Kelly Devers-Franklin remembers being one of the first Emerson students to ever move into the Little Building in 1995. Now, from her Ansin Building office, above the studios where she used to work as a student journalist for WERS, she looks out onto the same facade.
“It was always sort of my endgame to be back in Boston, so really happy to get back here,” Devers-Franklin said. “I’ve always been an Emerson cheerleader … It was such an incredible part of my life.”
Devers-Franklin, who is Emerson’s new vice president of marketing and communication, was one of four permanent vice presidential appointments the college made over the summer. The sense of “homecoming” she felt stepping back onto campus is shared among her new colleagues; Executive Director of Government and Community Affairs Paola M. Ferrer and Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer Richard Madonna.
Ferrer, a lawyer originally from Puerto Rico, said she feels at home working right in the Theater District, having spent decades around Boston as a stage actress in addition to her career in philanthropy, nonprofit management, and state government.
Madonna, who graduated from Quinnipiac University, said he felt at home with Emerson’s culture because of his love for photography. He described taking a tour of the campus in the late summer after he accepted the job and running into a college trustee on the street. The trustee was putting up a poster for an Emerson exhibition on photographer Henry Diltz, a favorite of Madonna, which he took as a serendipitous encounter.
“It was that moment where I was like, these are my people,” Madonna said.
Additionally, alongside new hires, Brian Basgen was appointed vice president for physical and digital infrastructure, which oversees information technology, facilities, business services, among other responsibilities, after holding the same role in an interim capacity for the previous year.
“[These appointments] are part of a larger effort to help Emerson remain resilient during a difficult period in higher education,” President Jay Bernhardt wrote in an August communication announcing the changes.
“With the uncertainty of shifting enrollment trends, outside pressures, and evolving student needs, we need the right people in the right roles,” he continued.
Over the summer, President Trump took aim at higher education institutions, specifically targeting diversity initiatives, and subsequent agreements between universities and the federal government have required schools to pay upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid funding cuts. Institutions across higher education are poised to experience declines in enrollment adding further pressures. At Emerson, which has faced an enrollment shortfall since 2024, 30 staff members were laid off in August after total revenue fell “below projections” for the second year in a row.
In this moment of tension inside and outside the university, the new vice presidents said that transparency and communication would be key to navigating Emerson’s future.
“I’m not breaking news when I say that we’re a school that teaches communicators, that hasn’t always done the best job communicating,” Devers-Franklin said.
She explained that her goal is to lift the reputation of the college and drive enrollment.
“One of the reasons I was most excited about this job is because we have a president that really values communication as a practice,” Devers-Franklin said. “[He] has really encouraged me to lean into all the things that I think we can do better.”
As an alum, she said she sat around for years questioning Emerson’s decision-making and is excited to finally be in the room to contribute to it.
“We have a lot of work to do, but I think there’s nowhere to go but up,” she said, emphasizing that her point of view is different from her predecessors. “I think you’ll see a change … I feel strongly about cracking narratives.”
Devers-Franklin identified one “false narrative” she wants to combat, which is the notion that Bernhardt is isolated from the Emerson community.
“I think that Jay knows that he wants to be out there advocating for everything he wants for the college with all of our stakeholders,” Devers-Franklin said. “He doesn’t get a whole lot of credit for [it], but he is out and about.”
She also said she feels there have been unfair “false narratives” regarding the policy on institutional neutrality introduced by the Board of Trustees after 118 protesters were arrested during a four-day Pro-Palestine encampment in Boylston Place Alley. The policy was initially met with criticism by some faculty and students who said it would suppress political speech.
“I think there’s this kind of resistance to it here because I think people think it means something it doesn’t,” Devers-Franklin said. She explained that most colleges and universities have done neutrality statements and cited the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a civil liberties union focusing on free speech on college campuses that encourages adoption of neutrality policies like Emerson’s.
“The idea that it somehow makes us less Emersonian to have one, the opposite is actually true,” she said. “Everyone needs to make sure they’re making fact-based assessments of the situation.”
In 2022, FIRE specifically accused Emerson of suppressing free speech for suspending its chapter of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, which the school said promoted “anti-Asian bigotry.”
Having attended the college herself, Devers-Franklin said she has a strong grasp on the Emerson ecosystem.
“I deeply understand what it is to be an Emersonian and all the quirks that come along with that,” Devers-Franklin said.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in our president and in our strategic plan, which I think is exactly what Emerson needs to be doing.” she continued, adding that Bernhardt has “an enormous amount of support from faculty and staff,” as well as the Board of Trustees.
Devers-Franklin said she and Madonna have already sat in on classes and met with faculty and staff to begin the work of increasing community and dialogue. She explained that the goal is to understand the community they will be serving.
“It is very important to understand the community where you are, to be able to be a good advocate for your mission, your vision, and your aspirations,” Ferrer said, echoing these sentiments in her role as a civic engagement liaison between the college and the Midtown Cultural District where the campus is located.
In addressing Emerson’s enrollment decline, Madonna attributed much of the pressure to a nationwide “demographic cliff,” a steep drop-off in college-age populations that he says higher education has been anticipating since the 2008 recession that caused it.
“Here are challenges, but … these are challenges every institution is facing and our strategic plan really checks the box on addressing many of those,” Madonna said.
Madonna said increasing enrollment will take a collective effort to create a welcoming atmosphere from everyone at the college, from faculty to staff to students.
“I’ve done this at an institution once before, where we had to all look and say, ‘How can we all contribute?’” Madonna, who has worked previously at Yale, Connecticut College, and Union Theological Seminary, said.
Emerson is not the only school facing declining enrollment or navigating an increasingly fraught landscape of higher education. Private institutions nationwide are experiencing drops in revenue—a symptom of a larger universal trend due to increased attention from the Trump administration.
The college was listed among dozens of institutions, including Harvard, Brown, and Columbia University, as being under federal investigation for “antisemitic discrimination and harassment” last March. Following investigations of Columbia and Brown, the schools settled with the Trump administration, paying millions to restore federal funds. Harvard remains locked in a tense legal battle with the college over a variety of issues, but saw a significant legal victory in early September when a federal judge reversed billions in research cuts.
“I don’t think we’re deeply affected in the way that some other schools are,” Devers-Franklin said regarding Trump’s conflicts with higher education, citing Emerson’s lack of reliance on federal or NIH funding as a private institution.
The interim CFO, Robert Butler, who predated Madonna, signed an open letter alongside nearly 300 business leaders over the summer, condemning the Trump administration’s funding cuts at Harvard.
When asked if he shared Butler’s concerns, Madonna said, “I haven’t looked at what he signed … but everyone’s navigating the various pressures that we’re facing, and I’m confident we will come through that stronger.”
Moving forward, Madonna said part of his skillset is presenting financial information in a way that translates to the average person.
Addressing recent layoffs, Devers-Franklin said a lot has been made of Emerson’s staff cuts, despite them being consistent with actions at other local schools.
“Nobody ever wants to lay off people [but] our number is lower than I believe almost anyone else in the state of Massachusetts, and our percentage is lower than any of our peers,” Devers-Franklin said, criticizing what she called the “framing” that these were “flippant decisions.”
To combat financial difficulties, Boston University laid off 120 people during the summer, Suffolk University laid off 35 staff in June, and Northeastern University considerably slowed its hiring this year.
“We have done [an] enormous amount of work to do everything we can to protect jobs,” she finished.
As part of efforts to further reduce personnel, full-time faculty have the option to participate in a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program which will provide special benefits to eligible employees who voluntarily resign. According to a newsletter shared by the full-time faculty union on Aug. 21, union members wrote that “it can be assumed that a reduction of approximately … 15 to 20 full-time faculty members,” is desired to meet college wide targets for personnel reduction.
“There’s no quota,” Devers-Franklin responded, and Madonna concurred. “It’s a voluntary program … it’s a very good package [and] there’s been a good response to us.”
The college has also faced criticism from representatives of the staff union for announcing new VPs amid layoffs in “student-facing” staff areas.
“First of all, that’s absurd,” Devers-Franklin said in response to the comments. “Rich is the CFO; he’s a replacement position. Do they expect us to operate without a CFO? I’m [in] a replacement position … Paola’s replacing a VP as an executive director position, so it’s a completely unfair and absurd accusation.”
Despite these criticisms, the new executive-level hires emphasized confidence and strength in the college’s current plans for navigating its future.
“We have a very strong VP team,” Devers-Franklin said. “We’re all very aligned, we’re all very excited about the path forward, and we all feel very good about the future of the college.”
