On Friday, the Collegian sat down with President Julie Kornfeld to reflect on her busy winter schedule, the ongoing rightsizing process and the lessons she has learned during her time in office. 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does your schedule look like on a daily and weekly basis?

One of the exciting things about this job is it changes all the time, in the sense that there’s always interesting things happening on campus. My schedule is a mix of meeting with my team, my cabinet, which is the vice presidents on campus — that happens weekly. Depending on the week, there’s faculty meetings or a meeting with either the whole faculty or smaller groups of faculty.

When I’m not on campus, I am traveling on behalf of the College. Sometimes I’m attending national meetings — for example, last week or the week before, I was at NAICU, which is the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. It’s a national conference, but then there’s also a state association and a group of us go and visit with our congressional representatives on the Hill to talk about what’s on our minds, what’s important to us in the colleges. So a group of us went and met with Sen. [Bernie] Moreno’s office, Sen. [Jon] Husted’s office. One day this week I hosted a member of Congressman Troy Balderson’s staff who stopped by campus.

Sometimes I’m traveling to meet with alumni and donors, former members of our board, other people who are providing philanthropic support for the College. In two weeks, when we’re on spring break, I will be in Los Angeles for an alumni event. The other evening, I had a zoom call with the Class of 1976 who’s coming here for their 50th reunion. 

How was the Board of Trustees meeting last week? What were the main takeaways?

Every time the Board comes to campus, [we’re] keeping them informed about the critical issues that we’re facing. It’s also making sure that they have an opportunity to get to know the community well. I want the Board to spend time on campus. We talked about budget, the financial moment that we’re in. We talked about enrollment.

We always talk about strategic initiatives going forward, the kinds of things that we should be thinking about to ensure that Kenyon is financially strong, and we’re constantly thinking about the value proposition of a Kenyon education. We find ourselves in a moment where the value of a four-year college degree is questioned across the nation. So I think it’s always really important that Kenyon is thinking about how we articulate not only why a liberal arts education continues to be important, but why a Kenyon education continues to be important.

The faculty early retirement deadline just closed. Was it higher or lower than you were anticipating?

It’s hard to anticipate something like that. So we didn’t have specific goals for that. I think this was an opportunity for us to say to the community, “We are looking at all the ways we spend resources.” We want to make sure that we have the resources on campus, both on the faculty and staff side, that match the student population and what we do here. I think it was perceived as a good opportunity by faculty, and we had nine faculty [members] take the opportunity.

In the November faculty and staff forum, you mentioned that involuntary staff separation notices would be complete by mid-February. Are those complete? 

We eliminated 17 positions, but not all of those positions were currently occupied. So we tried very hard to look across the whole College and to make decisions when possible that didn’t necessarily affect somebody who was currently on campus. That wasn’t always possible, but we try very hard to say — if somebody was retiring or leaving for a reason — “Is there a different way that we can manage their responsibilities and save that position without having to let someone go?” We were able to do that in several cases, not all.

What would you like students to know about the rightsizing process?

What I would like students to know is that Kenyon is a financially strong and stable institution, full stop. We’re very fortunate. That being said, the financial pressures in the higher education space are real, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to think carefully about how we manage that. And so this process of rightsizing, to me, it’s my responsibility as the president to make sure that we utilize the resources that we have to the best of our abilities.

And again, I think this is an important message that we would not do anything that would disrupt the student experience. We are very clear on what our mission is here and what our values are here. We could do things that might cut and save us money, but they would disrupt what it is that’s core to who we are, and that was not acceptable. There was a hard red line in terms of really being able to do things, that we wouldn’t do anything that was very important to us from an academic perspective. 

In a similar vein, what would you say to faculty and staff who might be feeling nervous about this process?

I understand. It’s a tough moment. We would all love to keep doing things exactly as we have, but we have to be realistic about the moment that we find ourselves in. And we tried to be very clear and transparent about the process. We were very clear in November that this was something we were going to do, that we consciously made these decisions in February so people would have time. We provided generous severance packages so that people would have time to look for jobs and be prepared to join another community in the next academic year, if that’s what they chose to do. 

Other institutions have done things in a less transparent way, and we were really trying to be very fair and open and honest about the fact that we had to do this, and that we will communicate effectively.

I think the challenge is, when you say something in November and decisions are made in February, naturally, it causes fear and anxiety. So that was a balancing act. …We felt very strongly that we wanted to be clear that this is what we were going to do, recognizing that it causes fear and anxiety.

Kenyon’s current enrollment for the spring 2026 semester sits at 1,544 students, which is the lowest number since spring of 2006. With Kenyon class sizes gradually becoming smaller, what does the future of enrollment look like? 

I wish I could tell you I knew what the future of enrollment looks like, but I don’t have a crystal ball, you know? There are many things happening in the external environment that we have no control over that impact us. We know that the domestic pool of students is shrinking, right? So, people are trying to make up for things that are affecting them. We’re not a big R1 institution. We didn’t lose tens of hundreds of millions of dollars of research dollars, for example. But we compete for students with institutions that have, so they have to look for other ways to attract domestic students. 

I suspect that we will stay around our sweet spot of 1,500 to 1,800 [students]; I don’t think we’ll know. I think there was a moment in the post-pandemic world, we saw a big bump of students and people thought, “Oh, well, maybe this is the new normal, and it will continue, and we’ll suddenly have 2,000 students here.” I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of years is, no, we’re actually going to go back to more pre-pandemic [levels].

Do you feel that your duties as a president, both personally and professionally, have changed as a result of the current political and cultural climate, and if so, how?

Yes and no. I would say no, in the sense that my job is always to lead this institution in its best possible way, and that doesn’t change no matter what’s happening around the world. Where I would say yes is I feel a much stronger sense of responsibility to ensure that Kenyon’s value in the state, in the region and the value of a liberal arts education writ large is articulated well, given the political conversation that seems to be undermining that.

We’ve done a lot of outreach to our reps, both at the state level and at the federal level. We’re a big employer in Knox County. We make a difference in this rural community. Our students volunteer. They tutor in the schools. They volunteer at United Way and many other community service organizations. It’s important that our political leaders know that, right? If you do something to hurt Kenyon … you hurt the communities that we serve. 

I feel the world needs liberal arts college graduates now more than ever. Truly! I mean, yes, it’s my job to say that. An interdisciplinary education is incredibly important, because you have the durable skills of: How do I communicate effectively? How do I argue effectively? How do I solve complex problems? You’re not being trained to code “X.” If you are trained to code “X”, in six months, “X” is no longer relevant. I like to say: A liberal arts education is an AI-proof education, right?

An ongoing conversation that Kenyon community members are concerned with is Kenyon’s policies of financial investment disclosure and the issue of divestment. Kenyon Students for Justice in Palestine spoke to Student Council and asked them to endorse a statement urging the Board of Trustees to “disclose all financial records of investment and to divest all corporations involved in weapons manufacturing.” Student Council did not endorse the statement, but they are having an ongoing conversation, and they mentioned that the Faculty Council has passed a similar statement and has not received a response.

That’s actually not accurate. I think two years ago the faculty brought this, and we brought it to the Investment Committee, who actually put together a very comprehensive policy — it’s on the website — about if anybody on campus wants to make a request of consideration of our investments, not necessarily full disclosure, but if there’s a question about something, there’s a pretty robust process. That was something I did in my first year in response to these questions that we got both from the faculty and from student groups. So I do think we’ve articulated a policy and a process, and it’s pretty available.

The Investment Statement of Purposes and Policies was approved in May of 2022 and then the Community Engagement Policy for Socially Responsible Investment Considerations and Divestment was approved in October of 2024. Does the College have any plans to reconsider?

Not at this point, no. That was a really well-thought-out process. We looked at lots of other colleges around the country and their policies, and this was the recommendation of the Investment Committee on the Board.

Looking back on these last two years and four months, what lessons have you learned as president?

I have learned that the world has changed a lot and changes quickly all around us. I’ve learned a lot of wonderful things about this community.

 I feel really lucky that I made the decision to come here, and that’s been reinforced in my time here. I talk to presidents all around the country, and I walk away from those conversations and say, I feel really lucky to be here, and part of that is this tremendous community. While there’s disagreement and opportunities for improvement — always — I have found the discussions between students and faculty and administration to be respectful and thoughtful, and I’ve learned a lot from those conversations. And so I feel like this is a place that is constantly challenging itself to be better, and that’s excellent. That’s the kind of place you want to be.

I think a lesson learned is the unexpectedness of the external environment and the disruptive nature of what’s happening in — none of us could have predicted what’s happened in the world around us. I started here Oct. 1, 2023, so I think both on the international and domestic stage it is very difficult for me to know how to manage that until you are in it. 

The challenge of this job is to be responsive, in many ways, to what’s happening around us, but also to remain focused on what’s important on campus. Some of the things that happen around us, we have to be responsive. And some of those things, we can say, okay, they don’t impact us immediately, so we can’t lose sight of what’s important in our day-to-day work.

Looking to the future, what are Kenyon’s goals and priorities going forward, in five, 10 years and beyond? And do they still align with the strategic plan?

The strategic plan was done in 2020 and 2021 and I think that when I came in I felt strongly that there were things that were very resonant with the moment and that’s where we’ve leaned into, the experiential learning component, building out the student success component. I think some of these newer initiatives are somewhat of an evolution from the strategic plan. How we continue to think creatively about how to enhance the Kenyon experience and enhance our visibility in cities where our students come from, and where they might want to go. And to tap into our alumni markets, if you will, our alumni who want to help Kenyon students, and we want to give them better ways to do that.

What we won’t do is move away from our mission and who we are, and we are seeing a lot of schools add things, engineering schools, nursing schools, and they may be excellent things to do. I don’t see Kenyon doing that. I see Kenyon leaning into who we are and staying true to our values and this incredible education. But continuing to evolve to meet the needs of students and families as that does, like launching an interdisciplinary computing program, is an amazing example of that. 

I think we have this opportunity to think about how our students are fluent in AI and have technical literacy but do it in a way that’s concordant with what we teach here in liberal arts, and think about ethics and research methods in the humanities where these tools will matter. Like, “How is AI a tool for good?” is something that a Kenyon experience is going to continually investigate. We’re not going to suddenly turn focus on something that’s concordant with that. So I think it is going to be continually leaning into our strengths, making sure that we are very loud and proud about who we are and what we do, and making sure that we’re responsive and learn continually about the needs of students.