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Kimo Ah Yun, provost, executive vice president and acting president of Marquette University. Photo credit: Marquette University[/caption]
Kimo Ah Yun was named acting president of
Marquette University last month under tragic circumstances:
Michael Lovell, who had led the institution for the past decade, died at the age of 57 following a three-year battle with sarcoma. Ah Yun, who joined Marquette in 2016 as dean of the Diederich College of Communication, was named provost in 2019. He’s now tasked with balancing both leadership roles while guiding Marquette through a time of grief.
But it’s also a time of growth for the university, with three major infrastructure projects underway: the remodeled nursing school building, the Lemonis Center for Student Success and the reimagined Wellness + Helfaer Recreation facility. Earlier this month, the university's board of trustees launched a national search for its next president, who will be the 25th in Marquette's 143-year history. BizTimes associate editor
Maredithe Meyer recently sat down with Ah Yun to discuss his leadership transition and the year ahead.
The following is a transcript of portions of their conversation.
BizTimes: You've taken the helm during a very difficult time in the wake of Michael Lovell's death ... How are you navigating that?
Ah Yun: "I was fortunate to become Mike Lovell's friend over the years that we worked together, and when you think about the grieving process, it's not linear. So, you know, we have our good days and we have our bad days and I'm fortunate to walk part of that journey with his wife, Amy Lovell, who is a good friend of mine, and my wife. As you think about where we are as a university and the role that all of our leaders on campus need to play, including me, is that we have a campus community who is suffering a great loss. A person who was our president for 10 years, who did phenomenal things that helped propel Marquette forward, and he's not here. So, the leaders are just finding ways to wrap up our faculty and our staff, and we'll think about how we attend to our students who have not been on campus since President Lovell passed -- and they'll start returning to campus in a few weeks -- so really just think about, what are the best ways that we can care for everyone? That's one of the things Marquette is really good at is during times of crises and when we have challenges, we pull together. We support one another and we help everyone get through things."
You have acting president in your title in addition to provost. How does your day-to-day work differ now that you have those extra responsibilities? And what does that look like as Marquette gets ready for the next school year?
"As it turns out, when you add a second full-time job to your existing full-time job, things get a little bit busy, and that's OK; there are people who are asking what are ways that they can help to be able to take things off of my plate.
“I would say the piece that is additional is (thinking about) how are we engaging even more so with our alumni? How are we engaging with the community? How are we working with other boards? The president really is an extra visionary in the external arm of the university, while the provost is really the internal arm of the university. So at least for now, I'm really focusing on a lot of the presidential duties. I've been doing the provost jobs for six years. One of the nice things is I've been around the cycle six times, and so I understand what's coming, when it's coming and who I can lean on to be able to help me to get through those things."
What is the update on the various infrastructure projects that are under development right now and coming online soon?
“We have three projects we're very excited about that are all coming to completion in the near future. The first is our new nursing building, which is a remodel. When we opened our new (O’Brien Hall) business school building, that gave us the opportunity to reuse (the former business school building) and we remodeled in a way that's made it a tremendous space. We understand that there are challenges coming forward with being able to attract students, and so one of the things we ask is, what are the areas we know that are in high demand? And there are majors that are consistent with our kind of mission and students who go out and do work that is needed by society. Nursing was just a no brainer in so many respects. They've actually started to move into that space already, and our students in August will be able to start taking classes in that space.
“The second space then that will open at the same time – and it will be ready when students come back to campus – is our Lemonis Center for Student Success. President Lovell set forth a goal to be one of the best universities at retaining their students. We started at about 100th in the country for retention; our goal is to become a top 40 university in retention. The space, which is part of our library, will be a one-stop shop. It does not matter what challenge you have as a student, as opposed to asking the question, ‘Where is it that I need to go?’ there's someone from all of the key offices that will be in that space. And so what we would say is, go to that space, and it doesn't matter what your challenge is. You're having a problem buying a book. You can't figure out how to enroll for a class. You don't know which class to take. It doesn't matter. You're having a challenge with tutoring, you’re having a challenge with your mental health, whatever it is, you'll go to that space and there'll be someone there to give you guidance to be able to reduce the friction in the process. It's going to be a tremendous asset for our university and it's one of the ways for us to signal to all future students that we have a commitment to your well-being.
“The last building that will open, in January, is our wellness and rec center. This (remodeled facility) helps us to think about who we are as a Catholic Jesuit institution and what we are called to do. We know students who are looking for universities now care for their mental health, they care about their physical health, they care about their spiritual health.
We talk about cura personalis at Marquette University, the care for the whole person. How do you go to one place and say, you're going to care for my well-being and no matter what challenge I am facing, there will be someone that will help me to walk through that challenge and help me to get to the other side. And so, when that space opens, it's going to be a state-of-the-art space where we take away or reduce the stigma around well-being so that people can be cared for.”
What’s been the approach to big internal decisions in the immediate wake of Lovell’s passing? For example, pausing the search for a new athletic director.
“So as we think about decisions and moving forward, I was fortunate that I met with President Lovell two to three times a week. And when we think about even hiring the athletic director, he had talked about wanting to have me in those meetings, just as part of the process that kind of helped him to be able to think through who would be the next athletic director, thinking about the sorts of challenges and headwinds and what we are going to do. In terms of decisions and moving forward, obviously a lot of that stuff ultimately ends up rolling up to the acting president. I was fortunate that I had heard that our athletic director (Bill Scholl), who had announced his retirement (in May), expressed a willingness to continue to help the university. Bill Scholl is a phenomenal person, a phenomenal leader, and someone I was sad to see go. And I reached out to him when I heard that there might be a willingness to say, ‘I would love it if you would consider staying for just a little bit longer because the athletic director reports to the president.’ So, when Marquette hires its 25th president, the 25th president should be the one who selects the next athletic director. It was really an easy decision when he was willing to stay on, simply to say let's take a pause, hold on. The board of trustees will go through their vetting and selection process. And when that's done, then we can re-institute that process and we can get them back rolling.
"And I would say the same thing with other decisions we are making, decisions around our strategic plan. We are making our decisions around what we call our Securing Our Future initiative. There's no one person who looks at it and makes all of the decisions. Information comes from a lot of different sources; we have an academic senate, and we work with them to be able to get input. And there are certain things in the guidelines and the bylaws that require certain sorts of actions and steps taken before we do things. We'll go through those processes, that's important for us to engage in the shared governance process. We have our vice presidents and our deans who are actively involved in working with faculty who will give input for some other decisions. So it's a lot of information coming in. We have a lot of discussions and conversation, but at the end of the day, the president or the acting president becomes responsible for taking all of that really good input, synthesizing it and making the final direction decision, saying this is the direction we're heading."
Will you be a candidate for the president role?
"My only job right now is to be the best acting president I could be for Marquette University, and that's what I'm focused on. I'm focused on, how do I help the university stabilize? How do I help to care for people? How do I continue to move us forward so we can best achieve our Catholic Jesuit mission? That's what I'm doing today."
