By Ricky Thompson

Working in the close-knit college community in Amherst, Roberta Berrien has influenced colleges such as the University of Massachusetts, Smith College and Amherst College. Now she plans to make her mark at Northeastern.

Although only a few weeks into her new position, University Health and Counseling Services (UHCS) Director Berrien has already developed high expectations for the road ahead.

“I think it’s an opportunity to really do good things in health care,” she said. “It’s a dynamic community. It’s a community that’s interested in change, and health care is always changing.”

Berrien brings knowledge gained not only by a series of administrative medical positions, but also from operating under similar college settings in the past.

“I’m old — I’ve done a lot of things,” she said. “My most direct experience in this job was quite similar: I was at the University of Maine at Orono in the late eighties and early nineties.”

In addition, Berrien spent 11 years operating a private practice in North Hampton, working amidst the “five college community.” As a result, her patients were “lots of different people of all different ages, [as well as] a lot of students coming in from the various colleges.”

Berrien and a friend started the facility while living in the area.

They wanted to practice medicine “the way we wanted to practice, which was very hands-on and very close to patients,” she said. “We didn’t want to join somebody else’s practice who told us how to do it, so we started our own from scratch.”

Upon opening for business, the pair had no patients, a small office and a few pieces of furniture. However, 11 years later, nearly 10,000 patients sought Berrien for their medical needs.

“What’s really funny,” she said, “was when you’re in a private practice and the students don’t like their health services, they go to the private doctor in the community. Then suddenly you’re the same person in student health but you don’t have the same credibility [among students]. It’s really interesting.”

Berrien has significant ties to the city of Boston. Although she aspired to become a doctor, an early marriage at the age of 20 ultimately turned her plans in a different direction.

In coming to grips with the potential difficulties of being a doctor, a wife and a mother at once, Berrien instead enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and later earned her master’s degree in biology.

“Why I think you could be a scientist, a wife and a mother, I don’t know,” she said. “I liked going to MIT but I realized that my life wasn’t in the laboratory.”

After having her first child shortly thereafter, she took some time off before enrolling in medical school at the University of Tennessee.

As the director of UHCS, Berrien has a clear understanding of the responsibilities she holds on campus.

“I think there are a multitude of responsibilities, one of which is to ensure the quality of the health care given in both the counseling and the clinical medical services,” she said. “I think that I’ve come into a place that does have high quality, but it is my job to make sure that we have ways to demonstrate that, to ensure that the quality is what it should be.”

Berrien has also set out to accomplish the full integration of the counseling and health center.

“There have been different services that have worked well together and in this past year begun a number of different ways to do even more together, but the mandate from the university is to bring us together physically,” she said.

Criminology and corrections major Nicole Martino, who serves as the Student Government Association’s vice president for student services, sat in on the search committee for a new director and participated in the interviews.

“[Berrien] had amazing ideas in her interview and she was very student-centered,” Martino said. “She also came to us with experience in university health care as well as health clinic and private practice experience.”

Vice President for Student Affairs Ed Klotzbier had his own praise to sing for Berrien’s track record.

“She’s been involved throughout her career in a variety of health service environments and we thought she had the right experience to bring to the position,” he said. “I really think the students are going to love her.”