Kelly Barry, PhD
Executive Director for Student Success
Kelly Barry works with colleagues across JHU to develop the FLI Initiatives, an array of programs and advocacy efforts that unlock access to the full experience of a Hopkins education for first-generation and/or limited-income students. An academic happily turned administrator, Kelly is energized by helping students identify the contexts that make their academic work meaningful. Apart from overseeing the CSS, she’s also co-founder of the Common Question program and teaches in the First-Year Seminars program.
By training Kelly is a literary scholar with teaching and research interests in 18th-century German literature and intellectual history. She was faculty in the Department of Germanic Language & Literatures at Columbia, where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses and in the Core Curriculum. After a turn at Colgate University, she came back to Hopkins to build the National Fellowships Program.
A native of Buffalo, NY, Kelly earned her undergraduate degrees in German Studies an East Asian Studies from Columbia University and her PhD in German Literature from Johns Hopkins. She remains an advocate for the study of foreign languages + studying abroad and has served on the Fulbright National Selection Committee. Both a professionally trained reader and a gonzo connoisseur of books and reading habits, Kelly is also a booster for the Maryland Book Bank.
