Leading With Love

Meet Malcolm Smith, whose approach to student development is to lead with love and promote the values of integrity, transparency, collaboration, and kindness. Smith is Kalamazoo College’s Vice President for Student Development and Dean of Students. For more than two decades he has helped build transformative educational experiences at Ohio University, John Carroll University, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Salve Regina University. Then, nine months ago, he decided to bring his talents to K and (rather than build) amplify the transformative educational experience the College already does so well. Short- and long-term challenges and opportunities include: expand student activity programs; grow the Intercultural Center; increase four-year campus residency; and improve residence halls in ways that enhance engagement with the K academic experience and foster a healthier work-recreation balance.

The Arc From “Being Here” to “Making ‘Here’ Home”

More black people, indigenous people, and people of color are choosing to attend K as students and work at K as faculty and staff. That’s progress in diversity, or “being here.” More progress is required in equity and inclusion, or “making ‘here’ home” for all. Home is deep and complicated. K is shaping itself into a space conducive to in-and-out-of-the-box ideas and actions that extend the arc from “being here” to “making ‘here’ home,” a place that every member of the K community considers to be their own. In this K-Talk, four members of the community describe the multitude of projects—a hard work as urgent as it is painstaking—that constitutes the march to extend the arc. These four educator-activists are D’Angelo Bailey ’05, Karen Isble (Advancement), Regina Stevens-Truss (Chemistry), and Rhiki Swinton (Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership). What they describe is eye-opening (in terms of need and effect) and inspiring. And a good start.