Dr. Nicola Blake is the University Dean for Faculty Affairs at the City University of New York (CUNY). An accomplished higher education leader with more than 25 years of experience in instruction, academic administration, and institutional advancement, she has dedicated her career to improving student outcomes and strengthening faculty engagement across four-year and community colleges. She played a pivotal role in launching and building Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, New York City’s first new community college in over four decades. In this groundbreaking effort, Dr. Blake led collaborative initiatives to establish a student-centered, equity-driven environment that significantly improved student retention and graduation rates by removing barriers to completion. 

As Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Guttman, Dr. Blake stabilized the Office of Academic Affairs and oversaw all academic and student support units. During her tenure, she guided the transition to a departmental structure that more than doubled the number of academic departments, launched the college’s first online programs, and founded the Career Innovation Hub, Guttman’s workforce development arm. She also secured multimillion-dollar grants and gifts to introduce new academic programs and student support services aligned with labor market needs, expanding pathways for workforce and economic mobility. 

From 2024 to 2025, Dr. Blake served as Senior Fellow for Strategic Initiatives and Student Success in the CUNY Central Office of Academic Affairs. In this cabinet-level role, she led a cross-system initiative to identify and implement best practices for reducing DFWI (drop, fail, withdraw, incomplete) rates, a critical student success metric. She also co-chaired the University-wide rollout of the Coursedog platform to improve course scheduling and sequencing efficiencies, with the goal of boosting retention, easing student transfer, and accelerating timely graduation for over 200,000 undergraduate students across the CUNY system. She also advanced CUNY’s mission of expanding access and driving social mobility by co-leading the University’s national work on civic education and democratic engagement through the Multi-State Collaborative on Civic Engagement. 

Building on this record of system-wide impact, in 2025, she was appointed University Dean for Faculty Affairs. In her current role, she mentors new department chairs, supports faculty governance leaders, and spearheads initiatives that promote teaching excellence, transfer success, and student achievement across CUNY. (She is also a Professor of English at Guttman Community College, presently on leave while serving in this University-wide capacity.) 

Internationally recognized for her expertise in curriculum and program development, Dr. Blake was selected as a U.S. Fulbright Specialist (2015–2020) and serves as an accreditor for the New York State Education Department and the New England Commission on Higher Education. Her leadership and contributions have earned her numerous honors and accolades. She is a past American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow (2016–2017) and an alumna of several prestigious leadership programs, including the HERS Institute, the Harvard Institute for Higher Education, and the American Association of Community Colleges’ Future Presidents Institute. She was also nominated for the Zenobia L. Hikes Distinguished Career Award, which honors women of color leaders in higher education. In 2023, she was named to the prestigious Complete College America Fellowship Program (a national fellowship recognizing innovators in student success). 

Dr. Blake holds a B.A. with honors in English and Psychology from the City College of New York (CUNY) and a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from Rutgers University. A committed scholar-practitioner dedicated to access, mobility, and academic excellence, she continues to contribute to scholarship and inclusivity as the author of scholarly articles and children’s books that expand representation in literature.