Gayle D. Beebe
President of Westmont College

Westmont president since 2007, Beebe has spent more than a quarter century in higher education. He has authored or edited more than 40 articles and 10 books including, “The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership.” Leading unprecedented growth at Westmont while facing significant challenges, he has loved attracting new resources to build out the campus, developing new academic and co-curricular programs, and pursuing the next horizon. Under Beebe’s leadership the college has raised more than $400 million dollars for various projects and added 390,000 square feet in new or renovated facilities on campus and in downtown Santa Barbara.

Steve Bell
Songwriter & Storyteller

Steve Bell is a Canadian Christian songwriter and storyteller who has produced 20 solo CDs and won numerous music-industry awards, including Gospel Music Association of Canada Covenant Awards: 2018 Album of the Year (Where the Good Way Lies); 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award; 2018 Collaboration of the Year (Where The Good Way Lies); and 2018 Inspirational Song of the Year (Wait Alone in Stillness). He has performed more than 2,000 concerts to more than a half million people in 15 countries. Steve has written and co-authored a number of books, including a seven-book series on the Christian calendar called Pilgrim Year. 

Malcolm Guite 
Poet in Residence

Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. He is  Life Fellow, and former Chaplain, of Girton College (Cambridge) where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty. He lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. Guite has published poetry, theology, and literary criticism, and worked as a librettist. His books include Word in the Wilderness, Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination, and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He has written seven collections of poetry, including The Singing Bowl, and Sounding the Seasons. Guite has a decisively simple, formalist style in poems, many of which are sonnets. He also performs as a singer and guitarist for the blues, rhythm and blues, and rock band “Mystery Train”. Guite earned degrees from University of Cambridge (BA, MA) and Durham University (PhD). In one interview, he described his work as a “full-time poet at the service of the church, trying to sing the Christian song into the world and make it attractive to the world, and draw people in.”

Dr. Kimberly Battle-Walters Denu
Westmont Provost and Dean of the Faculty

Dr. Kim Denu has over 25 years of experience in executive leadership in higher education. Denu worked as vice president for educational programs for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. At Azusa Pacific University she served as vice president and chief diversity officer. A two-time Fulbright alumna, she has conducted research projects in South Africa and Ethiopia. She has published in the areas of African-American issues, women and family matters, leadership, welfare reform and international relations. She speaks on these topics at various national and international forums and conferences. In addition to serving on local and national committees and boards, Kim has taught undergraduate and graduate students on five continents. Denu earned a Doctor of Philosophy in sociology at the University of Florida, a Master of Social Work from Temple University and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology at Vanguard University.