Why You Do the Work

Stephenie Kennedy-Rea, a first-generation college student, recalls that from an early age, it was never a question of whether she would go to college, only where she would go. “My parents really emphasized education as an important part of my upbringing,” she said. Kennedy-Rea comes from scholarly stock: both her father and grandfather were high school valedictorians, and her great-aunt was one of the first women to receive a master’s degree in education at West Virginia University.

Kennedy-Rea graduated from a small Catholic high school in Harrison County, where she gravitated toward mathematics and science. When it came time to pick a college, she chose Wheeling Jesuit College because of its size. She threw herself into college life, volunteering, reading for the weekly masses, serving as a resident assistant and then a residence hall director while earning a degree in biology. “I never thought about being a first-gen student when I was there because the classes were small, the residence halls were not gigantic and we got to know professors on a first-name basis,” Kennedy-Rea said.

The foundation in place, Kennedy-Rea was ready to build bigger things. She decided to pursue a master’s degree in counseling at WVU. After graduation, she worked at Pressley Ridge, an organization that works with troubled adolescents, where she became the director of residential and community-based services. After a decade at Pressley Ridge, it was time for a new challenge.

“There was a position at the WVU Cancer Institute that kept coming up in my job searches, and though I didn’t have any direct experience with cancer prevention and control, I thought, ‘What the heck; I’m just going to apply,’” she said. Her expertise in program administration and grant writing landed her the role, and she became the assistant director of special projects at the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, leading educational endeavors for the West Virginia Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program.

That was in 2001, and today Kennedy-Rea wears a few different hats at the WVUCI. She’s the inaugural chair of the WVU School of Medicine Department of Cancer Prevention and Control; the principal investigator for the West Virginia Program to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening and a principal investigator for Take CARE: Clinical Avenues to Reach Health Equity. She is also the co-leader of the Community Engagement and Outreach Core for the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute. In 2007, Kennedy-Rea enrolled in WVU’s Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration Program with an emphasis on educational leadership studies.

“I was starting to engage in activities where I felt like I needed more training, especially in mixed methods research,” she explained, “and a doctoral degree meets those needs and opens avenues for you professionally. My career at WVU has allowed me to marry all my skill sets. A love of science, my biology degree, research and a focus on administration and program development. My funded research addresses needs in the community through implementation science and population-based work,” Kennedy-Rea said.

The focus on the needs of the population remains core to her identity. “Serving the people of West Virginia provides the motivation for what I do,” she said. “I feel a strong sense of the importance of giving back to the people that live in the state.”

Months after Kennedy-Rea offered an education module on colorectal cancer screening in a church, one of the participants approached her to say, “I just want you to know that my provider had been talking to me about the importance of colorectal cancer screening for years, but I kept putting it off and your very kind and simple message of the importance of it sent me to screening. They found a stage one cancer, and because of you, I’m going to get to see my grandchildren grow up.”

“I walked away from that thinking 

“This experience motivated me to write the first grant for the West Virginia Program to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening. In the first five years of that grant, we increased colorectal cancer screening by 28% in the sites we were working with, and that resulted in screening more than 100,000 people who wouldn’t otherwise have been screened. The reason I am committed to cancer prevention and control is simply the fact that serving others and pursuing work that is meaningful brings joy and fulfillment both professionally and personally.”