After being gone nearly 10 years, University of Idaho alumna Kathy Barnard is coming home.
Barnard, will officially begin work in her new role of the executive director of Alumni Relations Wednesday.
For Barnard, a 1981 graduate, this is the second time she has returned to UI as an employee. For 13 years after graduation, Barnard worked as a reporter and then editor at the Lewiston Tribune. She returned to UI to work in the Marketing and Communications department, where she stayed until 2005. Barnard has spent the last 10 years working at Washington State University, but now she has returned to UI.
Mamta Kandel | Argonaut
Kathy Barnard is the new Alumni Executive Director for the University of Idaho.
After 10 years away, she said she has missed seeing the people walking around campus the most.
“It”s like coming home, but better,” Barnard said.
Barnard said she looks forward to working with alumni all over the world and helping them reconnect with their alma mater. She said she also hopes to help current students take advantage of the opportunity to connect with Vandals in their fields of interest.
Barnard said she wants to create more opportunities for current students and alumni to make connections.
To Barnard, it isn”t just connecting students but also showing them that they are part of something bigger – a Vandal family that is about 100,000 strong, she said.
Barnard said she is interested in trying to find a way to connect students from satellite campuses, as well as those seeking degrees online, with the Vandal family. In the years to come, Barnard said she hopes to make those students feel like UI alumni.
Barnard said she wants all students, including those who attend classes at satellite campuses, online and on the Moscow campus to understand and appreciate the full value of a UI education.
As a first-generation college student herself, Barnard said she appreciated the emphasis UI has on hands-on education as well as the nurturing community that instills a strong work ethic in students. Barnard said UI graduates understand that it takes hard work to succeed and that it is necessary to start from the bottom and work up to the top.
“I hope other Vandals will realize how wonderful UI is,” Barnard said.
Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected]