With Gratitude to Sue Aber
May 21, 2020
Dear Trinity College Community Members,
With deep appreciation for her tireless dedication and countless contributions to the Trinity community, I write to announce the retirement of Sue Aber, our vice president for information services and chief information officer. Among many reasons for my gratitude to Sue is her willingness to postpone the start of her retirement until the end of October, so that we may start a new semester that is certain to require her expertise, and so that we may have time to plan for her succession.
Sue hasn’t just been a team player; she has been an exemplary member of the community, always willing to take on a new task, serve on and lead committees, and advocate for the needs of staff, students, and faculty in all that we do. Sue is an able and dedicated leader who cares deeply about her staff. Her ability as a leader who gets things done was the reason that I asked her to help lead the college’s COVID-19 emergency response, a role in which she continues to serve admirably to coordinate the college’s response and communicate with and care for our community. It’s no surprise that Sue and many members of her team were among those honored by the faculty last week with commendations for meritorious service, for displaying “particularly selfless dedication to the educational mission and well-being of our community during the COVID-19 crisis.”
Sue joined the college in 2010 as director of information technology services and chief information officer and was promoted to her current position in 2015. In her leadership of Information Services, Sue has guided the overall direction of the libraries and technology through strategic planning and collaboration, and she has advanced a customer-service approach throughout the division in support of the college’s academic mission and its business operations.
Sue also has contributed enormously to the support of students, most especially in founding and serving as co-chair of the Venture pre-orientation women’s leadership conference for first-year students. Since its inception in 2013, Venture has become a treasured part of the Trinity experience and an early supportive network for its participants, many of whom go on to become leaders on campus and in their communities and lives beyond Trinity. Sue’s personal mentorship and her devotion to the Venture program has helped shape the experiences of these young women at Trinity and, in turn, has had a lasting impact on our community as a whole.
She may be retiring, but we know Sue’s ties to Trinity will remain strong—including as the parent of a Trinity grad, her wonderful daughter Lauren Aber ’13—and we’re all glad for that. And with her departure date later in the fall, we’ll have plenty of time to celebrate Sue and wish
her well in retirement. In the meantime, please join me in thanking her for her numerous and meaningful contributions to the college. Congratulations, and thank you, Sue!
Sincerely,
Joanne Berger-Sweeney
President and Trinity College Professor of Neuroscience
