Vilma Cortina – Seton Hall University

At Seton Hall University, where the physical campus shapes how students learn, train, and build community, Project Manager Vilma Cortina sees every renovation and new build as an opportunity to support people first. As part of Campus Planning and Facilities Management, she manages capital projects with a human-centered lens, measuring success by the everyday experiences of students, athletes, cadets, faculty, and staff who use these spaces long after the ribbon-cutting.

Seton Hall is a nationally recognized Catholic university known for academic excellence, a commitment to servant leadership, and a campus community rooted in belonging. Within this environment, the Facilities Management team plays a crucial role in ensuring that thoughtful, well-executed physical environments support learning and student life. Cortina’s focus on detail, coordination, equity, and end-user experience has made her a steady force behind some of the university’s most impactful recent upgrades.

She draws on a deep background in construction and general contracting, honed during more than a decade with Hunter Roberts Construction Group and additional years with LRC Construction. Coming from the GC world, she learned how to ask the right questions, see through distractions, catch unnecessary change requests, and read people well enough to get to the heart of what they truly need. For her, the technical work is essential, but the ability to understand the motivations of contractors, tradespeople, and end users is what keeps projects on time, within scope, and aligned with the university’s goals.

“There is no better feeling than watching students and staff enjoy their spaces,” Cortina says.

That moment, she says, is what every project is ultimately about.

Modernizing athletics for present & future generations

No project has showcased Cortina’s impact as strongly as the sweeping athletics modernization effort she assumed soon after joining the university in 2023. The men’s and women’s basketball teams, along with volleyball, visiting teams, and officials, now benefit from a more efficient footprint, purpose-fit training areas, and dedicated spaces that reflect the university’s goals for competitive excellence.

The centerpiece is the new 55,544-square-foot men’s basketball practice facility, a modern operation that includes a players’ lounge, locker room, film room, a suite of coaches’ offices, and a state-of-the-art training room complete with hydrotherapy equipment such as whirlpools and a water treadmill. The upgrade gives the program the most valuable asset it lacked: autonomy. Instead of coordinating practice times around other campus users, the team can now train independently without scheduling conflicts or interruptions.

“The men’s practice facility spans 55,544 square feet, space that finally matches the program’s ambitions,” Cortina says.

This expansion also created a cascade of benefits across women’s athletics by moving the women’s basketball team into the former men’s space and renovating it with new offices. Relocating those offices allowed for a complete renovation of their existing space by adding a players’ lounge, a film room, and improved locker and restroom facilities. The university rebalanced its offerings and created a more equitable foundation for athletic success. Cortina was a vocal advocate for these improvements, pushing to ensure the women’s program received meaningful upgrades despite donor-driven funding limitations.

“I pushed to ensure women’s programs gained meaningful upgrades within real-world budget limits,” she explains.

The volleyball team now has a dedicated locker room and practice support spaces, a long-needed improvement for program identity and daily rhythm. Visiting teams and officials also have proper, renovated locker rooms and offices for the first time, supporting a more professional and hospitable game-day environment.

These improvements reflect both the university’s ambitions and the personal leadership style of head coach Shaheen Holloway, whose focus on security, efficient access, and operational flow influenced several design refinements. Cortina coordinated closely with athletics staff, facilities, and contractors to implement these adjustments, from upgraded office layouts to electrical modifications required to support hyperbaric chambers donated for recovery.

Her coordination superpower, built through years of GC oversight and refined in city work, has allowed her to steer the project with clarity and foresight. She knows when a contractor is trying to add cost without justification, when a scope needs to be tightened, and when an end user’s request requires a deeper conversation about function versus preference.

“My edge is reading people, separating true needs from nice-to-haves and steering decisions accordingly,” Cortina notes.

The men’s facility held its ribbon-cutting in March 2025, with women’s teams moving into their upgraded spaces in early fall 2025.

Expanding ROTC capacity for a growing cohort

While athletics commands much of the spotlight, Cortina is equally invested in smaller but deeply meaningful improvements across campus. One of her next major undertakings is the expansion of the ROTC training space on the fourth floor of Mooney Hall, a historic structure with all the engineering challenges that come with age.

The original weight room could accommodate only 10 to 15 cadets at once, far too few for a program that has grown to more than 30 students and continues to climb. To create a right-sized facility that supports formal physical training requirements, Cortina led structural due diligence on the building, searching archives for old drawings, coordinating a structural engineer assessment, examining framing conditions through ceiling openings, and confirming load capacity before moving any work forward.

“In Mooney Hall, we verified the fourth-floor structure, drawings, field checks, and engineer sign-off before opening the ROTC space,” she says.

The project joins the existing gym with an adjacent room by removing two walls, allowing for more equipment, better training flow, and the potential for a turf strip for sled pushes in a future phase. Work is scheduled strategically for winter break 2025–26 to avoid academic disruption, and the expanded space is expected to accommodate the program’s full cohort more efficiently and safely.

Her approach blends pragmatism with advocacy, ensuring that ROTC students have the environment they need to train effectively within a historic footprint that requires careful stewardship.

Embedding sustainability into learning & daily life

Cortina’s projects often blend operational improvement with academic opportunity and nowhere is this clearer than in the new Table2Ground™ biodigester initiative. Installed for the Food Services department, the system converts roughly 300 pounds of food waste into about 30 pounds of compost-like material each day, reducing volume 80-90% each cycle. The output becomes a hands-on educational resource: biology students will collect samples, test the material, and incorporate real-time campus operations into their coursework.

“This circular approach will reduce the kitchen’s solid waste stream by 40-50%, decrease hauling costs and tipping fees, divert food waste from being shipped to landfills and becoming methane gas, and overall reduce the university’s total carbon footprint,” says Table2Ground’s Arthur Henderson. “Vilma has been an incredible partner, asking strategic questions, offering suggestions for improvement, and collaboratively working with us, the facilities team, and the dining team to optimize success.”

On selecting and managing vendors for projects like this, she is deliberate. Contractors go through a vet-first model that emphasizes insurance and terms reviews, person-to-person interviews, and a trial period on smaller scopes before taking on larger work.

“New partners prove fit on small scopes first, then we scale together if the work and cadence align,” Cortina says.

Focusing on people & planning ahead

Born in Colombia and raised in the United States from age three, Cortina found her way into facilities work through curiosity and early exposure to hands-on learning. She attended a technical high school where her personality assessment placed her in building-related tracks like drafting, carpentry, cosmetology, and electrical work. Drafting hooked her first, but working for an architect made her realize that site work, coordination, and construction management were where she belonged.

Most of her career since then has been in K-12 and higher education environments, where buildings have a direct impact on young people. She loves the complexity, the coordination, and the satisfaction of watching students walk into a space that works for them.

That experience is what keeps her pushing for better facilities at Seton Hall, especially as the university faces footprint limitations and infrastructure pressures. She sees dorm capacity and aging building stock as growing challenges, but ones she is eager to help solve through thoughtful planning and cross-functional collaboration.

Beyond work, she is a mother who loves watching her son and daughter play soccer and baseball, enjoys documentaries, and appreciates quiet evenings reading or relaxing on the couch. But even in her downtime, the satisfaction she gets from her job stays with her.

“That moment when students and staff light up in a space we’ve improved, that’s the best part of the job,” she says.

It is the human response, she says, that makes all the coordination worth it. And at Seton Hall, where athletics, academics, and community life all depend on the spaces students inhabit, Vilma Cortina is shaping environments that will continue to support and inspire future generations.