Elliott Kai-Kee

Professor

“The SEEK students are intensely committed and very conscientious.”

Elliott Kai-Kee is one of those lucky people who is able to pursue two passions that complement each other. When he’s not teaching history at SMC, he spends time in his studio working on sculpture. “I do very traditional figurative work with classical themes. That goes well with history,” explains Elliott who incorporates two lectures on the history of Western sculpture into his schedule. “The forms that I work on originated with the ancient Greeks and have continued through Western civilization,” he says about the continuity of his art.

Elliott has been at SMC for two years and teaches history mostly through the SEEK program which is designed for people returning to college after years in the workplace. Elliott says he’s noticed that as people get older they tend to have more appreciation for his field. “I think if you have a bit of life experience you realize you can’t really understand what’s happening in your own life without knowing a little bit about what went on in the past.”

Elliott didn’t start out as an historian. “I’ve always been interested in art, really for all my life,” he says. But realizing that he would have to earn his bread one day, he followed his father’s advice and majored in history, another great interest.

“What happened is that I stayed in both,” he says. “It’s a way to use both the creative and the analytical side of the brain. And I need that balance.”

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