Dr. Kendra Skinner exudes passion, determination as leader

As a leader, Dr. Kendra Skinner acknowledged there was always room to learn something new and continually better herself.

Skinner came to Southeast Missouri State University in 2004 to act as the associate director for student and staff development, and in 2014, she was appointed to her current position as the director of residence life.

Skinner has an office, but she makes it anything but an office job. Her passion for her work is obvious in the smile she flashes even on a Monday morning.

Most importantly, she said her position keeps her on her toes and always holds surprises. She discovers different ways to apply herself as a leader every day, and she said she'd like it to stay that way.

How did you get your position as the director of residence life?

There was some changes within the structure within our division. So my boss, Dr. Bruce Skinner, who is the assistant vice president for student success, was also the director of residence life as well. There was a decision basically that the office needed to have a full-time director, not somebody who was doing some things kind of part-time. So they made the decision that he would become the assistant vice president for student success and auxiliary services, which then left the director of residence life position open.

I'd been serving as the associate director here in the office for seven years, and so at that time, they made a decision to do an internal search for the position, and I applied and received the position. Basically, it was just kind of due to some of the structural changes that we had within the division that allowed me then to make the move up into this position here. ... He [Bruce Skinner] had a lot of other things, a lot of other responsibilities that he had here in the division, and so it was kind of taking him out of the office a little bit more. Not that we were struggling, but it's nice to have somebody in the office day-to-day as the director.

What does your day-to-day job look like?

I feel like I go to a lot of meetings (laughs). And they're meetings for a lot of different things. So whether it's meetings here in the office or it's meetings within the division or the university or if I'm meeting the staff ... I have a lot of meetings that I go to day-to-day. Then between that is just working on projects, crisis situations that we may have, you know, if we've got something going on, roommate issues or concerns that the staff is struggling with that they might come and chat with me about so that we can talk about that if we're looking at making some changes with some housing.

So a lot of it is just having a to-do list of things that you know you want to do during the day, but then knowing that you're going to be really lucky if you get that to-do list done, because there's other things that are going to come up during the day, so it's really just being able to respond to situations that might come up -- requests that you might have from students or some new project that might come along that you have an opportunity to work on. ... I think for me is I kind of like not knowing. Sure, I would love to get my to-do list done, but I also kind of like just coming in and saying, "What's today going to have in store for us?" You know, I don't want big, bad crisis situations every day, but just saying, "Something new could walk through your door at any moment, and you don't really know what it's going to entail or what you're going to be required to do." ... It keeps it fresh, so there's kind of a new challenge, every day's a little bit different, every year is different. I don't really have a lot opportunities, I think, to get bored.

How do you show leadership in your position?

I would say that I try to role model being a good student-affairs professional. So whether that's by providing professional development opportunities for individuals -- and that might be encouraging them to go to conferences -- or I do a lot of reading and get a lot of stuff online for leadership-skill development and being a new supervisor or a good supervisor and things like that and trying to share that information out to my staff.

So from the professional staff members that we have here in the central office to our hall directors and just try to show them different ways that they can go about being a good leader themselves, whether they're supervising people or not, and kind of how they can grow and develop in their own positions.

So I think for me, it's just showing people that I'm still learning a lot of new things myself, and that is part of everybody's job -- to keep learning, keep finding out what's going on in our field -- in housing, in student affairs and how we can best work with students. So I think I'm definitely still growing as a leader, but I think that while I feel that I have a good foundation, I think there's still lots of things that I have to learn. And hopefully some other people can learn some things, too, as I'm going through that process.

What other instances in your life call you to leadership?

I would say that probably the biggest thing for me is my life is really wrapped up in my work and always has been. So I have felt very strongly the importance to give back and have people have the same kind of campus experience that I did when I was an undergrad student many years ago.

To me, it's, "How can we provide those great experiences to students?" and then, "How can I help others see the importance of doing that as well?" So whether that's working with RA staff in the halls and just encouraging them or working with some of our newer professional staff, so whether that's our graduate assistants or some of our new hall directors, but just helping them to see the importance of the work that we do, and then getting them to step outside of their comfort zone sometimes or to challenge themselves to work with individuals and just to really be able to provide good- quality experiences for our students while they're here on campus.

It seems like while I'm here at work, I'm thinking about work. While I'm at home, I think about work a lot and what I can do to keep people involved and invested in what we do on campus so that everyone has that good experience, not just in the residence halls, but beyond and into the larger campus scene as well.

Who has been your mentor as a leader?

Probably my first mentor would be, she was the vice president for student affairs and dean of students at my undergraduate. Her name is Carol Nemitz. She was just someone who I always said that I wanted to be like. I went to a very small undergrad school, very small in comparison here to Southeast, so she was everywhere, you saw her everywhere -- athletic events, student activities and all that on campus. And that's kind of how I got involved working with her was through homecoming and our version of Student Activities Council and everything, and she was just always there. To see her always there and being involved with the students, she was probably one of my first mentors and really a big encourager for me to get into this field and to go on and get my master's degree and to begin working in student affairs.

There's been others along the way that have shown me how I can be a better leader or a better supervisor, but she's really the one who gave me the kick that I needed to go and get my master's degree and do this kind of work. She's always, still to this day, been a big supporter of mine, and so I've been really appreciative of that.

To you, what qualities constitute an effective leader?

I would say someone who is an effective leader is someone who isn't full of themselves, has a good head on their shoulders, knows why they're doing what they're doing, is able to fail and understand that not everything is always going to be a success and is able to learn from their failures. I think that someone who can be a good strong role model for people and be an encourager to others and their work and to let other people -- and this is a tough one sometimes -- is to let other people do their thing and shine and, you know, have their moment and to recognize the work that they're doing.

I think that shows how important it is for you that others are kind of developing as well and may develop so much that they are able to leave and go on and do great things somewhere else. So I think that really shows that you're providing a good, effective environment for that, for the development of others.