Dr. Kimberly Greer is the University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, who arrived to Stan State last spring of 2017.
“It’s a great campus. Great students, great faculty and staff and excellent people to work with,” Dr. Greer said.
Dr. Greer grew up in Missouri and went to school in both Missouri and Illinois.
College Years
In terms of education, Dr. Greer said her “Bachelors was in CJ. My masters was in Administration and my PhD was in Sociology. So, I was in the Social Sciences, but I was crossing over in interdisciplinary fashion within the social sciences. It definitely helped with what I was interested in.”
Dr. Greer then moved to Minnesota and took her first teaching job there as a professor. She taught in the Sociology and Corrections Program, specifically geared towards women in the criminal justice system and more in the corrections program.
During her undergraduate years, Dr. Greer never thought about the possibilities of graduate school. “I had no thought about graduate school, it just wasn’t in the realm of possibility, just didn’t think about it. And so that piece of it then impacts what your dream is, how far out do you dream and ultimately I wound up going back to school a couple of different times.”
However, after several opportunities, Dr. Greer said that she “was always intrigued by new challenges and so it winds up kind of taking you down some different paths.”
After College
Before coming to Stan State, Dr. Greer had lived in Minnesota for 20 years. She then moved her way up as a Dean and then a Vice-Provost at Minnesota, and eventually came to Stan State.
When it came to choosing Stan State, Dr. Greer actually heard about the University from one of her colleagues who knew President Ellen Junn.
“I started looking at information about the university, and I was really intrigued by Stan State, given that such a large percentage of the student body were first generation and that really resonated with me. I was a first-generation college student,” Dr. Greer said.
Being at Stan State
When Dr. Greer had her all-day interview at Stan State, by the end of the day she was sold. “I had really been sold on this institution mostly by my interactions with faculty, staff and administrators. I had a little bit of an opportunity to meet some students for a very short period of time, but because of the way that the faculty, staff and administrators cared about the students and talked about the students, I knew this was a place where I wanted to work, too.”
Dr. Greer’s position means that she has “responsibility for everything that falls within academic affairs. So within each college, and department, and program, so faculty and staff, and Deans, and associate Vice Presidents that are within the division of academic affairs, that’s my responsibility, or portfolio. It’s a large portion or large division of the university, there are six divisions total.”
Dr. Greer also added that she gets to “be involved in helping programs and departments and colleges plan for the future.”
Dr. Greer’s involvement with different departments has led to a positive experience for Dr. James Tuedio, Dean of the College of the Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. “I find her really easy to interact with and I’m very straightforward and she’s got what you want to see in a provost, she’s got real integrity and a comfort with her intuitions about things,” Dr. Tuedio said.
“What strikes me as really one of the most defining and important elements of her [Dr. Greer] leadership is the total commitment to a collaborative engagement and good critical analysis of situations and the importance of hearing out different views,” Dr. Tuedio added.
For Tomas Gomez-Arias, Dean of the College of Business Administration, Dr. Greer has had a positive impact on him, as well, in terms of working together.
“It’s actually really comfortable to work with her. She listens and it’s possible to disagree with her and discuss things in a very exploratory manner without having her be forcefully impulsing her opinion, so you could just talk to her candidly about problems we may have and then explore solutions together,” Dr. Gomez-Arias said.
Goals
In terms of goals, Dr. Greer has a couple of ideas in mind. “When I said by the end of my interview that I really wanted to come here, part of that was really wanting to be part of this team and contribute through this role because I so appreciated what the faculty, staff, and students here already valued about this institution and what they saw as the vision of this institution moving forward, and so I want to contribute to that and be part of the team that moves Stan State into the future,” Dr. Greer said.
Dr. Tuedio said that although Greer has been here for a short amount of time, she has assisted in improving the interpersonal communication.
“[Dr. Greer] has made it possible for me to say that some things really have changed in a year and a half and that’s pretty remarkable. I think also by now we have recognized the similarities in our different intuitions and so you know, I’d be sitting there and there’s a term that just pops up in your head about what you’re talking about and somebody uses that term and that’s kind of new. That wasn’t going on the same way looking backwards. There’s something a little more copacetic about the conversations that are going on around the table and yet it hasn’t lost its critical edge,” Dr. Tuedio said.
One thing Dr. Greer wants to see is “leaving the University as a better, healthier, organization.”
“My belief is that if the institution, if Stan State is a healthy organization where people work collaboratively with each other, where people communicate fully and all voices are heard, then ultimately, the university will solve its problems and move forward,” Dr. Greer added.
