Walking into the Brafferton at the College of William and Mary, it is clear that President Katherine Rowe has already made her mark after just one year at the College. She points out the art that covers her walls, from an Auguste Rodin sculpture to calligraphy piece drawn by students. According to Rowe, each is equal in value. She speaks thoughtfully, clearly aware of her significance in the community. However, that thoughtfulness does not translate as snobbish or aloof, as showcased at the end of our interview when I asked her to teach me how to throw a frisbee correctly. She, clad in business attire, gladly took me outside to gently showcase the art of the forward flick.

Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity.

Anna Boustany: So, you’ve just finished your first year here. What is your high and your low and your Buffalo? Basically, what has the high point of this experience been, and what has the low point been? And Buffalo is just a weird or unique or special thing that doesn't really fit in the first two categories. What would those be for you?

Katherine Rowe: The high would be the students, and just being in a place where as the President I actually get to be with students, doing things with students like the president's aides or any given group of students, like the Spotswood Society which comes to the house and tours, and Student Assembly. Just that there is so much opportunity for real connection. And I'm thinking about that for next year as we do strategic planning. ... So, I want to talk about that. Also, I think the high is this ethos of this campus that we are about intentionally making community together. That's amazing.

My low would be humidity … And Buffalo would be the ampersand and just the coolness of thinking about what it means to have something iconic; that’s old and new simultaneously. I'm a Renaissance scholar. So of course, I love old orthography. And the ampersand used to be the twenty seventh letter of the alphabet. And so, when you're using those older icons you know you're thinking about the long span of time that you've always lived in. It's also beautiful and elegant.

AB: You've been at Carlton and other schools, so what stands out about the College to you?

KR: Well there is something that I learned at Carlton that we have an enormous capacity here in the College environment which is the sense of intellectual community with faculty. So over 85 percent of our undergraduate students are doing research with faculty, that’s amazing, and the sense that there's a community of thinking in process and we're pushing the edge of knowledge together with faculty and student partners. That's something that's so powerful.

And then, I've never been in a place where there’s undergraduate and graduate student commitment, so actually making community together was so front of mind. So, I'm thinking about that just after convocation yesterday and what it's like to walk out on the portico and see those signs and see the sea of human beings, all convened deliberately and intentionally to welcome the new students. ... One of our Student Assembly leaders last year talking to the board about what makes William and Mary students distinctive said, “We take care of each other. Not I. We don't always succeed. But we call each other in rather than calling each other out, when we're not succeeding that's something that we are doing.” This is so powerful, I think. How to make a community well is no longer obvious. We are rediscovering how to do that with a world changing so rapidly and where technology is changing so I love being in a place where that is what our students are dedicated to thinking about…

AB: You live on campus and you get to interact with students, but obviously not everyone gets to come into the Brafferton. What would you want students to know most about what your job is, what you're doing every day?

KR: Like the students, I'm being a learner. So, it’s one of my most important roles is to be out and about in the community listening: listening to what's the experience of students, with the experience that their parents experience and the alums, and the experience of the city council and neighbors and gathering that then trying to reflect what is the whole point, what is William and Mary in Williamsburg in Virginia, in the world. And how do I share that out? So, I’m often doing what I just did with you which is getting quotes from one group and sharing with another. When I'm with alums, or when I'm with community members, I'm often talking about who the students are and why they are so awesome and why you would want to know and be part of this community of students. And when I am with students I am often talking about alums, like bringing back Comstock to talk. So, I think of myself as trying to broach conversations that people who don't know each other can hear each other. 

AB: Your first year here has also been the first year that the Wellness Center is open. What are some ways that you practice wellness through your work when you're working or when you're on vacation?

KR: Lots of exercise, lots of sleep. Mindfulness work — so I meditate, and I often blend exercise that lets me be present and mindful. And time with friends. I'm pretty deliberate in building the sources of joy into my life so that I am renewed. And I love being with young adults, so I'm actually in a really great job because I get recharged. I miss teaching. I will allow myself to teach, when we're done with this campaign and I can't wait. I’m already fantasizing. I have two potential ones right now.

AB: What’s your favorite class that you've ever taught? 

KR: That's a course called “Milton and Dissent.” And it's organized around this enormous epic poem “Paradise Lost” and his prose pamphlets, and some of our earliest ideas about democratic institutions come out from the thinking in the 17th century when Milton wrote “Areopagitica” which is against censorship of the press. It is the basis for some of our thinking about freedom of the press, freedom of expression in the United States and I pair that with a series of novels by a writer Phillip Pullman, Dark Materials is the trilogy. It’s young adult, but it's really actually a very sustained philosophical and writerly engagement with Paradise Lost. So, we do those together, and we do three books of Paradise Lost and one novel and then another. And I love that course. I love it.

I love thinking about Milton's argument and poems as dissent is essential for the growth of a moral subject. He's trying to cultivate a dissenting reader and that's a crazy project no writers do. Most writers try to get you to agree with them. And he actually is trying to get, part of his project, is to cultivate a dissenting reader and I am fascinated by that project. I think that's the core of growing up as a democratic subject. So that that's my favorite class but then I'm fantasizing another new class that's not ready for primetime. But it would take a group of students around the commonwealth, I'd think about where we might find partnerships that could help sort of springboard out of our new strategic plan. 

AB: That's really special. So, another question about your first year is about some student activists, particularly Students United. Last year a student protest group called Students United held several protests around campus demanding that the school stop buying furniture made by prison labor.  Several activists received disciplinary action from administration for their protests. That group wanted you to do certain things that you chose not to do. Can you talk me through a little bit of your reasoning for that? Why did you make the decisions that you did and how do you plan on working with student activists in the future?

KR: That's a great question. Thank you. I would say last year we had a good amount of activism, and that is to say lively normal frequent activism which is what you'd expect on a campus of young citizens in a democracy. And that's important and valued for me. I have some principles that I use, that to me, go back to our core values: one is freedom of expression and that includes activism as an essential condition for learning, and it is a core value. As a state institution we uphold the Constitution. And we also, I think, uphold standards of being really well informed, respecting and cultivating multiple positions listening to those decisions. I'm really proud of the way at least last year the activism on this campus happened so I'm remembering one in the spring where a group called The Center for Bioethical Reform demonstrated at the College, and they were a very strongly pro-life group, with their goal to activate conflict on campus. In response, the pro-life and the pro-rights groups on campus got together. Administrators passed out pamphlets, hundreds of them on freedom of expression, and the two groups, effectively and respectfully together, articulated how we do that argument on this campus. And then the Flat Hat published those facing page opinion pieces and I felt like what you all were claiming was here's how we do our dissent and conflict at William and Mary because we pride ourselves on that being a core part of our learning experience in democracy. So, I was so proud.

We started the Committee on Freedom of Expression to look at our policies and those will be coming out this fall: policies on safety and security on campus and on how we use space and make it available for appropriate forms of activism and debate. And that'll be really good to refresh those. There are students, faculty, administrators on that committee and I'm just excited to see what they come up with.

I have some core principles that I use when I'm engaging with students. One is if you write to me respectfully I'll answer. The second is I am a second day responder. And I'm trying to cultivate that stance on the campus which means gather information. Don't assume that your initial understanding of what are the issues in play is actually complete. Pause to engage reflection and think critically. And so, with that group in particular I ask them do some homework. I said, how are your positions connected to the Prison Reform positions in the Commonwealth and in the country? Is this the most pressing set of issues? And if not, then talk to me about why these are the ones here. So, my interest was in a mutually learning in the process. And then, I seek to call in. That's a William and Mary thing, call in, not calling out. And then to empower other leaders on campus to speak from their roles. So, if it's a student’s affair matter — the VP for student affairs, if it's a public safety matter — Chief Cheesebro. Those are the principles I'm coming in with when I'm asked to take a position on something. What I'm thinking about is where the position sits with William and Mary's Mission: teaching learning and research. And I speak for — I'm everyone's president. So, I speak for those core missions rather than for individual groups.

AB: Could you clarify a little bit more, you said you asked the group to come in rather than call out. What did that mean for you?

KR: That's a kind of core practice that I want to work always and partner with students on which was what does it look like to call people in a way that respects a true conflict. I have my own mantra which is respect the conflict. To me that means first listen, then ask, with appreciative curiosity: what else do we need to know? And so, with that group I said tell me more about how this sits with the larger prison reform movement.

Respecting the conflict also means taking the time to hear that full picture, and convening people together in a way that allows for the full picture to be articulated with all the different perspectives that might be held by honorable people who disagree. And so, I flip to the story in the spring because it felt to me as if that was a moment where the conflict was respected here. Right, honorable people do disagree about the question of abortion. And this campus showed what it meant to respect the conflict. And the students led that.

AB: Can you talk to me through how you're getting students involved in the campaigns like the ones you were talking about?

KR: Well, going back through my career my best work has been in partnership with students. It's actually a principle of entrepreneurship that you go into the community of practice that you're trying to design something for and you say tell me what you need. How do you understand what it is you do? What do you care about? And you see from that stems a partnership. So strategic planning is like it's a design of a plan for the next 10 to 20 years for William and Mary and we have some big goals and how we marshal our resources to address those goals. That has to come out of the broad engagement of the community, particularly students. So, I'm thinking a lot about what we will be doing open sessions. Like we did for thinking for nine of them over the course of the year. Some will be broad. We're going to kick off next week with Mission, Vision and Values. And then the process itself, strategic planning — some will be narrow focused on a particular thing that we're interested in. But my biggest question is: what's the best way to engage students in being partners and thinking and imagining ways to respond to the biggest challenges and opportunities we face and to define those challenges and opportunities?

I want us to come out of strategic planning with three to four really big claims we're making on the most pressing issues that we are facing in that the world is facing. Give the example of conservation and environmental sustainability. We are an estuarine campus. What is William and Mary's power to shape conservation and sustainability research learning policy here and in the world? So, we have a particular obligation as a campus in the Chesapeake to think about that question. I don't know whether that'll end up as a big macro challenge but it's something along that order from where we are here and who we are here to where we are in the world that I'm really trying to think about in strategic planning. 

AB: So, to pivot a little bit I know you're talking earlier about that you like to take quotes from students. 

KR: Yes. I'm listening to the way students talk about what matters. 

AB: Do you have an all-time favorite quote from anyone?

KR: I think “we take care of each other” is really powerful. Really powerful. I love that I'm still resonating with the one that I heard really early on from the freshman class last year that came up with a tagline to recruit this year's students which was: “join the tradition and make history.” So that sense of deep connection to a long past and excitement and a sense of duty towards the future. That's the dual commitment of William and Mary and I find that really powerful.

AB: Do you have a favorite tradition at the College? 

KR: Oh, so hard. It's always the last one that I just did or the one I'm about to do. Right now, no question it's Convocation, and move-in day was awesome!

Maybe Yule Log. That’s a time that we take care of each other, coming together it's a really dark and cold time of year. It's stressful because of exams. We have hot chocolate and donuts and we cast our cares away symbolically into the fire and we sing together and we bring greetings to each other. And that’s that intentional community that I found so powerful. 

Brian Whitson: Yesterday you even recruited our speaker to join you in the new tradition of high-fiving the students.

KR: Oh, I totally did. So, everyone in just the President's office is like OK so you did the high five thing last year because you are new. No, I actually think I always do the high-five thing. To our new Provost, I was like look here's how it's going to be. You're going to have to run, there's a lot of hands to slap to make sure you're seeing as many human beings as possible and making eye contact with the students. it's really fun. And both of them came into it. So maybe that's my current favorite, high fiving down the sunken gardens. I'm standing by that one.

AB: Do you have a role model at the moment? Who would you say you're looking up to or learning from? 

KR: So many different people. People often ask me whom I'm most impressed by of other university presidents. There it's definitely Freeman Harbowski who is the president for twenty-two years now of UMBC. So, the question is how do you do that kind of job for so many years? And what I discovered in listening to him is he's always putting himself in a learning stance. When I last heard him speak last year he was speaking to a bunch of new presidents and he used French because he's taking first year French. And it was first year French. But it was interwoven in his talk and then he said here's why I'm doing this because tomorrow I have to go take a quiz. And as soon as I take it when I get home on Sunday 18 students for my class will text me and say, what was your score?

So, I have to practice and what I learned from that actually was the importance of remembering — put yourself in always learning but really learning. So, I'm taking up golf, which I'm so bad at it. But it does center me and it's a great game for a meditative and mindfulness states. And it reminds me what it's like to really truly be at the beginning of learning something and you guys are in that state all the time. And it's so intense and powerful and demanding sometimes exhausting, sometimes exhilarating. And we forget, as adults what it's like to be in that stance. So, he inspires me for having taught me that that's one of the keys to leading an institution of learning.

As we finish our interview, I ask President Rowe if she is willing to teach me how to throw a forehand flick, a quintessential ultimate frisbee move.  Despite her busy life and business attire, she smiles, and gladly accepts.  Out on the Wren Yard, we throw the frisbee back and forth until I get the angle of my wrist right, with nothing but words of encouragement from President Rowe.