- Kamala C. Kiem, Ph.D.
- Associate Provost for Student Success and Dean of Students
- Phone: 1-508-793-7423
- Email: kkiem@clarku.edu
Kamala C. Kiem (she/her/hers) joined Clark in January 2022. She has a portfolio of more than 20 years of accomplishments in student affairs and student success. Since 2008, she has held several leadership positions within student affairs and student success at Fairfield University, serving as Associate Dean of Students and Director of Student Engagement for the past six years. Early in her career at Fairfield and previously at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kamala directed residence life activities.
At Fairfield, Kamala created holistic experiences for students to discover themselves and their calling. She established tighter synergy between student development areas including student activities, leadership development, international student life, and graduate student life — and improved engagement with and support for the entire student body. She innovated a robust onboarding, orientation, and transition process for first-year students; co-created new and enhanced living and learning communities; strengthened training and development of student leaders to create an influential peer leadership culture; and created social justice mediation and dialogue programs. Importantly, Kamala served as Co-Chair of the President’s Institutional Diversity Council and the Co-Lead of the Diversity Leadership Team — both instrumental in driving diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts. In those capacities, Kamala led the development of a roadmap for addressing campus climate, including core recommendations for a university-wide diversity strategic plan.
Kamala earned her bachelor’s degree at Florida International University, master’s in student affairs administration at Michigan State University, and master’s in social justice education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed her Ph.D. in higher education in August 2023 at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where her research focused on how the influences of the market and the demanding pressure for higher education to serve the public good shaped enrollment management leadership teams’ decisions, actions, and practices to recruit and admit students. One of her most memorable educational and transformative experiences was her South Africa study abroad program. The courses focused on a comparative analysis of race relations in South Africa and the United States.
Kamala’s Clifton Strengths are Connectedness, Relator, Learner, Restorative, and Context.
For fun, Kamala loves playing strategic board games such as Catan, Pandemic, Castles, Dominion, and Agricola!
