HESP Alumna Kim Rice DeGross ’87 is Back at UMD Paying it Forward
Kim Rice DeGross was interested in the University of Maryland’s hearing and speech sciences program for three reasons: she thought it would be nice to help people who had a hard time hearing or speaking; she liked that she could get her master’s degree in five years through the 4+1 program it offered at the time; and, she recalls with a laugh, she heard it didn’t require a lot of math classes.
DeGross ultimately decided to move in a different career direction after getting her undergraduate degree in hearing and speech sciences, but she still says today, “If it weren’t for the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (HESP), my whole life would be different.”
HESP introduced DeGross to two of her closest friends, one of whom is her daughter’s godmother. And, via its home in LeFrak Hall, the department also situated DeGross exactly where she needed to be to pursue her true passions for leadership and law.
“There is a reason for everything, and for the four years that I was a student, HESP brought me to South Hill where the dining hall was, where The Diamondback was, where the Nyumburu Cultural Center was … HESP was my anchor,” DeGross says.
DeGross spent a lot of time at each of those places during her early years at UMD because as a 19-year-old sophomore she ran for and was ultimately elected to lead UMD’s Student Government Association (SGA), making campus history as the first female SGA president.
“When I was a freshman there was an ad in The Diamondback for a constitutional revision committee for the student government association, and I thought that sounded neat because I had been involved in class office in high school. So I signed up, and the then-president James West said to me ‘You should run for president of SGA,’” DeGross, who was also a Benjamin Banneker Scholar, remembers. “Our campaign was ‘U.S.A.: Unlimited Student Achievement’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ was our theme song. And during the runoff election, it was pouring rain and Andrea Anderson, a fellow Banneker scholar, ran across campus and pulled the gospel choir out of practice saying, ‘You’ve got to go vote for Kim’ and marched them all across campus to vote. It was as grassroots of a campaign as you can get.”
Looking back, DeGross realizes that James West wasn’t the only person at UMD who saw something in her that wound up having a significant impact on her life. In light of all of her SGA work, and the work she went on to do as the president of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, one of DeGross’ sorority sisters once said to her “you would make a great lawyer.” Then, upon deciding that law was a career she was indeed interested in pursuing after graduation, then-UMD chancellor John Slaughter agreed to write a letter of recommendation to the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law on her behalf.
“In all these instances, I was pushed to do something great because of what other people saw in me—a capability or capacity that I didn’t even know or recognize in myself, including coming to the Robert H. Smith School of Business,” says DeGross, who recently celebrated one year as the Assistant Dean of the Smith Schools’ Office of Career Services.
In the spring of 2024, after joyfully returning home from events during UMD’s Black Alumni Weekend, DeGross’ husband half-joked to her “You’re always so happy when you come back from UMD. You should work there.” So, a few months later, DeGross decided to leave her career as a sales team manager behind and “come home” to UMD, a move that she sees as her way of paying it forward.
“I want to give back to the University of Maryland what it gave to me: every opportunity for leadership and for growth,” said DeGross, who is responsible for building relationships between employers and the Smith School in an effort to help students land internships and launch careers. “I love every day that my job is to help students get the same start that UMD gave me. I get to help thousands of students and I never imagined that I would be able to do something like that.”
In the hopes of expanding her impact on students even further, DeGross offers this advice: “Be open to believing what other people see in you, because if you're willing to believe that, how much you can possibly accomplish is almost limitless.”
Photo by Kim Rice DeGross
Published on Fri, Oct 31, 2025 - 9:57AM