Acting Dean of Students Cheryl Steele leaves Kenyon.

After twenty years of service, Acting Dean of Students Cheryl Steele leaves Kenyon.

Acting Dean of Students Cheryl Steele has announced that she will be leaving Kenyon at the end of June to become dean of co-curricular life and vice president for student affairs at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia. The private women's liberal arts and sciences college, founded in 1901, has approximately 750 students. The Sweet Briar Junior Year in France, founded in 1948, is one of the nation's premier study-abroad programs for undergraduates.

Steele said, "I came to Kenyon from Mary Baldwin College, a women's college in Virginia, and returning to the state and to a women's college is like coming full circle. My time at Kenyon has been transformative for me, both personally and professionally. My positive feelings about the College--and especially about the students, faculty, administrators (particularly in student affairs), and staff who make this place so special--are deep and sincere."

President S. Georgia Nugent said, "Cheryl Steele has been an extraordinary member of the Kenyon community. She has contributed selflessly and immeasurably to the experience of many, many student generations. A greatly beloved member of the College staff with a warm, caring presence, Dean Steele will truly be missed on the Hill. In working with her on Senior Staff this semester, I have really come to appreciate her thorough professionalism and her can-do attitude."

The Alabama native came to Kenyon as assistant dean of students in July 1986. Among many other accomplishments, she served on the College's Commission on Student Life in 1988-89, working to improve the housing system and address sexism and drug and alcohol abuse on campus, and headed the Horn Gallery Reconstruction Committee in 1999. She became acting dean when Dean Donald Omahan stepped down in January 2006.

In 2003, Steele was named Kenyon's "Administrator of the Year" and received the Senior Cup and Thomas B. and Mary M. Greenslade Award. The Greenslade citation read, in part, "As assistant dean, and now associate dean, she has dealt as much in support as in discipline, as revealed by the numbers of alumni who still consider themselves her friends ... A campus favorite because of her sense of humor, she has also been an indispensable source of strength for students and many others in the community during times of personal challenge and even tragedy."

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