Alexis Friedman/The Hofstra Chronicle

Tucked away past the beeping door to Special Collections in the basement of the Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library is the office of assistant vice president of University Relations, Karla Schuster. The room is filled with souvenirs from her time working at Hofstra, memories from her 20 years in the newspaper industry and assorted New York Mets memorabilia.

Schuster first joined the Hofstra community in 2009 and has especially appreciated the opportunity it has given her to more deeply connect with students attending the university.

“I will be honest, getting to know students is probably one of my favorite parts of my job – one that I didn’t expect coming to work here,” Schuster said. “Obviously I knew I was going to be dealing with students, but the idea that meeting students, getting to know students and telling students’ stories would become one of my favorite parts of the work has been a really lovely and unexpected surprise.”

Schuster also loves the irregularity of a job where there’s never a typical day. Currently, she has been focusing her work on a press release about the most recent survey conducted by the Zarb School of Business and Marcum LLP about mid-market CEOs. Schuster frequently deals with student reporters and journalists who are researching the university’s stance on a particular issue or are curious about Hofstra faculty’s research on a particular topic that may be useful to cite in a news article.

One of her favorite projects to work on is the Hofstra Votes voter registration campaign which the university launched in 2018.

Because of her work on Hofstra Votes, Schuster has learned so much more about voter registration laws around the country and has had the opportunity to educate the campus community about them, while confirming that students are registered to vote in upcoming elections.

She views her role within the University Relations department as “protecting and promoting the university and the campus community,” giving her the “opportunity to talk to really smart and interesting people and tell their stories.”

Prior to coming to Hofstra in 2009, Schuster worked in the journalism industry for over 20 years at newspapers in Connecticut, South Florida and New York.

Coming from a journalistic background really helped Schuster in her role at Hofstra, especially with understanding what makes a good story and helping her pitch stories about Hofstra in a more interesting and captivating way.

During her time as a reporter, Schuster covered many different beats, but her favorite was education. She recounted her surprise in discovering her passion for the education beat because it wasn’t one she had directly sought out.

“It’s really interesting and compelling [writing] feature stories, human interest stories – whether it’s about students, teachers or faculty, really interesting political and financial stories about school districts and institutions and how they’re spending their money, if they’re spending their money,” Schuster said about the complexities of education reporting and why it became so interesting to her. “Education is also something that people feel really strongly about. You know, school districts are often the biggest chunk of any municipal budget, so they’re incredibly important to people. They’re important to the people who have kids in school and to the people who are paying taxes to support school districts, even if they don’t have children in school.”

As a Queens native, Schuster grew up a mile or so from Shea Stadium, the former home of the Mets, so the franchise consumed her childhood. After school, she would watch their afternoon games on television and learned to love the team and the sport.

“I can’t fix on an exact date or an exact moment, but it really feels like being a Mets fan was inevitable,” Schuster said.

She describes her first memory of the Mets to be when they made it to the World Series in ‘73. To this day, Schuster loves the Mets, as anyone who follows her on social media would know, because that’s almost all she posts about.

Reflecting on her four years at Le Moyne College, where she earned a degree in English and communications, Schuster shares what she wished she did differently, something that many Hofstra and other university students alike can learn from.

“In school, I think particularly towards the end of my time in college, I got impatient,” Schuster said. “I just wanted to get out, and I wanted to work. I was done with school before it was done with me.”

Her college experience was lots of fun, working at her school paper and meeting new people, but Schuster wishes she did more.

“I would tell my college age self to study abroad, do internships and take full advantage of all these opportunities to broaden my horizons,” Schuster said. “I wish I had worked a little harder by taking advantage of all the opportunities offered.”