The President of The King’s College expanded his Cabinet to include new members, such as Koby Jackson, the Student Body President.

After being President for a little over a year, President Tim Gibson said he had the opportunity to step back and think about any changes he wanted to make to the Cabinet. The changes were made in September, a week after Fall Break.

“To be frank, in my experience in the Air Force I always had a much larger group of people in that weekly recurring meetings so it always struck me as a little odd that, although King's was small, we had a limited number of voices in the room,” Gibson said.

Specifically, Gibson wanted to hear more people and more perspectives in the room during their Tuesday morning meetings.

The original people on the Cabinet, besides Dr. Kimberly Thornbury, have remained the same. However, to compensate for Thornbury leaving earlier this year, Eric Bennett has taken over parts of her role.

“Eric’s role is no longer the Vice President of Student Development but the Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Development,” Gibson said.

Bennett has over 30 years of higher education experience and experience in admissions at other institutions.

“It is pretty industry standard to have enrollment management and student development combined at a school our size,” Gibson said. “When we get big enough, we might expand out those parts again.”

There are now 15 total people on the Cabinet with the new additions, such as Dr. Kimberly Reeve, Grace Gleason, Dr. Jennifer Tharp, Noah Hunter, Leticia Mosqueda, David Leedy, Megan Dishman, Megan Starnes and Koby Jackson as the newest additions.

President Tim Gibson speaking at The King’s College 2018 Convocation. I I Photo credit to Gabriela Kressley

Jackson is the first SBP to be on the President’s Cabinet.

“I love the idea of having more voices. As we are discussing issues that crop up, we get the benefit of a lot more perspectives,” said Gibson. “For example, there was a question this morning that came up that I wanted to have another faculty voice in and I very quickly could turn to Dr. Reeve and say ‘Tell me from a faculty member perspective, what are your thoughts?’”

Gibson notes that the motivation behind adding new members was in effort to create a community of belonging at King’s.

Gibson explained this idea in the form of three spheres: “Peer, academic and institutional” which all makeup a Venn Diagram of where people can find their belonging in community. In order for students to feel welcomed to King’s, they need to feel comfortable in more than just one of the spheres.

The updated Cabinet will “tangibly go after ways of creating that sense of belonging,” through reaching all three of those groups.

President’s Cabinet expands to represent more voices at King’s