Every morning at 5:30, she walks outside and peers at the sky as it slowly reveals a wash of blue, pink and purple. Reveling in its beauty, she thinks to herself, “How grateful I am to be here.”
Kim Bissell, the new dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication, has found greatness in her surroundings ever since she was a child.
In the darkroom of her childhood home in Washington state, 7-year-old Bissell stood on a stool and peered into the developer chemical, watching a photo of Mount Rainier slowly emerge.
“It was like magic,” Bissell said with a soft smile.
At that moment, Bissell fell in love with photography. Much like an image in the developer, her life reveals a more beautiful picture as time goes on. There is always room for more people in her life picture. However, she makes sure that her photos are being taken for the right reason.
“It was an escape for me,” Bissell said, as her restless hands swim through the air in front of her.

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Her father was a minister who started churches, and throughout her childhood, she was constantly moving around the country. Her family was “quite poor,” she said. With a lifestyle bound for change, photography, alongside her willingness to give to those around her, was a constant. Her father taught her the importance of living life with a rich heart, and even though there wasn’t money to spend, there was a life to spend giving.
Bissell’s father sent her down the path of believing in others. When people didn’t believe in her, she paved the path for herself.
“When she was in high school in West Virginia,” Emma Bissell, her youngest daughter said, “she was told by her guidance counselor that she would essentially amount to nothing. She was told to give up on her dream of attending the University of Florida and to choose a path that might ‘suit’ her abilities better.”
“Nothing” amounted to receiving her doctorate from Syracuse University, holding multiple positions at the University of Alabama and Florida, where she did indeed earn her undergraduate degree, and now making her place at LSU. Aside from these accomplishments, her nothingness is also defined by her mental and physical strength combined. Taken together, these two have produced 36 completed half-marathons, 29 marathons and four ultra-marathons.
“When you cross the finish line after running 26.2 miles, you feel empowered,” Bissell said. Her eyes lit up as she continued, “It changes your perspective on who you are and what you can do.”
Empowerment is what drives Bissell to continue raising the bar for herself with each of her groundbreaking successes. Even when there were people who thought she wasn’t strong enough, she let their doubts fuel her.
“She’s in the business of proving everybody wrong,” Emma said. “No one can get in her way.”
When there wasn’t a seat at the table for her, she made room for herself, and extra room for others. “If you give to others before yourself, good things will come of it, ” Bissell said in an interview in Manship professor Len Apcar’s advanced reporting and writing class.
Everyone around her seems to notice.
“She’s never willing to ask more of someone else than she’s willing to ask of herself, and she always seems to have people’s well-being in mind,” said her former colleague, professor Andrew Billings, associate dean for faculty at the University of Alabama’s College of Communication and Information Sciences.
This reflects a high standard of personal ethics. While working as a young photojournalist for a newspaper near Pittsburgh, Bissell was assigned to photograph a victim of sexual assault. When she got to the address, the woman was standing on her porch.
“I thought there’s no way that the newspaper is going to publish a photo of a sexual assault victim,” Bissell said. “No way.”
She was appalled at the idea of having to flash a photo of a woman who had just been assaulted.
“I made a decision at that time to flood the photo,” she said, “So that there was no way it could be reproduced.”
She recognized at that moment that her job conflicted with her morals and that the photograph was being taken for the wrong reasons.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do that,” Bissell said.
So, she left news photography and chose to follow a career better aligned with her personal ethics, which led to teaching. Bissell’s childhood prepared her for moments of picking up and moving on. She said she wasn’t afraid.
“It’s just about being adaptable, being able to evolve, and being open to change,” Bissell said.
Her openness guided her ability to adjust to consistent change. Constantly moving as a child taught her that life is everchanging. However, the faith she has in others remains consistent.
Bissell acknowledges “we all have doubts in ourselves.” She added, “What I try to do is funnel my efforts into believing in others and making sure that they know I believe in them.”
When self-doubt starts to sink in, at least they can think, “but Kim believes in me,” she said with a slight sigh of relief. She finds peace in knowing that.
Every night when Bissell gets home, she takes another look outside.
“I see the color in the sky,” she said, as she let her restless hands finally land on her lap, “and I wrap it with gratitude.”

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