This June marks the end of an era for Otterbein University.
After eight impactful years, Kathy Krendl will retire from her role as the university’s first woman president. In her time at Otterbein, she has grown Otterbein’s presence in Westerville and central Ohio, created opportunity for innovation and more community engagement through the Point, and embodied the values highlighted in not only the institution’s past, but also her own.
Serving Otterbein
Though she always made a point of teaching as an administrator, Krendl’s first year at Otterbein was hectic, coinciding with the transition from quarters to semesters.
In her second year on the job, though, she began the Women and Leadership First-Year Seminar. Not only did teaching this seminar give her the opportunity to understand the struggles of the faculty in the midst of this curricular transformation, it also highlighted Otterbein’s rich history of inclusion.
“Part of my goal as president here was to get the community to more fully appreciate our history: (having) a stop on the Underground Railroad, admitting African-American students before the Civil War, being founded on the principle of coeducation, recruiting Japanese students from the internment camps in WWII,” Krendl says. “There was this history of commitment to openness, to access, to inclusion, to diversity, to opportunity.”
Krendl led Otterbein in developing new undergraduate and graduate programs, and in 2016, she launched Otterbein’s STEAM Innovation Center, the Point, which connects students, educators, businesses and economic planning and development partners in a state-of-the-art facility designed to put education into practice.
“The Point and the Innovation Center are amazing, and I give all the credit to Kathy to drive that,” says Mark Thresher, chairman of Otterbein’s board of trustees. “We’re reaching out to businesses that we never talked to before. … We’re now graduating students that are probably more marketable in their areas than they ever were before.”
As chairman, Thresher played a role in hiring Krendl and encouraged her to think big and see the potential for Otterbein beyond Westerville. Krendl’s implementation of the Where We Stand Matters strategic campaign did just that by focusing on three pillars: access and affordability, building a model community, and campus renewal.
“Our doors are open; you’re welcome here. If you want to seek a higher education, and you’re willing to work for it, we’ll try to make that as affordable as possible,” says Krendl. “So we’ve frozen tuition for five years in a row. I don’t know anybody else who is doing that, but that’s our commitment to make (Otterbein) as affordable as possible.”
A Formative Past
As one of six children, Krendl grew up working on her family’s farm in Spencerville, Ohio and was ready to work hard for everything in life.
“My parents were both important role models for me in terms of the kind of partnership they had and raising us and helping us set our aspirations,” says Krendl. “It was a very busy time, but I began to see from a very early age that you could do more if you worked together.”
Working her way through college at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, Krendl graduated and moved back to Ohio to teach high school English in Auglaize County for four years. There, she had the chance to teach adult education two nights a week, in addition to her college prep English course during the day. Krendl embraced the opportunity and was able to help many people reach their individualized goals.
“This isn’t about if you have the ability you can get what you need,” says Krendl. “This is about the barriers that people have to navigate from different social policies or immigration policies or their own social inability to accept being illiterate. It was really transformative for me to say, ‘My gosh, this makes a difference in people’s lives.’”
Krendl went on to be the first visiting scholar at Children’s Television Workshop, where she worked on shows, such as Sesame Street, designed to reduce the achievement gap of America’s youth through public media.
“It’s hard for me not to think about doing something in education in some way. I want to continue to be actively engaged in education, because it’s where my life has been spent.” - Krendl
With a master’s degree in journalism from The Ohio State University and a doctorate in communication from University of Michigan, Krendl eventually made the leap from faculty to administration when she implemented a system-wide flexible degree completion program as Dean of the School of Continuing Studies at Indiana University.
“My job was to bring technology as a solution for making education more accessible for students who confronted social barriers or life barriers to accessing higher education,” says Krendl. “So that was really a part of my research agenda, but also part of my commitment to educational access and the transformative power of education.”
What’s Next?
Krendl will officially retire in late June at age 67, but she has no intention of being idle.
She and her husband, Richard, plan to move to Virginia to be closer to their daughter and her family just outside of Blacksburg. Though she doesn’t have any definitive plans yet, Krendl is looking forward to finding some sort of professional activity with the flexibility to be able to spend time with family and get to know her grandchildren.
“It’s hard for me not to think about doing something in education in some way,” she says. “Whether it’s K-12 volunteering or guest lecturing or something for one of the institutions in the region, I want to continue to be actively engaged in education, because it’s where my life has been spent.”
As for her replacement, Thresher says it will be hard to choose someone to fill such big shoes.
“We’re going to miss Kathy. We are in the middle of a search right now; it’s going to be a hard replacement,” says Thresher. “People wouldn’t be as thrilled with Otterbein, and we wouldn’t have the number of people, and the quality of the folks applying to be Kathy’s replacement, if it weren’t for the great job she did.”
Jenny Wise is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
Krendl’s Recent Accolades
- Global Women’s Summit Leadership Award
- Living Faith Award
- Ohio’s Most Powerful and Influential Women Award
- Deloitte’s WISE Woman Award
- 2015 Women for Economic and Leadership Development Inaugural Riveter Award
- 2017 Smart Business Magazine Progressive Woman Award
- 2018 YWCA Woman of Achievement Honoree
- 2018 Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year
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