Student Affairs VP candidate Kimberly Barrett discusses healthy university communities at forum talk
Kimberly Barrett, the first of three candidates for the position of Vice President for Student Affairs to visit campus, discussed creating a healthy university community during her public forum talk Sept. 27. She currently serves as Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pfeiffer College, Misenheimer, N.C., her master’s in clinical psychology from Murray State University in Kentucky, and her doctorate in higher education administration from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She has been in her present position since 2008. Prior to that, she was the associate vice chancellor of student development and diversity at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She has also held the positions of vice provost for student affairs at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada; associate provost and dean of students at Southeast Missouri State University; director of multi-cultural affairs at SUNY Potsdam College; and counselor, instructor and director of the Women’s Center at Murray State University.
Barrett has more than 20 years of administrative experience, has taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, and was invited to participate in the American Council on Education’s Annual National Leadership Forum. As vice president for student affairs she is responsible for personnel and budgets related to student learning and development. She is affiliated with the Association of American Colleges and Universities, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and has served on various university committees including Strategic Planning, Undergraduate Curriculum, Budget Review, Academic Advising and Retention, and Enrollment Planning.
In her talk, Barrett said the topic of healthy university communities is near and dear to her heart. She said she is a strong advocate for access, and wants to ensure that all people have the opportunity to reach their potential – including students, faculty, staff, and those in continuing and distance education. That, she said, is essential to forming a healthy community.
She said she’s impressed by the great things going on at UND, including the Wellness Center, which she hoped to visit, the many programs reaching out to American Indian communities, and cutting-edge research. “You already have a healthy campus community,” she said. But, in keeping with President Kelley’s theme of “great to exceptional,” she said UND could become exceptionally healthy.
She said her talk would follow Ernest Boyer’s Six Principles of Community: purposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring, and celebrative. Her focus, she said, would be on three of these principles: purposeful, caring, and celebrative.
Barrett said she was drawn to UND by the variety of programs, including medicine, law, and other disciplines, as well as its mission and strategic plan. Defining shared goals is a unifying force, she said. The process of producing liberal education for students is liberating for those students.
How can student affairs help the rest of the campus reach liberal education goals? she asked. They can share across campus, help increase the quality of instruction, and assist with student retention. Ways to achieve liberal education goals include helping students develop ethical reasoning so they can make wise choices, incorporating proven theories into the Code of Conduct, and help impact whether or not students choose UND. Barrett said student affairs could also help show how to measure what we do, and what it means to promote the development of the whole student.
“Our purpose,” Barrett said, “is to provide an intellectual apprenticeship.”
Caring is not just “touchy-feely,” it is built of actions showing concern about every member of the community. And that includes the Greater Grand Forks community, tribal communities, and the world community as well as the University community. Caring is important, Barrett said. “If we are passionate and care about our subjects and pupils, we have better outcomes. Students are more engaged.” We need to provide good customer service for both students and those who serve them, she said.
Diversity and cultural competence provide an opportunity for us to learn more, Barrett said. It’s critical that we incorporate them into everything we do. When it comes to cultural diversity, we are all learners, and can learn a lot from students. She mentioned her 21-year-old son, who she said is accomplished at “switching,” or accommodating the personalities of different people, and said she hopes she played some small part in that. “I’ve seen the impact of being exposed to differences in the way he interacts with others,” she said.
Developing a celebratory culture is more than holding parties, said Barrett. It’s about valuing the contributions of everyone to shared goals, about fostering collaboration through empowerment. We also need to celebrate people who engage in questioning, and we need to do it as an institution. We need to celebrate achievements of students, faculty, and staff, not just with recognition, but also by incorporating it into the campus culture and integrating it into the reward system. That includes promotion and tenure as well as merit pay, she said.
When it comes time to discuss how to create an exceptionally healthy campus, Barrett said, she considers herself a servant leader or facilitator. “It’s not about me, it’s how to help make others successful,” she said.
Barrett then took questions from the audience, the answers to which are summarized below.
She agreed with one audience member who said that part of wellness includes financial wellness and fiscal responsibility. “It’s a major issue related to student success,” Barrett said. As students try to juggle jobs and school, she wants to help students understand their options. “Education is Job One,” she said. She said her university has added a “cash course” to help students learn to manage money and increase their financial literacy. It’s important – a good skill to have in college and beyond, she said.
When it comes to issues with alcohol and binge drinking, Barrett said she supports a multi-faceted approach that includes education for all students, working with students who have problems, and bringing together community resources such as community coalitions, law enforcement, and others to develop an effective, integrated approach to alcohol. She mentioned an approach to binge drinking at Wisconsin when she was there, and said she favors a similar approach. You need to tailor the approach to the community, she said.
To ensure that students have input into major decisions, Barrett favors giving students a place on committees, including major budget and search committees. Needs and satisfaction surveys, informal forums and meetings, and regular meetings with student government are also important components. We need to understand student issues and take them to colleagues, Barrett said.
The role of the Vice President for Student Affairs is to help all students, including international students, she said in response to a question on how to help international students overcome culture shock. Students have different needs. Her job is to find out what they are and see that they’re met, and that students feel comfortable and safe. We need to ensure that there is a space for everyone and support all students so they can impact the campus community. Programs and events are one way to do that, she said, but you have to know the students before you make plans.
Barrett said it’s not feasible to keep increasing tuition. There are two conflicting ideals when it comes to public education: that education serves the personal good with an increased income, and that public education is to serve the public good. We need to do a better job of emphasizing the benefits that public education brings to the state, nation, and world. We must be frugal, and work with the legislature to help them understand how education serves the public good.
When it comes to serving off-campus, online and distance students through student affairs, Barrett said we can use technology to find ways to care about students. She mentioned looking at what online competitors do, including online counseling and blended services. She also suggested meeting with those students in central locations. “There are lots of ways to better serve them,” she said. “We need the will to do it.”
Student Affairs can play a big role in helping families support their students, as well as help them transition into letting go of those students, she said. She added that there is a need to develop programs to help parents successfully make that transition, and to develop new ways of being involved.
It’s always the case that offices in other divisions also serve students, Barrett said, and there are ways to promote cooperation and mutual support. We have a shared purpose, and she’s found it’s not a problem to bring them together with an inclusive process.
When asked for an example, Barrett said that people wonder what teaching chemistry has to do with diversity. She said Student Affairs can work with faculty by sharing literature and helping improve teaching effectiveness. With any issue, you have to get buy-in, and it needs to be relevant to the audience. It needs to help them achieve their goals. Data can be an effective way to get people on board.
When asked how to prevent conflict, Barrett said that it’s important to not look at diversity as a minority issue. She wants to engage all students.
Asked to share both success and failure when it came to championing an idea, Barrett said that she’s worked at a lot of institutions, and it’s important to understand the culture of the college of university, identify what it’s doing well, and build on that. She said they developed enrollment management initiative at one university, and there was a lot of buy-in because everyone had a stake in getting new students. Union faculty became involved in orientation, even though it wasn’t in their contract. “There was a desire to enhance learning and retention, and they were willing to do it,” she said. What didn’t work was a plan for student retention that involved courses for students. They rushed into the project and did not adequately prepare instructors. As a result, there was a “mish-mash,” and students had different experiences, some of them less than pleasant. “We hadn’t prepared up front for faculty development.”
When asked about the importance of quality vs. quantity when it comes to enrollment, Barrett said that it’s difficult to predict student success based on test scores. We also need to look at the likelihood of student success in the university environment, and we need a good mix of students – both in majors and achievement levels.
Barrett said she has supervised a crisis response team and worked with faculty and police, and also taken NIMS training for larger scale crises. She has training in dealing with student suicide and death, and said she’s never had to live through a large-scale crisis like a flood or pandemic. She said that when she takes a new position, she looks at crisis plans and determines whether they need review. – Jan Orvik, Writer/Editor.
