Episode 7 - Kenya Swanson
Host Annmarie Caño speaks with academic leaders at Wayne State University to learn how they have developed their careers while empowering themselves and others.
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Show notes
About Kenya Swanson
Kenya Swanson is the coordinator of Wayne State University's Warrior Vision and Impact Program, which is known as Warrior VIP. In 2017, she launched this learning community to help incoming freshmen acclimate to life at the university. Swanson has studied and worked at Wayne State since 1991, and she is currently pursuing a doctorate of education.
Conversation highlights
Host Annmarie Caño begins the discussion by asking Kenya Swanson what she loves about her role as the coordinator of Warrior VIP. For Swanson, it's students: She gets to work with incoming freshmen, prospective Warriors and peer mentors every day.
Swanson reveals that she makes time for the 275 students she works with by modeling behavior. She works closely to train peer mentors, who then pass on that information to students in Warrior VIP.
While discussing essential leadership behaviors, Swanson explains that she wants peer mentors to be active listeners. "A lot of times, we listen to respond, and when they are listening to their student or mentee, I want to make sure they listening to listen." She also stresses the importance of empathy, and she works to make sure that students are aware of their privileges.
Building relationships is critical to Warrior VIP, which isn't connected to a class at Wayne State. The learning community stemmed from a conversation that Swanson had with a couple colleagues about using data from the College Student Inventory (CSI) to help incoming students. The discussion evolved into a larger conversation about recruiting and better helping students as they enter the university, and Warrior VIP was born.
Swanson outlines her career trajectory, which began in 1991 when she was in university advising for Wayne State's College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. She then went on to become an academic advisor for the veterans program, which she worked with until launching Warrior VIP.
While elaborating on the three roles she has held at Wayne State, Swanson reveals that the university's nurturing environment gave her the freedom to make mistakes. "When you know that you are cared for, you feel a lot better receiving the criticism than if someone doesn't have your best interest at heart." Caño points out that each of Swanson's roles has set her up for the next one, and Swanson notes that she's also been able to grow personally. "I like to think I've always been a really great listener, but each set of students that I've worked with has helped me to be a better listener as time goes on."
Caño asks Swanson about learning from challenges, and she shares what went into her decision to leave university advising which was ultimately gratifying for Swanson. Caño encourages listeners to think about the type of work they want to do instead of focusing on a position's title.
Swanson shares some resources that have been helpful in her leadership development: SuperSoul Sunday from Oprah Winfrey; Ear Hustle, which centers on the prison system; and The Science of Happiness from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She also notes that she relies on her colleagues at Wayne State. "I found my people," says Swanson, who adds that she also learns from Warrior VIP's peer mentors (who have even helped her navigate Instagram).
Caño ends the discussion by asking what it means to empower someone to lead. For Swanson, it's important to recognize different versions of success. "When we are working with students who are taking classes, everyone is striving for that A, but for some students, a B might be their own version of success," she explains.
Additional resources
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Transcript
Annmarie Cano:
Welcome to EmpowerED to Lead, a Wayne State University podcast for academic leaders who are committed to empowering their community to succeed. I'm your host, Annmarie Caño, associate provost for faculty development and faculty success at Wayne State.
Annmarie Cano:
In this podcast we'll explore the personal journeys of academic leaders, both current and emerging, to learn more about how they've developed their careers. We'll speak with faculty and staff about their work and how they have empowered themselves and others along the way. By doing this, we hope to empower listeners like you, as you continue on your leadership path.
Annmarie Cano:
Today we're speaking with the coordinator of the Warrior Vision and Impact Program, Warrior VIP, Kenya Swanson. Kenya has led the Warrior VIP learning community since it began in 2017, and is currently working with about 275 students. Her work focuses on incoming freshmen to ensure they feel a sense of belonging and community at Wayne State.
Annmarie Cano:
Kenya has studied and worked at Wayne State since 1991. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State, and she's now pursuing a doctorate of education here. Welcome to the podcast Kenya. Let's start with what you love about your job.
Kenya Swanson:
Well, thank you for having me. One of the things I love about my job is I get to work with various students every single day, whether they be incoming freshmen, perspective students, or peer mentors, everything I do centers around working with students and making sure that they are doing well and that they feel like this is their home.
Annmarie Cano:
So you spend a lot of time with students, and 275 students is a lot. How do you find time for all of them?
Kenya Swanson:
Well, one of the things that I do that has worked well is I model behavior. So I work with peer mentors very closely. So I set up a training program along with Amy Cooper and we do training with them. So then I model behavior that I want them to show the students.
Kenya Swanson:
So the peer mentors and I work closely together and then the information that I give them, they then pass onto students. That has worked really well because the peer mentors are very tied to the program, so they buy into it wholeheartedly. Because of that, the students feel that and they feel like this is actually where they do belong and they feel like they have a whole team of people in their corner.
Annmarie Cano:
So what are some essential leadership behaviors that you want peer mentors to engage in when they're working with students?
Kenya Swanson:
The first thing, I want them to be an active listener. A lot of times we listen to respond and when they are working with their student or their mentee, I want to make sure that they are listening to listen.
Kenya Swanson:
Sometimes when people come and talk to us, we want to make sure that they are talking to us about all things. So if it is a small thing, some of the conversations have been, "What are your favorite types of cereal?" "Who are your favorite Marvel characters?" But that allows the space for when a student has a bigger issue to know that it's a safe space, that they can talk to the peer mentor about it.
Annmarie Cano:
So active listening is one skill.
Kenya Swanson:
Yes, active listening is one skill. Empathy is another. When someone is going through something, you may have absolutely no experience in dealing with that, but if you can listen and pretend like you are in their situation or even acknowledge that, you know what, I've never been there but I understand that that's a hard place to be in. Students feel that, and so it is performing your duties with empathy but also not looking at it as if it is a duty.
Kenya Swanson:
When we are connecting with each other, you're just listening and people can feel that connection. Another trait or another leadership quality that I like to help instill in peer mentors, is making sure that they are aware of what their privilege is. We all come to the table with some type of privilege. Some of our students have the exact same privilege. They may have more, they may have less, but it's treating everyone as if they're an individual and listening to their story.
Kenya Swanson:
I think there is a lot of power in our story and sharing our story with other people and having them actually acknowledge our stories.
Annmarie Cano:
So a lot of what you're describing is doing the work, but building relationships as well.
Kenya Swanson:
Yes, absolutely. Building relationships with each other. I think that that is a lot of what Warrior VIP is. We are not necessarily connected to a class. We focus on what does it feel like to belong to Wayne State and treat Wayne State as if it's your community.
Kenya Swanson:
And that part has helped our students to feel like this is where they can go and they can get the help they need, whether it's academic or whether it's, I just want someone to sit and chat with about what's the best restaurant on campus to go to.
Annmarie Cano:
So not everyone in the audience will know what Warrior VIP is, the Vision and Impact Program. Can you say a little bit more about how it began and what the goal of Warrior VIP is?
Kenya Swanson:
So Warrior VIP is a learning community. So we're a newer learning community. Learning communities at Wayne State have been in existence since 2006, so clearly we're fairly new. We're entering our third fall. It kind of started in an interesting way. So I was having a conversation with two colleagues, Ken Smith and Joseph Bradfield, and we were discussing the college student inventory, the CSI, thinking about how we would use the CSI, the information that we're given, to better help students as they were coming in.
Kenya Swanson:
So CSI or the college student inventory is a set of data that is collected from incoming freshmen based off of what they tell us. So they tell us what they are nervous about, they tell us what areas they feel like they want more help, and if we take that information we are able to more clearly help them as they're coming in. At the time I was a academic advisor for the veterans program, and so we thought we were just having a conversation.
Kenya Swanson:
We then took that conversation to Michelle Bruner and Cheryl Kollin who took it to Monica Brockmeyer, who at the time was also having a similar set of conversations regarding how do we recruit and how do we better help students as they enter our university. And so the two kind of combined and that's how Warrior VIP was born. It happened very quickly.
Annmarie Cano:
Which gets to a question that I had about your career trajectory. So you started in veterans, an advisor for veterans?
Kenya Swanson:
I actually started university advising, so I worked with Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. That was one of the first times that we actually had an advisor who had a specific population, and I was the liaison to FPCA.
Kenya Swanson:
And then it turned into doing just a lot of general advising, and the way that university advising is structured now is a little different from than how it was before. Before it was a little bit more reactionary and now they are definitely proactive. How can we reach students where they are? Then I left and I became an academic advisor for the veterans program and I worked with them until I started with Warrior VIP. So I've had three jobs during my time at Wayne State.
Annmarie Cano:
And can you say a little bit more about what each of those roles has taught you in terms of leadership skills or other skills that have been useful as you've progressed on your career journey?
Kenya Swanson:
So my career journey has been very interesting. So when I first started at Wayne State in 1991, I started off as a student assistant in the university advising center. So a lot of the people who I came back to work with in 2002 were people who had known me since I was 18.
Kenya Swanson:
So they had known me since I was a freshman, and I think what helped in that role was I knew that these people were very nurturing. I knew that deep down they loved me as a person, they wanted to see me succeed. And all of those things helped me to feel like I had the freedom to make a mistake.
Kenya Swanson:
When you know that you are cared for and you're loved, if someone has to check you on, "You know what, I don't think you advised that student properly or maybe this information is different," you feel a lot better receiving the criticism than if you feel like someone is... They really don't have your best interest at heart.
Kenya Swanson:
And I knew that every single person in university advising had my best interest at heart. When I first started in university advising, the director of advising now, Cheryl Kollin, was one of the new advisors. So that gives a little bit of perspective about where it has come from.
Kenya Swanson:
Working with the veterans population, first of all, working with the population itself was amazing. They are a very tight knit group and when they allow you into their circle, you know that you really have done a good job because they don't just let anyone in. Working that particular job gave me... It gave me the freedom to do a lot of program planning, which I think helped for the role that I'm in now.
Kenya Swanson:
So, because this is the first time that there was an actual veterans program that was actually not only helping veterans to find their way academically as well as with mentorship, just creating their own space on campus. It gave me the freedom to try and figure out how exactly could I better help these students. So I talked to students, "What is it that you need?"
Kenya Swanson:
Ken Smith and I did quite a bit of program planning in terms of these are the needs of students, this is how we can better help them. And Cheryl Kollin, who is the director of the program, allowed us to do so. We worked with veterans to come up with a holistic program in terms of admissions, and that first set of students, they graduated last year, and so that was very exciting to see.
Annmarie Cano:
So it sounds like each one of your roles taught you something that you were able to bring to the next one?
Kenya Swanson:
Yes.
Annmarie Cano:
So just knowing that the culture and climate in which you work is really important to be able to take risks and maybe make a mistake, but know that the people behind you are going to support you and you're going to continue to learn. Being able to plan, do needs assessments, develop programs, and now bringing that all to Warrior VIP, which is a large program with many moving parts and moving communities.
Kenya Swanson:
So each role has... And at the time I couldn't see it, but each role has set me up for where I am now, and I absolutely love what I'm doing now. So that that has helped to guide me into the role I'm in now. Each role that I had allowed me to kind of grow as a person, but also to grow in my ability to work with students.
Kenya Swanson:
I like to think I've always been a really great listener, but each set of students that I work with has helped me to be a better listener as time goes on. One of the degrees I have is a counseling degree, that also helped. Knowing how to listen and knowing how to read people. Someone can definitely say, "Yep, I'm great," and everything about their body language is saying, "No, I'm not so good."
Kenya Swanson:
And sometimes students just want you to ask the next question. And so it's actually being there for them and actually hearing what they're saying.
Annmarie Cano:
Great. So we're talking about all these wonderful building experiences where you're learning a lot, you feel trusted. I'd like to flip this now and talk about challenges, because people experienced challenges or disruptions along their career journeys.
Annmarie Cano:
And I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a challenging situation that taught you about yourself or the work that you do?
Kenya Swanson:
So when I left university advising to pursue the role of being the advisor within the veterans population, I left because I was bored. And at the time all I was thinking was, "I don't think I can do this until retirement." And not that it's not a great position, I think that advisors are some of the unsung heroes on campus, but I was terribly bored.
Kenya Swanson:
I had done it for a number of years, so one of the challenges that I had was the position that I wanted within the veterans program was a lower paying position. So I had to make the decision, is it worth it for me to leave where I'm at now or do I go ahead and jump into this knowing that I have to take a pay cut?
Kenya Swanson:
And that was a hard decision, but at the end of the day, I wanted the challenge. I knew that I needed to do something to kind of shake things up a little bit, because I didn't want to get to the point where every day was like, "Yeah, well, I'm here again, I guess I'll just make it until five o'clock." And leaving university advising, at least leaving that particular role and working as the veteran's advisor, was the best thing I could have ever done.
Kenya Swanson:
It gave me so many different experiences that I could learn from. I was put into situations in which I was forced to grow, and even though I had to take the pay cut, which I did not want to do it, it worked out for the best.
Annmarie Cano:
So it sounds like one of the implicit pieces of advice that you might give to listeners is to think about the kinds of work they want to do, or maybe even looking at the places that they might want to grow, or looking at jobs in that respect versus the title in terms of choosing that next position.
Kenya Swanson:
So there was a position that was posted, but it was a grade lower than the one that I was at. So I was an academic advisor two. This particular position was an academic advisor one position. So it was a hard decision to decide to leave that because I had to take the pay cut.
Kenya Swanson:
However, it turned out to be the best choice for me, even though it was hard. What made it hard was there was not a lot of mobility from where I was, and you had to go down a step based off of the contract. So that's the way the position was set up. So the position was offered at academic advisor one, which I felt like I had already mastered. I had already received a promotion and went up to two, but it turned out to be a great experience because I got to explore program planning, I got to work with students in a completely different way.
Kenya Swanson:
It was more of a cohort based program as opposed to the way that university advising works where you see a student for about a half hour and then they come back the following semester. I was able to build a greater rapport with this group of students, which was very helpful and help set me up for what I do in Warrior VIP.
Annmarie Cano:
Okay, great. I think that's the case for a lot of different kinds of positions where people are always looking at what's the next title to pursue rather than what's the work I get to do or what kinds of things can I learn in this next role? Although the pay cut is, for some people, very difficult to manage that given the context of family. But when that opportunity is available, to be able to look at the job as where can I grow? Where can I have more impact? Those are great questions. Thank you for sharing.
Kenya Swanson:
No problem.
Annmarie Cano:
Are there any books or resources that have been helpful in your leadership development that you might want to recommend to listeners?
Kenya Swanson:
So I listen to a lot of podcasts and I like podcasts, number one, because it gives me a little bit of alone time. I have two young children and so any quiet time is sometimes good time, and it's also a lot harder for me to fit in reading a whole book from cover to cover in between working all day long and then raising children in the evening.
Kenya Swanson:
But if I'm taking a walk or if I'm working out or even on my car ride in, I could listen to a podcast. Some of the ones I listened to are, it sounds so cheesy, but Super Soul Sundays with Oprah and that's just because she has a variety of different guests and I like the variety.
Kenya Swanson:
Another one, which is completely different, is Ear Hustle, which is on the prison system. I am not going to relate the prison system to university life at all, but a lot of things that people need at the university level and just across the board, they need connection, and that's a lot of what this particular podcast is about.
Kenya Swanson:
There is another one that I love and it's The Science of Happiness. It's short little tips and techniques that you can do to kind of improve where you are or improve how you are seeing things. Beyond that I have some people that I regularly rely on as resources, my supervisor and friend, Michelle Bruner. So that's a great resource for me. And Ken Smith is another one who no matter what I need, he's always honest, even when I don't want to hear the honest truth.
Kenya Swanson:
So those particular resources have been very helpful for me. And there are a number of university advisors that I still rely on, like Arnelle Douglas and Tyrone Austin, Anita Carter. So they are very helpful and, "Hey, can I bounce an idea off of you?" And I've been doing the same routine with these people for years and I know them, they trust me, I trust them. And that part works out really well.
Annmarie Cano:
So it sounds like you would also recommend that people find their people.
Kenya Swanson:
Yes, and that's what I always say, I found my people. So my people are like a close group of friends, that I now call, colleagues at Wayne State as well as my peer mentors. So the way that I use my resources is the way that they use me. We regularly rely on each other for... And I feel like you can learn from anyone. So it doesn't matter that my peer mentors are 19, 20, 21. I was talking to them yesterday about I need to set up a new Instagram page.
Kenya Swanson:
And they're like, "Yep, let me help you out with that." So I got a whole education on, "You're not doing it right."
Annmarie Cano:
So one question we like to ask everybody at the end of this podcast is what does it mean to empower someone to lead? What does that mean to you?
Kenya Swanson:
I think it means finding out what each person needs and what their version of success may look like. When we are working with students who are taking classes, everyone is striving for that A, but for some students a B might be their own version of success. I know that I've taken some incredibly difficult math courses that my version of success in that class was a C, and to me that was like a hard earned A.
Kenya Swanson:
So I think it's finding out what their version of success is, what exactly are they looking for? Because if I don't know that information, I'm just going to impose my own value system on them, which is not what they might be looking for. So I think having the conversation with them, "What is it that you're looking for? What do you hope to gain? What does the life that you want to create look like for you?"
Kenya Swanson:
And I think that when we have those questions, we always get a variety of different answers because it's different for everyone. Everyone is coming from a completely different set of circumstances, background, and it is important that we take into account what empowering them looks like. One of the other things that I do is I set them up with resources. So it's very easy to teach campus resources. So this is what you need to tell a student where to go. This is if they are struggling with X, you teach them how to go here. So it is teaching them the information, but then allowing them to find their way to whatever the source may be.
Kenya Swanson:
So the way that I might describe CAPS, for example, is very different than how a student might describe it, and it's allowing them that space to tell a student, "This is how you can best use it, or this is the information you may need to help you better." It may not be the exact way I would have said it, but giving them the space to, these are my words, this is my experience and I am teaching this to you, and then that student is going to in turn take it and see it completely different, and they will get what they need from that.
Annmarie Cano:
Great. Well, thanks so much for being here today, Kenya.
Kenya Swanson:
Thank you very much for having me.
Annmarie Cano:
Where can our listeners find you online?
Kenya Swanson:
It's @kenyalcvip. So K-E-N-Y-A-L-C-V-I-P.
Annmarie Cano:
Great. Thank you.
Kenya Swanson:
Thank you so much.
Annmarie Cano:
We're glad to have you listening to EmpowerED to Lead. To learn more about our podcast, follow us on Twitter @WSUFacSuccess