From the President:

Becoming Our Authentic Selves

Heartfelt greetings from Siena Heights University!

The theme chosen for this academic year was authenticity. The freshmen read for the summer was “My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change,” by Sam Bracken and Echo Garrett.

The theme of authenticity was quite prevalent throughout the book. Basically, a young man from challenging beginnings decides to be and become his true self through his own reflections, persistence and the aid of others. The students loved the book and could relate to it well. We also had some great presentations on authenticity at our Common Dialogue Day in late September. Students, faculty and staff all participated as presenters and/or participants.

When I think about authenticity, I tend to go to a spirituality of authenticity.
I ask myself many questions:

Is becoming authentic a process?
Who did God create me to be?
Am I striving to become who God created me to be?
Can I live in this world that calls all of us to be so many things and remain authentic?
How does prayer assist me in being authentic, and how does my membership in a community (in this case, the Siena Heights community) assist me in being authentic?

Iron Will

Stacey Kozel Doesn’t Let Partial Paralysis Prevent Her from Walking the Appalachian Trail

There was a time—actually, a few times—that Stacey Kozel ’15 didn’t know if she would walk again.

After a high school soccer injury to her spinal cord left her paralyzed, she was diagnosed with lupus—an inflammatory autoimmune disease. That means Kozel has been in and out of the hospital most of her adult life. After a life-threatening car accident and a severe lupus flare up left her wheelchair-bound and paralyzed in both legs in 2014, she pondered her next move.

“I’ve had to learn how to walk more than once,” she said of her post-accident condition. “I remember the second or third time laying in the hospital and looking up and thinking, ‘God, what are you trying to tell me here?’ No one should learn how to walk more than once.”

Mr. Smith Goes to Hollywood

Siena Heights Graduate Enjoys Distinguished Career as Director of Photography

Darryl E. Smith casts a long shadow standing 6 feet, 8 inches tall. However, that shadow pales in comparison to the one he has cast as a director of photography in Hollywood.

The 1985 Siena Heights graduate has an impressive list of credits and clients, including MTV, Disney, Coca-Cola, CBS, the NFL Network and HBO. The owner of his own production company, Darryl E. Smith Productions, for the past 14 years, he said his path to success was a winding one. And his starting point was Siena Heights University.

Originally recruited to play basketball at Siena by former coach Ben Braun, Smith said Siena Heights was the only school that showed interest in him as a student—not just as a basketball player.