Kelli Listenbee was nominated by Kyle Walker for P.R.O.P.S. recognition. Kyle said Kelli “works behind the scenes to ensure that two different programs on campus continue to provide services to students. In FYE, [Kelli] develops resources, materials, and communicates with faculty in an attempt to streamline the program as much as possible. This work touches the campus life of every single incoming freshman, and yet, only a tiny fraction of those students would ever know what she does. Additionally, she oversees Learning Support Services, the largest tutoring program on campus.
P.R.O.P.S. subcommittee members Darren Dunn, Cathy Naylor, and Karen Nelson spoke with Kelli to learn more about her and her experience at A-State
Kelli, would you tell us about yourself and about your journey at A-State? How did you get to where you are today?
I went to A-State for my undergraduate and I worked in Residence Life through my undergrad. That was a life changing experience for me to know what student affairs was like. And, like lot of students on our campus, I was a first-generation college student. And so that was impactful for me. Then after I graduated, I stuck around. My first job as a ‘big girl’ was in the College of Business. I worked for the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center. I was not a business undergraduate, I was a communications undergrad, and I think in our interview process I said, “So, is it ok that I don't know anything about business?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, that's fine! We can teach you.” I was a community developer and a business consultant with them for three years and they taught me a lot about what it means to assess a program. In all our weekly meetings, we were constantly looking at data and looking at our achievements and what we still had to do [to reach] our milestones. I'm super interested in assessment now and I think that they gave me a good start in that and what that should look like. About halfway through my time there, I had to get a master’s degree, and what better place than Arkansas State? I got my Master’s of College Student Personal Services which was a fun fit; it was something that I was really interested in. Thinking back, I didn't really know that working in higher education was an option as you don't really think about the people who make the university run and what that means and how you get into that. I finished up my master’s degree and right about the time that I was graduating, I had done an internship with Transition Studies, and [they] had a position opening and asked me to come over. I have been working in University College ever since. In 2020, right after we went home for COVID is when I took over the First-Year Experience (FYE) program. So, I kept learning support, but added on FYE and it was a strange time to be taking over the program. It's been great and I really enjoy the work. I'll hit ten years in May.
Wow. That's awesome. I didn't know that you worked for the Small Business Development Center, and that's cool.
Yeah, I helped some folks here in town start their businesses, so that's fun to be able to still see that they're thriving and to know that I had the teeny, tiniest part in that.
What do you like most about Arkansas State?
What I like most depends on the day, but I really like walking in and being able to say hello to everyone. I know [everybody’s] name, everybody that I pass, whether they work directly in my unit or not. I get to say “hi” to all these people every day and I don't think that there's a person I pass that I don't at least know their name. So that's a comfortable place to be. And we do a lot of collaboration, and I really couldn't do my job if people weren't collaborating with me.
Personally, what motivates you both at work and then outside of work?
OK, well, I'm an achiever, so I love a little achievement. And that means a lot of things, right? I literally couldn't do my job if my students weren't high achievers, if the faculty that I was working with weren't interested in and invested in our program, I think that that gives me energy. I really want all these other folks to be successful and I'm more successful if they're successful and I want to be successful. And I think personally, I've got a young daughter and I want to show her the cool things she can do. And like I mentioned being a first gen [graduate] and working in housing, I was involved in as much as I could be. I had a lot of people who were investing time and energy into me, so I try and do the same with my students. And then my husband. Anytime I'm like, “I think I'm gonna go to school again,” he's like, “You go girl! Do whatever you want!” He's super supportive of me, in whatever it is that I want to achieve, because he's just interested in watching me do that.
What is your favorite hobby?
I also like just hanging out with my three-year old. We go to the library a lot.
If you could travel anywhere, where would it be?
Well, I do a lot of travelling, actually. When I find a place I like, I really love to go back to it and to make a home in another country, so I might go back to somewhere I've already been. But the next thing on our docket, my husband and I will have been married for 10 years in December and so we're going to Cancun. Then my sister is moving to Italy next week, and so we will go see her in probably about a year.
Where’s your favorite place that you've visited?
Oh, that's so hard. Let me give you like a top three maybe. My most recent trip, I went to Korea and that was awesome. It was a lot different than I anticipated though.
So [my daughter] is named after an island off the coast of Scotland. And that's where my father-in-law was born, and my grandmother-in-law was born, and we went there in 2017. We did a two-week tour of Europe, and we spent five days on [the island]. The air smells like scotch, and there are more sheep than people on the island, and it was so interesting and so lovely, and everyone was so nice. A year ago, in December, I went to India for the first time, and that was interesting. I've never been anywhere like that. The people I stayed with, they just took such care of me, and it was just really a beautiful thing and a beautiful people to experience.
So my next question is if you could have one nontraditional animal as a pet, what would you choose?
This is maybe a hot take, but I don't really like animals. They're not really for me. I mean, we have a fish, his name is Moon. I think that I respect animals in the same way that I respect the ocean, in that it's kind of scary, you know?
We stayed on a ranch maybe six months ago in Georgia and they had cows and they invited us to feed them, and so I did. It's such an intimidating thing, because I just want to appreciate from a distance. So, maybe not applicable there, no pets for me. I couldn't even answer that, because they all give me the yuck a little bit. [Laughs]
Finally, what do you wish that everybody on campus knew about your job?
That I couldn't do it without them. I think my job is probably like everybody's job, in that there's a lot more to it than you think, right?
Is there an aspect of it that you do that makes you think, “Oh, it might be more beneficial if others might be a bit more aware of this?”
I'm super interested in assessment, and we have a cohort of tutoring centers across campus, because we're in a decentralized model for tutoring. And I think a lot of people don't know how much we collaborate or how much we would like to collaborate. I think that we're super into assessment in both of our programs that we’re constantly changing them.
The thing that I love most about co-curricular programs generally is how flexible they are. I think that maybe that's something I'd like people to know is that if something's not working for them in learning support or in the first-year experience, that they have an opportunity to influence those things. So, if you think that there's this really cool opportunity to collaborate in some way in either of our units then reach out and let me know. I think that that really serves our campus well and serves our students well, but maybe folks don't always know that they could have an influence in what [those programs] look like.
