Gale Stevens Haynes, Esq.

Provost
Long Island University,
Brooklyn Campus
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Long Island University has been a home for Provost Gale Stevens Haynes for more than three decades. “It’s an extraordinary place where you see students who often come with so little and become successful,” Haynes says. Her association with the university began when she earned her bachelor’s degree in English and her master’s degree in counseling from the Brooklyn campus. Soon after ob-taining her graduate degree, she accepted a position as director of the school’s Higher Education Opportunity Program. She went on to St. John’s University  School of Law and, after obtaining her law degree, returned to Long Island University as legal counsel. Haynes assumed her current position as provost for the university’s Brooklyn campus in 1989.

As provost, she oversees one of the country’s most diverse campuses, aided by an operating budget of more than $160 million. This a far cry from the campus population and size of budget that she encountered 21 years ago, when only a very few people, including Haynes, believed that the Brooklyn campus could and should remain open. Haynes, a self-described problem solver, took on the enormous challenge of keeping the campus going and began to guide its makeover.

Provost Haynes led Long Island University through a remarkable transformation that includes doubling student enrollment, managing campus construction projects and establishing important links with the community. She jokes, “I am the only woman I know with 11,000 children.”

Haynes’s love of education extends beyond the LIU campus, which she attributes to her Jamaican heritage. Since January 2007, she has served as the chairwoman of the board of education for the Roosevelt Union Free School District. Her downtime is devoted to spending time with her two grandchildren.

Haynes has learned to enjoy her daily wins. “Sometimes it is the small successes that we have everyday that builds the most purposeful life,” she says.