STEVE PUPPE
S
ometimes secrets hold. This one sure did. From Sept. 22, when Chancellor Bernadette GrayLittle announced that she would conclude her eight-year KU tenure on June 30, until the May 25 campus meeting called that morning by the Kansas Board of Regents to reveal her replacement, not a single name came forward. Certainly not officially: The search— organized by a consultant and overseen by a committee of 25 alumni, faculty, students and staff from across the University community—was closed to the public, with no open meetings or presentations. A genuine mystery was unfolding in the Lied Center, and even David Dillon, the retired chairman and CEO of The Kroger Co. who chaired the chancellor search committee, was in the dark until moments before the Regents’ public meeting began. Dillon knew which “three to five”—he would be no more specific than that—candidates his committee forwarded to the Regents, of course, but, until moments
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Chancellor Gray-Little describes her successor as “a person who is easy to work with, someone who is well organized, someone who is collaborative, a big cheerleader for KU, someone who has a good business mind.” before the news became public, nothing about which candidate the Regents had chosen. “I knew before I sat down, but only a few minutes before I sat down,” said Dillon, b’73. “The committee was not aware of the choice.” Four and a half minutes into the Lied Center meeting, gaveled to order promptly at 1 p.m. by Regents chair Zoe Newton, Regent Daniel J. Thomas was the first to make the governing board’s intention clear: “After holding many leadership roles at the University of Kansas Medical Center over the last 23 years …” And with that, the secret was out. Executive Vice Chancellor Douglas A.
Girod, a world-renowned microvascular head-and-neck cancer surgeon, was the Regents’ choice to succeed Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little. Bill Feuerborn quickly seconded Thomas’ motion, and the board unanimously affirmed Girod. “The work we do changes lives,” Girod said to his first audience as the next chancellor of the University of Kansas, “and it improves our world in very meaningful ways.” Given relentless financial pressure placed on all Regents institutions because of the state’s budgetary travails, it seemed at least plausible that KU’s chancellorship might no longer attract a large pool of elite candidates. Not so, Dillon emphasized.