In this installment of College Fluency Conversations, we interview Kim McKinsey-Mabry, Vice President for Student Affairs and Chief Diversity Officer at Genessee Community College. Prior to Genessee, Vice President McKinsey-Mabry was Acting Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs at Monroe Community College, where she led the vision for merging the divisions of Academic and Student Services. This interview focuses on her approach to aligning the structures of college administration with the needs of students to support college fluency, and how taking the time to understand the student experience is central to this endeavor.
Craig Nielsen: Thank you for joining us, Kim. We wanted to begin by asking you, how does your experience of attending and graduating from a community college yourself inform the work you do today in higher education?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: It absolutely informs my day to day work, my strategic thinking, and how I manage my relationships with our students. Because I once was a community college student, I now feel it provides the opportunity for me to meet students where they are and to navigate their understanding. I also know the challenges–the excitement, the anxiety–that incoming community college students face, and of those getting ready to graduate. Although it was many years ago, many of my family members went to community college after I graduated, including my own daughter. It helps me to see the perspective, not only from my own experience, but from others. It’s that pivotal moment, between personal and professional, that begins to shape thoughts about the future. For me personally, this now just fuels my work.
Part of that is learning the student experience today. I want to help students to learn how to advocate for themselves. It reminds me of the importance of also advocating for resources. Sometimes the community colleges are the best kept secret, which means we are also the ones to get less funding and support. My focus has been how students navigate through our systems and our structures. How do they get the resources they need to be successful? How do they know where to go for advising? How do they know where to go when they have food insecurities, housing insecurities, or academic challenges?
Craig Nielsen: In terms of addressing those questions, what does your role at Genesee look like on a day-to-day basis? What insights or activities from your current position inform how you think about college fluency?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: I’ve been at Genesee since late December 2024. I’m getting my feet grounded and trying to meet as many of my colleagues as I can. I’m also trying to get to know our faculty and students. Every week I am attending student events and activities, including athletic events and award ceremonies, to create opportunities for students to connect with me. Last week, for instance, it was Cookies and Milk in the cafeteria with students. I said to students, “You can take as many cookies as you want, but you have to tell me how your experience at Genesee is.” A couple of weeks ago, I was playing pool with the students: “Tell me, how are things going? What could we be doing better?” I’m really taking my time, because I want to understand–not from the staff and administrators’ perspective, but from the students’ perspective–how do you navigate community college? From the time you hear about Genesee to the time you graduate and walk across that stage, what does that look like for you?
I currently oversee Athletics, Student Engagement and Inclusion, the Student Success Center, Financial Aid, and Pathways to Success, which is a federally funded grant. I also oversee the Office for the Dean of Students, which includes the Education Opportunity Program (EOP), Testing, Access, and Accommodations, Counseling, and the Wellness Center. Almost all of my meetings are in someone else’s office, not my own, because I want to see: if I’m a student walking in, or a staff member, how do I navigate that space? Who’s there when I walk in? What does it feel like when I walk in? Even when going to the activities and events, I’m trying to see how the students are engaging, because that tells me a lot about how they feel and their experience. That’s been my day-to-day the last several weeks.
Craig Nielsen: Returning to the topic of your previous position, we wanted to ask you about the initiative that you were charged with leading at Monroe to consolidate Student Services and Academic Services under one roof. You have experience leading both the academic and the student affairs side of the house, and then you oversaw the process of combining the two. What factors went into that decision, and are you aware of any other institutions that have made this merger?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: There are maybe one or two community colleges in the SUNY system that have a similar merged structure, but it’s not very often we see that. I saw the challenges that our students faced with the divisions separated. At Monroe, we spent a lot of time looking at the student persistence, retention, and completion data. We were doing a great job of bringing students in, but we weren’t getting them to the end. That data helped make the case for the merger of the two divisions. It also helped folks like me, who were looking behind the scenes, to ask: how do we begin to align our resources? How do we begin to realign our departments in a more unified and efficient way?
Craig Nielsen: That is a good point about how siloing is an issue not only for the people who work in the different departments, but also for the students navigating campus structures. How do you conceptualize that decision about the campus administrative design and its connection to students’ ability to navigate and advocate for themselves within the system?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: I’m going to start with an experience I had. One day during the holiday season a couple of years ago, a student made their way to my office, because they were looking for a bus pass. It seems simple: a student needs a bus pass; we give out bus passes. But we didn’t have the bus passes in my office. I went on the journey with that student to figure out: where are the bus passes? I didn’t know, even though I had worked there for a really long time. I called our Student Life and Leadership Office, which had supports for students. I called Financial Aid, which also had supports. That continued on. It turns out, the bus passes were actually at Parking Services! Prior to when that student ended up in my office, the Parking Services department was on the very first floor of the main building. Well, we went downstairs to the first floor, where Parking Services was located, forgetting that it had been relocated to another building outside of the main campus.
When we talk about the student experience, a student who needs a bus pass is a student who is faced with challenges, or maybe even in crisis. When we don’t know internally where our own supports for students are, that’s a problem. Our students can’t advocate for themselves when we don’t even know the answers. That was just one of the experiences, but it was the one that helped us get in a room together and really navigate from the seat of a student. We all think that we’re doing what’s in the best interest to serve and support our students and get them from walking in the front door to crossing that graduation stage. But that was the moment we realized that our structures may have been a bit broken and siloed. After the merger, communication was much clearer and the processes became much easier. It is much more helpful when all of the leaders are in one space together.
jean amaral: In terms of college fluency and student navigation of these non-curricular services, are there certain structural changes that we should be considering, other than the decision to combine Student Affairs and Academic Affairs?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: Truly, I think it’s taking the moment to walk through what a student walks through. You don’t have to merge the two divisions of an institution to get that to happen. Sometimes it’s walking to figure out where a student gets a bus pass, or with the student who came the day before Thanksgiving and the food pantry was closed. The person who had the key was on vacation, and no one knew how to get into that food pantry for that student, who had an Uber waiting outside. How do you understand the student experience without walking through that experience yourself? We can come together but we have to be committed and be willing to take the time.
It’s from the top down. It’s from the bottom up, to really hone in: how do we become a student-centered institution? Changing is hard work. We have to remind ourselves and our colleagues, and sometimes the administrators as well, why we’re really here. We have students who may not have an understanding of what it even means to walk through our doors. So, if we don’t make it seamless and easy to navigate the systems and structures, we’re not going to see them at graduation.
Craig Nielsen: Returning briefly to your experience at Monroe, can you talk about the role you played in redesigning the library there into more of a one-stop service hub, including some of the physical changes that you implemented and whose holistic needs they were oriented towards?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: Absolutely. First, let me clarify, I was not the genius behind that idea. The person who was in the role prior to me looked at the library as unique, and moved Student Affairs administrative staff. At the time, we tracked swipes–how many students go in and out of the library on a daily basis–and the library was the space that saw more unique student visitors than any other space on campus. So, the President and Vice President started hosting “office hours” there. When I became the Interim Vice President for Student Affairs, I moved immediately into the library space.
Library Services also decided to be the owner of the Student Emergency Directory. The library worked with others around the college to create an online accessible document for students of the supports and systems that were available. As we continued–not knowing what college fluency was at the time–we were talking about, “How can the library hone student success in new, unique, and different ways?” So, the library became the creators and the owners of that tool, which was shared with students during their onboarding.
We welcomed community college students, but we were not necessarily equipped or prepared to invite family members to campus. That doesn’t mean students weren’t bringing their children with them; we just hadn’t created a system that encouraged and supported it. I was part of a grant called the Single Mom Success Design Challenge, which really helped us to do that work. We would hear from students, “Oh, it would be great if I could bring my child with me to campus while I study or use the computer lab.” That’s what sparked the library staff to turn one of the study rooms–the very first forward-facing study room–into the Family-Friendly Study Lab. When you walk in, you can’t miss it. It’s surrounded by all glass. It’s full of quiet toys and books, and a table. It has a beanbag chair and a little kid’s book stand with books on it. It really was intentional in terms of creating a family-friendly space for students to come in with their children, for the children to also feel a sense of welcome and belonging, and for the parents to be able to do what they needed to accomplish in that space.
Craig Nielsen: We wanted to conclude by talking about the equity aspect of your work, particularly your conception of anti-racist leadership in higher education. We know that systemic barriers in information access regarding these various institutional structures disproportionately impact first-generation students and students of color. From your previous experience at Monroe and your current position as Vice President for Student Affairs and Chief Diversity Officer at Genessee, how would you describe the connection between college fluency and DEI?
Kim McKinsey-Mabry: College fluency and DEI are deeply connected, especially at a community college. We’re talking about creating systems and structures that support every student equally, from first generation students, students of color, student parents, student veterans: how are they able to access the information, resources, and support they need to be successful? While I’ve always done some kind of work around DEI, this is the first time having that title, and I’m trying to be very thoughtful and intentional about what that means for an institution. If a student doesn’t know how to navigate systems and we don’t set up systems for students to navigate, that is an equity issue. That is a diversity issue. A student mom needs to access resources very differently, and our structures have to reflect that reality.
We also have a large international student population. This is the time to embrace our international students. I want our students to walk through the door and be able to navigate our systems and structures easily. The responsibility that we have as an institution, and that I have as the Chief Diversity Officer, is to make sure that they can focus on their studies and not worry about all of those other things. That requires communication, building trust, and making sure that any department that they go to for support creates that seamless experience. The anti-racist piece is really important, and I’ll end on this. Anti-racist work is something that I have been doing outside of higher education, but it’s about building it into practices. The idea of being anti-racist means taking action to do something that goes against all forms of embedded racism that we know still exists.
