Georgetown has hired Kathryn Jennings, a student affairs leader in Washington, DC, as the new associate dean of students for the university’s Capitol Campus.
Jennings will oversee a team that builds on and expands the student experience on the Capitol Campus, a growing home for research, interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential learning in downtown DC.
Most recently, Jennings served as the associate vice president of student engagement at The Catholic University of America. Over her 18-year career there, she helped build the university’s Center for Academic and Career Success and the Center for Cultural Engagement, a hub for cross-cultural conversation and student engagement on campus. She also oversaw the university’s offices for campus activities, orientation programs and international services, and served as a dean in the Office of the Dean of Students.
Prior to working at Catholic, Jennings implemented alcohol and drug education programs at St. John’s University and the University of Maine, where she earned her master’s in higher education.
Jennings’ career in student affairs will inform her role on the Capitol Campus, she said, but so will her personal experiences. She was part of one of the first undergraduate classes to live on the campus of Fordham University’s Lincoln Center, the Jesuit university’s campus in Manhattan.
“I have a unique perspective, having been a student at a college that had a prominent campus with a lot of land and a traditional feel, but that was not the place I identified with,” she said. “I think that’s the key to building a campus like this: How do we help students at the Capitol Campus feel like they have their own Georgetown identity but are still part of the larger Georgetown identity? That excites me, figuring out how we’re going to do that.”
In her new role, Jennings hopes to bring her experiences in student affairs to Georgetown, strengthening the Capitol Campus’ student life, community and sense of belonging for students.
“We are thrilled to have Kathryn join Georgetown. With her wealth of experience in building programs and a robust student experience, this is an exciting time as we expand our vision for success for our students on the Capitol Campus,” said Claudia Arias-Cirinna, associate vice president and dean of students.
Learn more about Jennings’ unexpected journey to student affairs and her goals for enhancing student life on the Capitol Campus.
How did you get interested in student affairs?
When I started at Fordham, I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I had a rough freshman year and I had a rough time adjusting. I had roommate difficulties and I was in a big city. When I went back for my sophomore year — which I wasn’t convinced was the best idea — I got involved. I got involved in orientation, I started joining clubs and I started my own club. All of those experiences got me engaged.
In my sophomore year I was the student coordinator for orientation, and I had an office in the Office of the Dean of Students. I had a backseat view of what was going on, and it was fascinating to me. I loved the work. I thought, why can’t that be me someday? How do I create this career working with students, faculty and parents? For me, the experience of the relationships that go into student affairs is what makes the job different day to day. The relationships enrich everything.
How will your experiences in student engagement inform your role at Georgetown?
I’ve been blessed to work at Catholic. I had a lot of opportunities to grow as a professional and work in many different areas during my time there. Catholic University is a smaller university than Georgetown; you tend to wear more hats at a smaller school. I will be able to apply the breadth of experiences across multiple student engagement offices to the smaller campus feel of the Capitol Campus.
I’ll have a lot of learning to do in regard to how Georgetown does things. What are Georgetown’s traditions, how do we incorporate those traditions into the work? I have a lot of experience with faith-based mission work, but how do we weave in the Jesuit traditions that bring its own unique flavor to the work that we’re doing?
What drew you to this role at Georgetown?
This role was exciting because it’s building a division of student affairs at the Capitol Campus alongside the division of student affairs on the Hilltop Campus. The campus itself is fresh and new, and I’m drawn to the ability to work with staff, faculty and students to create the vision of what we want the student experience to look like on the Capitol Campus. I am a builder by nature and this work excites me. I was also formed by the Jesuit mission in my college years. It’s exciting to get back to a school with a Jesuit mission.
The other piece that intrigued me was, in some ways, I look at this similarly to my own college experience. I was one of the first few undergraduate residential classes at Fordham’s city campus, and I would love to have the opportunity to build that here for Georgetown students, in the city that I now call home.
[The Capitol Campus] hosts so many opportunities for students. It is in the center of the city. They have easy access to not only entertainment and social activities but to their internships, job opportunities and events in the city. They really do have the best of both worlds with that access to the Hilltop but with their lives centered in the very heart of the city.
What are your goals for your role?
I think the biggest one is going to be creating that sense of belonging for students. How do we help them graduate from Georgetown feeling like the Capitol Campus was their ultimate home, where they made their transition to adulthood?
In my work at Catholic, we saw an increase in students’ desire to have an experience in graduate school similar to their undergraduate experience. So for the students who are choosing the Capitol Campus as graduate students, how do they graduate with a sense of belonging? That will lie both in the work we do in student affairs and the work that’s done in their individual school, but it will take us working together to make sure that those students leave feeling that same sense of belonging and sense of pride of place.
We want both the undergraduates and graduate students to feel a pride of place in their Georgetown Capitol Campus. To be able to say to others how it’s different from the Hilltop Campus but also how it’s similar. We want them to feel integrated at both campuses.
What do you want students to know about you?
My door is open. I want to be able to meet students, talk to them, and listen to what’s been good, what’s been bad, and what their wants and needs are. I anticipate being able to meet as many graduate and undergraduate students as possible over the next couple of months to understand what their experience has been so far, what they see as the roadblocks for the students coming behind them, and how we can move past those to create a good experience.
I am excited to meet Georgetown students. I want to be able to go to their programs. I want them to be able to invite me to the things they’re doing. The only way I’m going to be able to get a good flavor of how the Capitol Campus works and get to know them is both inside and outside of a formal setting.
In my free time … well I have three kids. When I’m not at work, that’s what I do; they keep me busy. We are a multicultural family that tries to incorporate our children’s cultures into our daily life. Our kids are involved in taekwondo, kung fu, soccer, ultimate frisbee and Irish step dancing. In the summer we enjoy spending as much time as possible with extended family back where my husband and I grew up, at the beaches in Rhode Island and Cape Cod.
My fun fact is in 2015, I got to meet Pope Francis. I was on the Papal Visitation Committee for Catholic University when he came to DC in 2015. That was a really humbling experience and one I will forever be thankful to Catholic for providing.
