Dianna Shandy joined Kenyon as provost on Aug. 1, months after the College offered some tenured faculty buyouts to reduce long-term costs. When asked about Kenyon’s financial position, Shandy explained that she wasn’t ready to comment. 

“I am still in deep learning mode,” Shandy told the Collegian.

Kenyon’s enrollment fell 6.5% from 2019 to 2026 while total faculty grew 8% — a figure that President Julie Kornfeld stated was “not sustainable,” as reported by the Collegian. Part of the College’s response was a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP) in November that offered eligible faculty buyout packages in exchange for leaving. Shandy declined to comment on the program or the budget behind it.

“I probably will deflect a little bit on that, just because I think I just need more time on the ground to get in sync with the conversations,” Shandy said regarding the College’s finances. Of the VSIP, she noted that it is “common to have some kind of a pivot out because it can be hard [for professors] to decide when to stop.”

An anthropologist by training, Shandy described her approach to administration as “systems thinking” — a focus on upstream solutions rather than downstream fixes. She’s spent much of her first month observing. At Opening Convocation, she learned about the president’s chair. At New Student Sing, she noticed alumni and parents singing alongside students. Crossing campus, she was flattered when a student stopped to compliment her blouse.

“Kenyon is a very active place,” she said. “It is a very kind place. It centers community.”

When something at a new institution seems strange to her, Shandy explained, she first wants to understand why it’s happening. Colleges can develop “phantom rules”: practices that continue out of habit, even when guidelines change. “Even if I can say maybe we need to change something, I still want to understand.”

This instinct comes naturally to an anthropologist. Shandy’s scholarship focuses on migration and diaspora, gender and qualitative methods; she has worked on nine books and edited volumes. But her interest in understanding communities was also shaped by experiences far from the small liberal arts colleges where she has spent most of her career.

A first-generation college student, Shandy grew up in rural Kansas. A scholarship brought her to Georgetown University, where she studied languages and earned certificates in African studies and Russian area studies, spending a year abroad at the National University of Côte d’Ivoire.

At a remote boarding school in Namibia, Shandy helped teachers transition from Afrikaans to English shortly after the country gained independence from South Africa. “Higher education systems can change for the good,” she said. “They’re not as static as we think they sometimes can be — there’s inherent potential of institutions and systems to change over time if the will is there.”

She then completed a Master of Arts in anthropology and education and a doctorate in anthropology, both from Columbia University. She spent more than two decades at Macalester College, first as a professor and later as associate provost for strategic initiatives, before serving as provost at Augustana College.

“One of the things that I look out for as provost is to make sure that we don’t make assumptions about what students understand before they go to college,” she said, offering how relationships with faculty can shape a student’s life after graduation as an example. During the provost search, she was struck by the way faculty members talked about their students. “I was in, as soon as I heard faculty talk. Their admiration, appreciation, dedication when it comes to students, is very palpable. … And so that felt like a form of coming home,” she said.

But Shandy was careful about describing the liberal arts primarily as a route to a first job. “Over a lifetime, one will have many different jobs,” she said. “I think the preparation that we do …  is one to live a life well lived.”

That does not mean ignoring the practical pressures facing students. Shandy said she wants Kenyon to bridge what students study and what they can do with that education afterward. But she sees those connections as part of a longer trajectory rather than the sole purpose of college.

For now, Shandy is still learning where Kenyon’s systems work and where they might not. She has already learned at least one thing about the social system of Gambier. At a dinner with faculty, she mentioned offhand that she had been unable to find Aperol locally. Not long afterward, someone stopped by her office with a bottle.