Dr. John Kirby dropped out of college about 40 years ago, but that did not stop him from being named the University of Rhode Island’s Dean of the College of Environmental and Life Sciences (CELS) in 2010.
As a sophomore in college, he found that he wasn’t really connecting with the school and the coursework. Ultimately, he made the decision to drop out and find a job.
One of his friends then approached him with the opportunity to live in Monterey, California and attend the Army Language School. Here, he could become a linguist and Air Force crew member in the United States Air Force, and that’s what he did.
Despite having no prior experience with the language, Kirby became fluent in Polish, which was an important language to have at a time, in which Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc.
Although he was originally guaranteed an overseas assignment, his plans would soon change.
Kirby married his wife, then an officer in the Air Force. He said that marriage between enlisted service people and officers was frowned upon, so he was offered the chance to leave the Air Force and return to school. This resulted in Kirby ending up at the University of Nebraska.
“I picked biology because it was the fastest way to get a degree,” said Kirby, who had initially wanted to be a vocational agriculture teacher.
At the University of Nebraska, Kirby received what was missing in his first college experience: professors and advisors who helped him find what he was truly interested in. One of those professors was Bill DeGraw.
“He absolutely opened my eyes for stuff that I was fascinated with,” Kirby said. “I never would have dropped out of [my first] college if I had good advising. We really stress advising [in CELS].”
Still, there was about 30 years between Kirby’s first time as a student, then being a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Nebraska and eventually being a dean at URI. During these 30 years, he worked at many colleges and universities, including Northwestern University as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor in the Center for Reproductive Science and Urology Department.
At Northwestern, Kirby met Nina Schwartz, the first female chair of a medical physiology program in the United States, who happened to be gay.
“She taught me about the concept of white male privilege and ever since then, I’ve made it a point to ensure opportunities for everyone that are equal,” Kirby said. “We make sure that all of our students coming in the door have as close to the same chance walking out the door in four years. To me, it’s probably the single most important thing we do.”
Now, CELS is one of the few colleges with their own staff in Diversity, Recruitment and Retention, led by Michelle Fonts. When coming to URI, Kirby wanted to make diversity and inclusion a large focus of the college’s efforts.
“We are diverse and we are people with a lot of different backgrounds,” Kirby said. “We are diverse and we need to embrace it and deal with it.”
When the opportunity to work at the URI came about in 2010, he applied, hoping to live in a coastal area. He grew up in California by the ocean and was excited for the chance to live in Rhode Island.
“It was kind of like they had written it for me,” Kirby said of the job description as dean.
While he didn’t start his career with a dean position in mind, the position at URI was special, combining many of his interests including marine sciences and agriculture.
“I always hope that people have a little more direct path than I did,” Kirby said. “Search and find the things that you love and do the things that you love.”