From Posse Scholar to champion of student success

By Stella Katsipoutis-Varkanis

For Krysta Battersby ’11, there’s one common thread running through her experience as a Posse Scholar at Lafayette and her professional life today: the power of community. Currently the executive director of the McNulty Scholars Program at Hunter College—which provides mentoring, leadership training, and professional development support to help women succeed in STEM careers—Battersby has spent nearly 15 years in higher education creating the same kind of supportive environment for students that changed her own life as an undergrad on College Hill.

“I feel like I am who I am today equally because of Lafayette and Posse,” Battersby says.

Battersby’s path to Lafayette began unexpectedly the summer before her senior year of high school, when she traveled to Costa Rica to teach English through the nonprofit volunteer program Amigos de las Americas. After seeing Battersby in action, a program administrator approached her father to suggest she apply for Posse, a college access and leadership program that partners with higher education institutions to provide scholarships and support to promising undergraduate students.

Despite never having heard of Posse or Lafayette, Battersby applied and was accepted as a Posse Scholar. As a New York City native who had never lived away from home, she was skeptical at first about the move to Pennsylvania. “But my father told me, ‘I really think that school can teach you something I can’t teach you,’” Battersby recalls. “And my dad, being one of my first mentors, was right.”

College Hill became Battersby’s home away from home. She was a member of Lafayette’s Posse N.Y. 6 cohort, a group of 12 students from New York City whose majors ranged from engineering and economics to English and public policy. As part of such a diverse group of student leaders, Battersby soon saw Lafayette as a place where she could explore her various interests, build meaningful relationships, and pursue her passion for working with students.

Originally declared as a history major, Batterby was led by her love of discovering how learning about the past can change the understanding of the present. When she took a first-year seminar with George Panichas, James Renwick Hogg Professor Emeritus of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Battersby was introduced to a whole new way of thinking and learning—and decided to add a minor in philosophy.

“It was my first time engaging with things like ethics,” Battersby says. “My brain was firing back and forth between different perspectives, and I just loved it. Thinking the way I do now, that critical thinking, is all thanks to Prof. Panichas.”

Now preparing to teach her own first-year seminar at Hunter College for the first time, Battersby finds herself directly drawing from her experiences in Panichas’ classroom. “I’ve been vividly thinking back to how good of a job he did teaching that course,” she says. “And while I might not be as good as him, I’m going to try, because giving students the space to find themselves in their first year is so important.”

Javad Tavakoli, Battersby’s Posse mentor and currently professor emeritus of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was an equally influential figure for her and her Posse cohort, serving as a model of quiet, patient leadership and demonstrating a deep commitment to his students and mentees.

“I never saw him flinch, never saw him back down, never saw him not be there for us,” Battersby recalls. “He was the type who if we reached out to him over the weekend with our questions about our coursework, he would walk right up the hill that day to help us understand it as much as he could. He was the best, and my Posse and I still think about him and praise him.”  Years later, Battersby’s Posse established the Javad Tavakoli Scholarship Fund in his honor for future Lafayette students.

In addition to her coursework, Battersby served in NIA, a student organization providing support for women of color on Lafayette’s campus, where she had the opportunity to mentor young students herself. She also worked in the Lafayette College archives, where she helped transcribe interviews with members of Lafayette’s first graduating class of women. “My research and analytical skills, they were born at Lafayette,” Battersby says. “I would not have been able to do my master’s capstone or my dissertation without the discipline and the things I learned at Lafayette.”

After graduating, Battersby earned her master’s degree in higher education administration from New York University, where she worked in various roles for nearly a decade in her early career. There, she became deeply involved in efforts to improve retention of, and support for, women. She later served as assistant program manager at Break Through Tech, where she helped women enter the computer science field.

Now, as executive director of the McNulty Scholars Program, Battersby has come full circle, providing women in STEM with research opportunities, advising, and a community network, and setting them up for successful graduate school and professional careers. “I’m working for a program that’s almost just like Posse,” she says. “I want students to know someone cares and understands their journey.”

Battersby also currently participates in Posse’s Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP), helping to interview potential Posse Scholars as they move through the application process. She remains closely connected with her fellow Posse cohort members as well. “I can go to them about anything that’s going on in my life,” she says. “And this has a lot to do with how the Posse program taught us to support one another. The experience we shared will always mean something to me.”

Looking ahead, Battersby hopes to someday expand her impact on higher ed as a dean or provost, where she can help shape policies and create opportunities to change students’ lives—just as the opportunities she was given at Lafayette changed hers. “I didn’t get here by myself,” she says. “What I learned at Lafayette will always stay with me, and it helped create who I’ve become. Just one conversation, one email, one introduction can change the trajectory of someone’s life. And that’s what I want to do for students.”