Of the five full-time staff working for VWC in the Office of Residence Life, three will be leaving their positions soon. Director of Residence Life McCarren Caputa, Associate Director of Residence Life Ashley Jones and Village Coordinator Jacqueline Scott will finish their last days over the next couple months.
According to Caputa, the departure of more than half of the Residence Life faculty at almost the same time is pure coincidence. Vice President of Student Affairs Keith Moore agrees.
“All of them have been great…one, two, three, it was just happenstance,” Moore said.
Caputa, who will work her last day at VWC on Jan. 19, explained that for her, the decision came from a desire to raise her family near her relatives in Oklahoma. There, she has a niece who just turned three and an 83-year-old grandmother who Caputa wants to be near.
Leaving students and people is always the hardest part.
“We are going to go and live in Oklahoma and have my kids live by their cousins, and we are going to buy a house, and not live on a college campus,” Caputa said.
Caputa’s children are equally excited to move to a place where they will have more freedom to run and play. Most of their life up to this point has been spent living in Village IV on VWC’s campus.
“We love living on campus, don’t get me wrong, but today it occurred to my children that they will have a front yard and a back yard and they got so excited,” McCarren said.
McCarren expressed that this decision is bittersweet for her as she characterizes her time spent at VWC as “wonderful” years for her and her family.
“Leaving students and people is always the hardest part,” McCarren said, her voice cracking.
Moving forward, the school has begun the interviewing process to fill these three positions.
“I would say, for all three positions we probably were in 40 to 50 applications. Of those, we have had some very qualified and promising candidates. We interviewed several of those and next week and the week after we are hosting them on campus,” Moore said.
McCarren wants students to remember that part of moving forward is change and that while it can be hard to imagine how someone who doesn’t know VWC could ever fill her role, nine years ago she was also brand new to VWC.
Laurissa Senecal
ljsenecal@vwc.edu
