(Photo by Ariana Strzalka)
Fall in Love with the Problem
New EMU President Dr. Brendan Kelly brings urgency, clarity, and a deeply personal commitment to rethinking the student experience, alongside his partner in life and leadership, Dr. Tressa Kelly
Eastern Michigan University President Brendan Kelly has a phrase he returns to often: fall in love with the problem.
It’s not what you expect to hear from a new president. Most leaders come in with a plan, with priorities, with a clear sense of what needs to be done.
Kelly has that.
But what stands out is how quickly he shifts the conversation, not to answers, but to how we’re looking at the work in the first place.
Which is good. Because Eastern Michigan University has some real work to do.
You can see it in the data. You can feel it in enrollment conversations. And, if you’re paying attention, in the quiet ways people talk about this place. What it is, and what it could be.
After the special board meeting announcing his election, President Brendan Kelly connected with campus community members during an informal meet‑and‑greet. (Photo by Charlotte Smith)
A president in motion
When I meet him, he’s still President-Elect, working out of a temporary office tucked into the Board of Regents wing of Welch Hall. He doesn’t operate like someone in transition.
He’s moving. Constantly. Walking campus. Through hallways where people are still getting used to seeing him in the room. Stopping to talk to students. Chatting up employees. Asking questions that sound simple until you realize they’re not.
Not What’s your major? But: What do you want to do with your life?
Not What department are you in? But: What do you do?
At a university-wide meeting of marketing and communications staff—front-line people responsible for telling EMU’s story—titles weren’t the point.
Where are you from? What do you contribute? What are we actually doing here?
It’s a reset. The kind where you realize, mid-meeting, that the question isn’t what you do here. It’s whether it matters. And if it benefits students. Because that is the standard.
“Hannah’s experience is the most important thing that’s happening in this building today,” he says during our interview, gesturing toward a student just outside his office. “That’s going to be true tomorrow. It’s going to be true next Wednesday, and it’s going to be true until she graduates.”
It’s not a talking point. It’s a filter. And once you hear it, it’s hard to unhear.
Kelly is quick to call out where institutions, EMU included, get this wrong.
“We mistake kindness for effectiveness,” he says. “We mistake caring for effectiveness.”
Students don’t experience our intentions. They experience the friction. The closed office. The confusing process. The quiet handoff from one office to the next. Around here, people have a name for it: the Eastern shuffle.
It’s not malicious; it’s what happens when process gets in the way of experience.
“If it’s a number-one concern for students, then it’s a number-one concern for me,” he says.
That’s the standard.
Kelly made it a point to meet with EMU student government leaders during his first days on campus. (Photo by Ariana Strzalka)
What listening actually looks like
It’s one thing to say you’re listening to students. It’s another to show what that looks like.
Kelly tells a story from an earlier presidency, but it lands like a preview.
He was walking campus at night, with wife Dr. Tressa Kelly and their Great Dane. He made a point of asking students what was working and what wasn’t.
They were near the library when four female students stopped and told him something simple.
It was too dark. The walk from the parking area to the building didn’t feel safe.
Most places would log that. Study it. Fix it later. Or add ugly lighting without thinking about it holistically.
Kelly didn’t do any of that.
Within days, the university wasn’t just adding lighting, it was rethinking it. Architectural lighting that made the space visible, intentional, even beautiful.
About a month later, he ran into one of the same students.
“I said, ‘Tell me about it now,’” he recalls.
The answer wasn’t just about safety anymore.
It was about how the space felt.
More elegant. More welcoming. More like a place she wanted to be.
“It was all about elevating the experience,” he says. “My hope is that when that student is in service to others as a leader, she brings that same philosophy with her. This is part of her professional training. We’re preparing students to go out and lead communities, lead companies. That growth mindset, that responsiveness mindset, is critical.”
It’s a small story.
But one that reverberates.
Not nostalgia. Precision
This is, technically, a homecoming.
Kelly is a two-time Eastern Michigan University graduate, with degrees in public relations and political communication, later earning a Ph.D. from Wayne State University. His career has taken him across the country—faculty roles, senior leadership, presidencies—most recently leading the Arkansas State University System.
But when he talks about coming back, it doesn’t sound sentimental. It sounds intentional.
“The physical campus feels very familiar,” he says. “Ypsilanti feels very familiar.”
And then:
“The things that don’t feel familiar, that’s where vision begins.”
He’s not here to preserve what he remembers. He’s here to challenge it. To see the university through the eyes of the people choosing it, or choosing not to attend here.
“If we all don’t see the university through that lens, then we are getting it 100 percent wrong,” he says.
“It’s not about courses and credit hours anymore. It’s about transformative experiences in people’s lives.”
—President Brendan Kelly
The work (and the expectation)
Kelly does not believe in waiting. Not for comfort. Not for a better moment. When asked where and when Eastern needs to take bold steps, he doesn’t hesitate.
“A host of ways, and not in the next few years,” he says. “In the next few months. Today.”
He is not describing incremental change. He is describing pace and the cost of not matching it. The world is moving quickly. Higher education, in many cases, is not.
Kelly’s aware of Eastern’s laurels. The “Best College,” “Top College,” and “Best in the Midwest” rankings by publications like U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. But he doesn’t want to rest comfortably on autopilot.
“It’s not about courses and credit hours anymore. It’s about transformative experiences in people’s lives.”
Experiences that connect learning to work. To identity. To networks. To growth.
And he is clear about what that requires. Change. There is a tendency in organizations to welcome change, just not in your own area. He doesn’t hesitate. “Every area.” It won’t all be smooth.
“It’s okay for us to fall far short at something new,” he says. “We can get good at anything.”
But the expectation is not optional.
“If we’re not growing,” he says, “I don’t know what we’re doing.”
President Brendan Kelly and his wife, Dr. Tressa Kelly, met with faculty during a special campus reception held shortly after his December election. (Photo by Charlotte Smith)
The partnership
You can’t tell this story without telling hers.
Dr. Tressa Kelly is not adjacent to this presidency. She is part of it. They met here, though the story of how depends on who you ask.
In her version, she remembers him first: a high school student from Flint at a forensics tournament that EMU was hosting. She was an EMU forensics competitor from Chesaning, not far from Flint, so they knew of each other before they ever really met.
In his, the meeting happened at student orientation, where he was a freshman (group 37), and she, then a junior, was his student orientation leader.
Either way, it stuck. More than three decades later, it still has.
And while Brendan Kelly moves fast—pushing, reframing, challenging—Tressa Kelly operates with a different kind of precision.
A former speech and debate coach and longtime faculty member, she has spent more than two decades in higher education, teaching, mentoring, and helping students find both their voice and their direction. She earned her Ph.D. in communication with a focus on rhetorical studies from Wayne State University and both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Eastern Michigan.
“I see my role as building a bridge between the university and the town,” she says.
It sounds simple. It isn’t.
She is thinking about how EMU connects to Ypsilanti, to Detroit, to Michigan, and to the spaces in between where perception is formed long before a student ever applies.
Because for her, this work has always extended beyond the classroom.
At a previous institution, she, along with colleagues at the university, wrote a children’s book about the origin story of the school’s mascot. She and the mascot took it into elementary schools, reaching thousands of students, building affinity and fans for the university long before enrollment decisions are made.
That’s how she works. Not just inside the institution. Around it. Through it.
And then there’s how he describes her.
“She is as focused on occupying spaces that are supportive of creating more transformative experiences for students as I am,” he says.
“She’s also a great thought partner,” he adds. It’s a simple phrase, but it carries weight.
You see it in how they interact, the humor, the ease, their comfort in their own skin. They operate on the same axis, just from different angles. Both builders, both connectors, both clear about what matters.
And always, the same question: how do we make this better for students?
“I see my role as building a bridge between the university and the town.”
—Dr. Tressa Kelly
Kelly is committed to delivering best-in-class higher education. (Photo by Ariana Strzalka)
Why here. Why now.
They didn’t need to come back. By every measure, they were successful where they were. But Eastern wasn’t just another opportunity.
“There’s no more important place for us to be in service to others in this industry than here,” Kelly says.
What makes that decision more striking is what they left down south.
Their daughter, Bree, lives in Little Rock with her husband, Drew, and their young daughter—Brendan and Tressa’s first grandchild. Bree works in advancement at a college there; Drew in healthcare finance. Their son Liam is a police officer in Georgia, serving on a drug enforcement task force, alongside his wife Emily, who works in construction finance. Their youngest, Kieran, is at Georgia Tech, studying public policy and building his own path through internships in Washington, D.C.
Still, the pull to Ypsilanti and EMU was strong.
“The pros were like a mile long,” Tressa says. And then: “It just became increasingly clear that there really wasn’t a choice.”
Not because it was easy. Because EMU mattered.
“There’s no more important place for us to be in service to others in this industry than here.”
—President Brendan Kelly
First choice
Kelly’s first official day as EMU’s president was April 1, 2026. Ask him what success will look like to him, and he doesn’t start with rankings or reputation. He starts with pride. “Unapologetic pride.” Students who are genuinely excited about their experience. A campus that feels different in energy. And is in demand.
That ambition isn’t starting from scratch. The foundation is already here. In recent years, the university has invested more than $200 million in housing renovations and new apartment communities, reshaping where and how students live. Programs in areas like nursing, engineering, aviation, and cybersecurity continue to produce strong outcomes, with graduates moving quickly into in-demand careers. And beyond the classroom, campus life—from NCAA Division I athletics to a nationally recognized marching band to hundreds of student organizations—adds the kind of texture and energy students are looking for.
“Being a first-choice university is the goal,” he says. “Not five years from now. Tomorrow.”
President Brendan Kelly kicks off the Eagle Regatta boat races, showing his commitment to a vibrant student experience and to making EMU a first-choice university. (Photo by Hannah Karkheck)
Because underneath everything is something simpler, and harder to ignore: people choose this place. Or they don’t. And they are making that choice constantly.
“First choice is something people decide every morning,” he says. As prospective students. As students. As alumni. As employees. As employers.
The distance between being chosen and being overlooked isn’t abstract. It shows up in the way the institution behaves. What it prioritizes, how it responds, whether it delivers.
“It is all on us,” he says.
“Being a first-choice university is the goal. Not five years from now. Tomorrow.”
—President Brendan Kelly
Fall in love with the problem (again)
At one point, Kelly circles back to the phrase he started with: fall in love with the problem. Not as a slogan, but as a discipline. The willingness to stay close enough to the work, and to the students we serve, to keep asking better questions.
At Eastern Michigan University, those questions are starting to show up everywhere. In meeting rooms, in conversations with students, and in the spaces across campus that haven’t always been fully connected.
And people are starting to notice.
“There’s no choice,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s not about if we feel like doing it.”
The urgency is not theoretical.
“We work in an industry where we shape people’s lives,” he says. “And our students get one shot at this.”
By Darcy Gifford