(Photo Courtesy: dean.edu)
After 27 remarkable years as the President of Dean College, Dr. Paula M. Rooney announced in October 2021 that she would be retiring from the role of President of Dean College. Following Dr. Rooney’s departure in May of 2022, Dean College announced that Kenneth Elmore would serve as the 14th president in Dean College’s history. Since arriving at Dean in July of 2022, President Elmore reflects on his first-year performance, as well as what he hopes to accomplish for Dean in the years to come.
Prior to taking over as President of Dean, President Elmore previously dedicated the past 20 years as the Associate Provost and Dean of Students at Boston University. At BU, President Elmore was a leader for students, by managing residence operations and supporting the students on campus. Along with his student involvement, he focused a great amount of time collaborating with BU’s professors and faculty as well. Through his time at BU, his well-known, caring presence failed to go unrecognized by the public community. Elmore strongly embraced their student body with his empathy, energy, and thoughtfulness, which BU had been fortunate to experience.
Since the beginning of Elmore’s career, he always envisioned working in a college setting for a long time. With the desire to become president always in Elmore’s mind, initially, he did not understand what the “title” truly meant. As he continued to advance in higher education, Elmore began interacting more with leadership staff and other presidents. From the knowledge and experience gained over time, Elmore began to fully understand the mission of a president and believed he was well qualified for that position.
Having been highly involved in higher education, Elmore had always been aware of Dean College. By describing his leadership skills as “mission-driven”, Elmore sought Dean as the best place where he could apply those skills as president. He has always thought Dean had a “level of personal and holistic care for people,” which he values.
With just over a year having gone by, Elmore reflected on his first full year at Dean as a great experience. Elmore mentioned he spent a lot of time around campus observing, listening, and communicating, which gave him more ideas of what to touch upon for the school going forward. When asked how it was adapting to a smaller environment after having been familiar with a bigger school, Elmore explained the change in size and how it affected his decision-making.
Elmore responded by emphasizing the importance of scaling differently. He labeled this as “a change of mentality” by also stating that there should be a great level of impact for the scale. Lastly, regarding his process for decision-making, he has found that empowering students and faculty to “do their own work” makes his authority more collaborative.
President Elmore firmly believes Dean’s community is the school’s biggest advantage. He referred to Dean as a “place of care,” with everybody caring for each other. Overtime, he hopes to integrate stronger and more frequent study abroad programs and open new opportunities for students to work in the Franklin area.