've gotten to know Saint Michael's through seeing the college's graduates in the Vermont business community, and in the international community-they sold me on this community." She added, "This is a place that thoroughly supports students; you would have a tough time falling through the cracks here. In fact, I hope my daughter would come here."
Orner said her goal as a multi-cultural recruiter is to show students how much Vermont has to offer them. "I've chosen Vermont as my home, although I grew up in Delaware," she said. She spoke of changing strategies to achieve greater success with ALANA students and first generation students. "Their places of expected support are not always college fairs and high school guidance offices, but could instead be churches and community centers and other places."
Ms. Orner earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in French (in which she is fluent) from The Johns Hopkins University, and a master's degree in liberal studies from the University of Delaware with a thesis titled "Mathematics Achievement of Underrepresented Ethnic & Gender Groups in Secondary Education: Implications on College Acceptance Patterns in Delaware."
Ms. Orner was public relations developer for Ben & Jerry's Homemade from 1999 to 2000, where she won the performance-based Stock-Option Award. She was a production associate at IBM from 2000 to 2002. She was a cost analysis and scheduling officer in the United States Air Force from 1989 to 1991, having been commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Air Force out of the University of Maryland ROTC program.
Ms. Orner, an accomplished vocalist with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus, resides with her family in Colchester.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.