Faculty Focus Friday is a Q&A series that highlights individual faculty members in various academic programs around Spalding University. This week’s featured faculty member is Dr. Kurt W. Jefferson, Dean of Graduate Education and Professor in the Doctoral Program in Leadership.
Why did you decide to teach at Spalding? What do you like about Spalding in particular?
I have taught in higher education for 37 years. I left Westminster College in Missouri after 24 ½ years there to come to Louisville and join the Spalding community. I left because I was an assistant dean and running a growing international academic, student, and recruitment center and decided it was time to become a full dean. So, after 30 years in Missouri I left for Kentucky. I like the mission of the university, the people at Spalding (i.e., the faculty, staff, and our ambitious and engaged graduate students), and the community of Louisville.
What is your academic specialty, area of expertise, or research?
I am a political scientist by training. I have been a student of European politics most of my career (teaching European Union, post-Soviet Russian politics, and Central European politics). About 10 years ago I started moving into international relations more and specifically the sub-field of security studies. I just had my fourth book published in October 2024 on International Security Studies and Technology, co-edited with Tobias T. Gibson [a longtime colleague and friend of mine from Westminster College]. Today at SU, I teach a course in global leadership (EDD 903) and have really enjoyed it and even publishing with my doctoral students. We are carving out a space in the leadership literature in the area of “New Power” (Heimans and Timms, 2018) which looks at how organizations and other entities address the decline of hierarchy in organizations and the flattening of organizational power and life which includes use of social media tools such as crowdsourcing to empower non-elites.
Why is a degree from the college of education a good option for students to consider?
Our doctoral program and our master’s programs are high quality, and they teach students to go beyond the superficialities of what they see in the news, social media, and other outlets. These education graduate programs help leaders grow, understand what is required of them in the busy world we live in, and understand that “learning for learning’s sake” is note only okay, but imperative to mature as intellectuals. We do not have to have everything figured out, but we do have to understand the toolkits we need to think, write, analyze, and inform. Our graduate programs in the College of Education do these things very well.
What major lessons do you hope students take from this program to implement in their personal and professional lives?
I want students to rise above the imposter syndrome that affects all of us (including myself as dean and as a professor). It is not easy. But graduate students know more than they think they do. They are bright and authentic. They bring unique mindsets and lived experiences to the table and when you connect that to the literature we study and the personalities studying with them in each course, they have a special mix and a special experience that will not only make them (as students) smarter but also inspire them to earn the graduate degree and move to the next level of leadership. We need leaders in education and other contexts today more than ever before (and I can say that after nearly 40 years in the classroom and as an academic leader of nearly 30 years).
What’s an interesting thing you keep in your office?
I have a standing globe that was dedicated in my late uncle’s honor: Lew Wallace, my mother’s older brother, that I never knew. He died in 1958. He was the top graduate (summa cum laude) of the Iowa Wesleyan Class of 1958, and he died on the operating table, linked to an aneurysm, at the University of Iowa hospital as a 23-year-old graduate student (in his first semester of graduate school in history) just months after graduating from Iowa Wesleyan College (where the globe was dedicated in his honor in 1959). He left a one-year-old daughter and his wife (he was a US Army veteran). I never knew him, but he was an inspiration to me in setting my path to graduate school many years after his tragic death. My grandparents talked about him for the rest of their lives. Now, I get to keep that piece of family history in my office at Spalding.
Spalding’s mission is to meet the needs of the times, to emphasize service and to promote peace and justice. How will your teaching style, your research, your class, or your curriculum support the mission of Spalding?
I hope my teaching style reflects the SU mission. I came here largely because of the university’s mission. The mission is a twenty-first century mission that embraces the distinct character of our institution, its history, the community, and the diversity of students, faculty, and staff, and the importance of the Catholic intellectual tradition in fostering that diversity. I admire all those things and want to see those things reflected in my own life and professional approach. I hope my teaching, leadership, and research all reflect those things. But, most importantly, it is the kind of people and the character and integrity of our staff, faculty, and students that matter most. I find my colleagues to be honest with me and I hope they would say I am honest with them because it is not about us but about our students and the teams of faculty, staff, and students we’ve put in place to make Spalding a great institution for years to come.