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In the thirty-seventh episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Kimo Ah Yun, President of Marquette University. As a communication scholar, Ah Yun opens by discussing how he designs messages and leverages platforms in ways that reach various internal and external constituents, emphasizing the ways those efforts also had to change as he accepted appointments as a dean, provost, and president. He then discusses how he came to serve as a communication scholar, the teachers who invested in him, and the ways he seeks to invest in students. After serving on the faculty at Cal State Sacramento for twenty years, Ah Yun describes how the core of Marquette’s mission of service “for and with others” led him and his family to move to Milwaukee. That move then allowed Ah Yun to integrate the life he was leading at Church with the life he was leading at the university in ways that advanced Marquette’s mission as a Jesuit Catholic university. Ah Yun offers insights concerning the discernment process that also led him to accept appointments as Marquette’s provost and president while also offering advice for other laypersons considering appointments as presidents at Church-related colleges and universities with long histories of clerical leadership. Drawing from insights gained through long-standing service as a scholar, teacher, and educational leader, Ah Yun concludes by offering insights concerning his understanding of the academic vocation and how he seeks to draw upon Marquette’s mission as a means of helping all members of the community flourish.
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Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University. Our guest is Kimo Ah Yun, President of Marquette University. Thank you for joining us.
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. Thank you. Glad to be here. Look forward to having a great conversation.
Todd Ream: In some ways, serving as a college or university president is comparable to serving as the mayor of a small to mid-size city. Many institutions offer living learning communities, wellness centers, dining facilities, laboratories, libraries, studios. Some institutions even offer their own post offices, police departments and fire departments. And when combined, their numbers of students and employees can range from approximately a hundred.
On one end of the spectrum from a school like Deep Springs College to over 150,000 at an institution such as Arizona State. Of course, those numbers don’t tell the full story as colleges and universities also have a considerable number of external and internal constituents that presidents communicate with.
As a communication scholar and a president of a university community of approximately 14,000, what means have you determined to be most effective when communicating with your internal constituents, staff, faculty, and students?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, internally because I’m on campus and these are people who have access to me, it’s usually face-to-face town hall meetings and senate meetings. And so they really appreciate that time to get together.
I do monthly lunches for faculty, staff, and students and dinners where people can sign-up. And then throughout the year we break bread. I answer whatever questions that they want and we have a good conversation, you know. In addition to that, when I go to faculty senate meetings or I do other sorts of university wide meetings, they really want me to be in front of them. So I think that’s the preferred.
There are others that I think achieve the same thing. So we do some videos. I do a monthly newsletter, regularly, newsletter that goes out to campus. Occasionally when certain things happen, I might send out an email. So it’s a variety of sources and I would say, depending on the situation, depending on the information, is gonna depend, what’s the best way to communicate that to the campus.
Todd Ream: When presidents seek to communicate with the internal constituents they serve, what do you think those constituents expect to encounter? What are their hopes or expectations, regardless of the medium that might be used?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. Most of the time internally, you know, people want to be seen, they want to be heard, they wanna understand that they’re valued. And so in those communication, I think they, they want you, they want recognition of the part that they play in the university and that you understand that.
So what, what I try to do is, you know, I say first and foremost, our mission calls us to serve God. And we do that through the transformation of our students and engaging in research that makes the world better. And so what, as we’re beginning to say that people wanna know, well, how do you see that I play a role in that and they want to make sure that I see that and recognize that.
Todd Ream: In what ways then, do external constituents maybe have different hopes or different expectations from those who are there on campus?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, in terms of communication, I think that it’s clear that they understand that it’s, I’m not going to be able to get out and talk to all of them because I’m not in the same place. We track when we’re communicating externally. You know, it depends on, on what age you are and what medium you are, you are familiar with or comfortable with. You know, for some of our alums, they like our magazine or our newsletter, something that’s written or that they hold, they can touch.
For some of our younger alums or external audiences, you know, they like social media, TikTok, Instagram, something where it’s a quick hit that I can make some sort of message and they can see it. Some people who want to dive in more like the kind of deeper video dives. You know, I think that people like a triangulation of ways to be able to get material. But based on people’s personal interests, usually they gravitate to one medium a little more.
Todd Ream: Now since you mentioned it, if I may ask a follow up question here, TikTok, do you have a TikTok account or perhaps does the university have one that you have availed yourself of? And do you have a preferred message too, maybe that you’ve shared?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, so TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, have all of them. We try Facebook, right? We try to push things across multiple platforms. I would say is, you know, those are good for messages. Yeah, so around Easter I was able to give an Easter message. Well, when we are coming back from campus, they welcome back campus message.
And then there’s some playful things that we do on those as well. And so one of the things we did this year was about kind of like Gen Z, TikTok language of me using phrases that they use you know, I think they find it fairly humorous that a, a guy who is 59-years old and is using phrases like you ate that and left no crumbs. Or giving five big booms, kind of like five stars. And I walk around campus and students will yell, give me a boom. And so I give them a big boom and they like that. So it’s just, you know, kind of some fun stuff that we do.
Todd Ream: Yeah, you got to expand your presidential vocabulary too and connect with your constituents there.
Kimo Ah Yun: You know, the funny thing is like, you don’t, you never know which of those things are gonna take off. So I was in a class where I had told the faculty member if within the first— and she had a class of 150 some odd students, and she was trying to get all 150 to come to her office hours in the first two weeks of classes. So that’s 150 who have to do one-on-one with the faculty.
And I said, all right, if you do that, I’m gonna come and bring free crumble cookies to your class. And she was able to do that. And so I had to pay up that agreement and I brought Crumble Cookies to 150 odd students. And then she did it again the next semester. And so I was able to do it, bring cookies and get a chance just to be with the students.
And given that this other Instagram video that we did where I did get the five big booms, some students said, hey, will you give us five big booms? And I said, I’ll give you four big booms, but we all have to give the fifth boom together. So if you’re familiar with this trend, I gave boom, boom, boom, boom. And then all of the students did the fifth boom with me.
Well, one of the students had pulled out their phone and took a video of it and then uploaded on their personal account, and then it got picked up by another account. And it had received over a million views of me booming the class and then I heard from people across the country who are not connected, you know, through my video that they found it got sent to their feed. So even my daughter who lives out in California received it from a different college site feed, and her friends at college were like, is this your dad? Fun stuff. And I think that’s the way, you know, especially the younger students and alums like to consume information.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. That’s great. Thank you. When you survey the history of higher education as it existed here in the U.S., are there any presidents whose abilities to communicate with the constituents they serve more admirable perhaps, than others?
Kimo Ah Yun: I mean I think part of that is, I think people who are open to what they’re doing and I think these are individuals who I think have to think about these new forms of social media and others to be able to access it. So, you know, I balanced that with— what is also the message.
And so Tim Snyder, who is the outgoing president at Loyola Marymount, I find him to be a highly ethical individual. I find him to be a very smart person. I find his communication to be direct and pointed. And so he’s somebody that I really admire and his ability to do that.
Another person who I think it’s because of her authenticity is Julie Sullivan at Santa Clara University from what I’ve seen of what she’s done, but it’s because of who she is as a person, right? She brings her full self and she’s real, and she understands what they’re trying to accomplish at Santa Clara. And I think that makes her kind of an exceptional communicator in that way.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you some biographical details now, if I may. You’re Hawaiian by family heritage and born in Compton, California, the fourth child in a family of five. As a first generation college student, you earned a bachelor’s in communication from Cal State Sacramento, a master’s in speech communication from Kansas State University, and then a doctorate in communication from Michigan State. On at least one occasion, you noted that having three older sisters and one younger sister helped you shape your strong communication skills.
At what point did you discern that the exercise of communication would prove critical to your vocation in terms of study, but also in terms of practice?
Kimo Ah Yun: I’m a first generation college student. None of my sisters, I have four sisters, none of them ended up graduating from college. I remember distinctly when I was in high school, I began looking around and seeing friends who had, you know, parents who were successful in whatever area of vocation that they had. And there are two things that I noticed.
One is they were all college educated and many of them had advanced college degrees. And the second thing is they had really good communication skills. Because I happened to talk to them and I was, you know, and so I began to put the pieces together and say, well, I can see a pattern here, right? All of the people I know who seem to be really successful in leading, productive, and happy lives and are able to take care of their needs, have these things. And I think that’s what’s helped me to kind of work my way through that.
As a first generation college student, you don’t know what the road is, and so you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there. And so some of it, I stumbled across it but it was also just picking up really good mentors along the way who could help me to figure out how to navigate the process. What I would say is, you know, most of them are accidental, where I ended up on each of the different stops were, you know, outside of Sacramento State, which was in my backyard, so that’s why I went there. After that, it was kind of accidental and happenstance how I ended up at those different spots.
Todd Ream: Can you say a little bit more about those mentors and perhaps any, what their unique contributions might have been?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, so I had a mentor, Nick Burnett, who was one of my faculty members at Sacramento State, super smart guy, very funny, outgoing, organized, great teacher, you know, and he was a mentor when I was thinking about going on to graduate school. He just took me out and sat me down and said, all right, here’s what you need to do to get to those other places. But even before then, he was pouring into me when I was, you know, doing things that probably was not gonna keep me on the right path. He’s like, can’t do those things, right. Stay on the right path. But he was a person who just really helped me to understand my focus.
I think about in my master’s program, a professor, Bill Schenck-Hamlin, who really taught me about what excellence is, taught me about, you know, being the best at what you could be. He was a really good researcher. And again, this is the first time where someone devoted to develop me as a leader in a space of engaging in research, which you need to do as a faculty member.
Thinking about my PhD program, my advisor, Sandy Smith, who is a leader in the field of communication, but really taught me how to begin to navigate spaces and, and use your voice and your ability to get access into those spaces to, to do better.
And then lastly when I was a professor Ed Inch, who was my boss, the dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Sacramento State, who, you know, really told me, taught me how to communicate in a complex university, about navigating, you know, spaces of faculty and parents and upper administration and students and external partners, understanding you need all of those groups to be successful. So not one person, but many people who did just a small thing that I was able to cobble together and create and become that person that I needed to be.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. You mentioned going back to your alma mater. I echoed that in terms of Sacramento State and you served there for almost 20 years. In addition to serving as an award-winning scholar and teacher, that tenure included service as a department chair, a director of a Center for Teaching and Learning, and Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Letters.
Would you describe the discernment process that led you to begin accepting administrative appointments alongside your services as a faculty member?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, one of the things I always tell my students is don’t get focused on the destination, like where you wanna end up. Be focused on where you are in the moment. And so I was fortunate enough along the way of whatever I was doing, I just wanted to be the best at that position. So when I was a faculty member, I wanted to be the best faculty member.
When I became the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, I wanted to be the best director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, and not focused on, well, this is gonna lead to this, which will lead to that, which will lead to something else, but it was, I just want to be as good as I can be. Be the best version of myself in that particular job.
And I think that discernment, it opened up doors because when you say yes to trying new things and when you say yes to trying to be a leader, then people pay attention to that and they would say, here’s someone who wants to lead, who is not leading it because they expect it, but I need someone I can rely on. And that opened up more doors.
So I think the discernment process became of just doing well at what I was doing. And then as new opportunities came up, I asked the question, is there something I can do to make something else better right in that next step? And if I could, then I would say, well, here’s what I will offer. This is what I would do if you give me an opportunity. And that just kept leading to additional doors being open eventually to being president of Marquette University which has been just a spectacular position.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As you progressed in your career, that portion of your career where you were at Cal State, Sacramento, from what experiences did you derive the greatest sort of satisfaction?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, probably in developing others. And I think, again, when you begin to back up all of us, right, what we value is likely something that we saw, something that was valuable to us. As a first generation college student, not having any education at all, and then understanding the power of a college education to be able to change the trajectory of your life, that transformative experiences for me is I understood, I became who I became because of what others did for me. And I said, well, what can I do to do the same thing?
And as I got into other positions, you are able to see that you can increase the magnitude of that impact on others. So yeah, I think about when I was department chair, I was able to change the curriculum that was going to ensure that every student who graduated would have a different experience and that experience would be current and allow them to be able to go out and find a job and be successful.
So I think you can use it as kind, kind of a, a bullhorn, right? To expand it greater than you could. And so while I had great opportunities in the classroom, you can only impact the students who happen to be in your class that semester. Other positions allowed me to find others to magnify the impact.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2016, you were appointed Dean of the College of Communication at Marquette. Would you describe the discernment process that led you to not only accept an appointment as a dean, but also a dean at Marquette, half a country from Cal State, Sacramento?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, yeah. You know, at the time I was actually serving as a chair of the board of our church on the leadership team. And my wife had served in that position right before me. And you know, being part of that leadership team and getting more connected with the internal workings of the church, gave me a better appreciation for all you do or all churches do, to be able to serve other people.
And I would be part of this group. And, and where we were really like entrenched in the Word of God and thinking about how we are forming ourselves and I was part of a men’s group where we talked about, you know, iron, iron sharpening iron, and how do we make other people better? And then I would leave this space that I felt good and felt like I would make a difference.
And then I would go to my public state institution where you’re asked to park your faith at the door or in your car. And then you go in, and then when you— you go pick it back up when you get back in your car. And I wasn’t looking to leave Cal State Sacramento. In fact, I thought I would make a career there.
But when I had the opportunity to consider a change to Marquette University, and I talked to my wife and we talked about how great it would be for us to be at a place where our faith was intertwined with what we did at work and that there wasn’t an expectation you would not bring it with you. And it was, yeah, I mean, we had a child going to ninth grade, another child going to eighth grade, and our third child going to fourth grade. That’s not a time most families pick up and move from California to Wisconsin.
And in fact, my children say people never pack up and move from California to Wisconsin. They go the opposite direction. But it was an easy decision knowing that I could be part of a university whose mission included finding ways to grow one’s faith and, and create men and women for and with others to be able to serve. That was phenomenal, and it’s paid dividends over and over since we’ve moved here.
Todd Ream: Two years after coming to Marquette, you were appointed interim provost and then a year later, the permanent provost and executive vice president. That was in 2019. The discernment process that led you to accept that full-time appointment?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, that, that was, yeah, that was an easy one. For those who, you know at the time, President Mike Lovell was here. He was the person I followed here, great person, visionary leader. He was one of the reasons why I also decided to come into Marquette because I knew that he was someone I could come to work for, and when he called me and said, hey, I want to have a conversation with you, and then he said, I’d like you to consider serving as the interim provost. I said, yes. And then he is like, you should probably talk to your wife. And I’m like, you’re right. I take back my yes. And then I talked to my wife that night, and then I called him the next morning and said, yes.
You know, it’s when you get to work with someone who you respect and admire and who is a friend and, and grew to be even a closer friend with me that was an easy thing to do.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Now you mentioned that that was the easy decision. You were eventually appointed president after serving as interim president and acting provost. Can you talk with us about that decision making process?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, that decision making process, and that was an important one. Obviously, I think the president of any university or any organization plays a key part. And what I had to discern was, and I did this in consultation with my wife, but identify whether or not there was something that I could provide to the university that would be a value or a benefit.
And I go back and I reflect back on my life as a first generation college student who was transformed because of education. But you know, when I went into that process, I said, what I have to offer is a student-focused, a student-centered university, where we asked the question, will this improve the student experience?
And when I went through the process, because as you might imagine, there are many people who would want to be president of Marquette University. But I had a very narrow platform. It would be, I will get up every day and I will ask, are we doing enough for our students? And if not, what will we do to change that? And so that discernment process only happened insofar as I said, here’s what I had to have to offer. And then there was a committee and a board who had to determine whether or not that what I had to offer was sufficient for what they needed to take Marquette into this next phase of existence.
And so, what I like about it is we have a nice, great strategic plan. It focuses on the things that I’m interested in. The pillars are around thriving students, a healthy campus, and caring for the world. So if you cannot get excited by that strategic plan, then you can’t get excited in life.
Todd Ream: For individuals who may be in the position of considering comparable appointments, what would you offer to them as advice?
Kimo Ah Yun: First and foremost, ensure you’re doing the, the, the, the job for the right reason. There are some who want the title or the salary or whatever it has. You have to say my intentions are, because it’s a good fit, right? Make sure it’s a good fit between you and the organization and do not do it if you simply want a title because there are titles in many other institutions, so align with the mission of that organization.
And if your alignment and their alignment is together on the mission, great. Go ahead and do it. But if you don’t do it for the right reasons, your heart won’t be in it. Your mind won’t be in it, and it will become apparent if you do it for the wrong reasons.
Todd Ream: As you made this progression then from serving as dean to serving as provost, to now serving as president, in what ways, if any, did you find that it was necessary to change, alter, enhance your communication with the people you were called to serve and called to lead?
Kimo Ah Yun: As president, you’re called to inspire others and you’re called to be the storyteller of the university. So I think one way is it requires me to be substantially more energetic. And you know, as provost it’s like, here are the things that we need to accomplish. And, and you still need to inspire the faculty that you have a good direction.
But I would say as, as, as the president, it’s like, people feed off of the energy that you bring into the room. And so, like I would say, one of the things I’ve changed is my sleep habits. I sleep more now because I know that I need to be prepared, right, to be able to show up with my most energized self to all of the meetings.
I think the other way as president you always have to be constantly thinking about how what’s going around you in the world could be integrated into what you’re doing and how you tell your story. And it has to be simple. Like I talk about it as president, inspired about the momentum we have happening on our campus, and I could point to buildings and I could talk about our campaign and I could talk about the incredible things that our students are doing. I could talk about the new students we’re bringing in. Like it’s all about how are you telling your best story to be able to inspire others that Marquette is a great place and that they want to be part of it.
Todd Ream: I’m looking for the provost out there who will also, with the faculty offers five booms too, that may be a different one.
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, you’re not asked to do booms, yeah.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. In terms of that story then, I want to ask you a little bit more about Marquette now. It’s one of 27 Jesuit Catholic universities in the United States. One of 189 Jesuit Catholic universities worldwide. As president, would you describe the ways in which the Jesuit charisms animate the Marquette community?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. The Jesuit charisms around it’s all for the greater glory of God and serving other people. I would say it is at the centerpiece of, I would say it’s our competitive advantage. It’s who we are and what we do. And so we want to focus on students who care about deepening their faith, care about commitment to helping other people. And when we center our university around those ideals, and then we find the students who are seeking that same experience, it’s a perfect match, and then magic happens.
If we were to not do it right, if we just go and get whatever students want to come here, then when they get here, they’re gonna find us we are not the experience that they wanted. And so we try to be very clear with our students. Do not come here unless you’re looking for this transformational experience. And I would say there are different universities for different students. Some students want that big, you know, 80,000 student experience where you’ve got a large student like Arizona State that you talked about early on, and that’s great. I think it’s perfect for some people. Others want a small 3, 4, 5, 700-student experience. That’s good for them.
I would say Marquette’s mid-size. It’s Catholic Jesuit. It’s about creating men and women for and with others. It’s about inspiring our students to be the difference, and I think our ability to match our charism or our story with our students has been really successful. So we were recognized this last year as being number one in the country. Number one, no, no university is more regarded highly than this in our students’ commitment to community service. And that’s because we were able to say, this is what we do. And if you want that, come here. I think that’s why we get there because it’s not as if we are building those students. We are saying is this is what we do, come here. And then we open up the opportunities that allow them to thrive in that space.
And then for those students who are on the edge, the fence, they’re seeing everyone else do it and they say, I want part of that too, and then they join it. And so giving back to Milwaukee and helping other people who need a little bit of help, cleaning up communities serving others, it’s just magical. And I enjoy the opportunities I get to serve with our students.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As Marquette’s second lay president then and, and someone who’s been part of the community now approaching nine years, 10 years, in what ways, if any, have you sought to appreciate those charisms, to take those on yourself?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. I mean, obviously, I engage in more service now. I go and serve with our students. I think about how we infuse that in everything that we do at Marquette’s campus. I use that as a discussion point when we’re recruiting new students. I try to be part of everything that they want to do in alignment with those charisms.
Todd Ream: In what ways then, you know, as the second lay president, again, prior to that, Marquette had a long history of Jesuit presence, in what way is your service as a lay president comparable to your predecessors who were members of the order, and in what ways is it perhaps different?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. I mean, obviously I think I’ll start with the differences, you know, as a Jesuit, they’ve lived their whole life, well, a majority of I guess their adult life with the Church, maybe, probably longer than that. And so, as a lay president, right, you have different sorts of commitments. You have a family, I have a wife, I’ve got children. And so it’s like how are you balancing things in, in relationship to that?
You know, in some ways I think as a lay person you also are probably thinking you start from behind, so you need to work a little bit harder to prove yourself in that regard. But at the end of the day, it’s about what’s in you and what do you want to do?
So you have a finite number of hours to be able to do everything. I think at the high level, are you setting the conditions that demonstrate you have a commitment to this personally, and you have a commitment to it as a leader, and when you align both of those things, it allows success to happen.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For other lay persons then who may be considering an appointment as a president at a Church-related college and university with a long history of clerical leadership, what advice would you offer them?
Kimo Ah Yun: I think as you get there, you have to understand and accept what you don’t know. So when I was provost and a leader, right, a university leader, when I would meet with, go to have lunch with our Jesuits once a month in their residence, and I asked the question, I said, okay, so I’m not a Jesuit, I’m a lay person who’s given the leadership role. Tell me what I need to do to be successful, right? Give me the best advice.
And there were about eight Jesuits on this particular table, and I went around and all of the eight Jesuits told me, pray every day. And so what I would say is like become part of the community, and this has probably now been seven years ago or so. I had this lunch, and I pray every day. I make a commitment to just get up and pray every morning and I pray in all of my opening of all of my leadership meetings. I pray when I meet with students.
In fact, I, just a couple of weeks ago, there was a student who walked out of the chapel. And he is like, I’m not even Catholic. I’m Jewish, but will you pray with me? I’m about to go into this exam. I’m like, absolutely. And we went off to the side and we prayed together, that he would be successful in his final exam that he was taking. And then he wrote me back and said it was, it was great. I did well. And he didn’t give me his grade yet, but the fact that he felt good coming out of it, that’s a great thing. So I would just say it’s like being intentional about figuring out how to plug in.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As our time begins to become short, now I want to ask you some questions about the academic vocation. So drawing back from your experience as a full-time faculty member, all the way through now to your experience as a president, how would you define the characteristics and/or qualities of the academic vocation for you, as you’ve sought to exhibit them, but also, you know now for educators who come to Marquette to serve?
Kimo Ah Yun: I think first of all, like you fit academically as you think about being a teacher. I think the larger one is, for me it’s men and women for and with others here. So, that’s the centerpiece of everything that I do and I think about and I hope to be able to persuade people.
You know, when I was dean and I was hiring faculty, I would say is every day I need you to get up and ask the question, what will I do today to develop men and women for and with others? Because that’s how we make the world better. And I’m no longer, you know, hiring faculty. I’m hiring other leaders. In fact, I’ll be hiring our provost in the coming weeks. We’re finalizing that.
But it’s about, you know, again, going back to and saying, well, what will you do to be able to create deans and vice presidents that will focus on men and women for and with others, and understanding that we’re called to serve God and understanding that we’re called to be a difference, right, in the lives of others. So I think it’s just being vigilant and, and about them. You know, for us it’s hiring the right people, getting to know people and saying, if you’re just looking for a job, this isn’t just a job. It’s a way of engaging the world.
Todd Ream: In terms of forming those people then for this end of service, for and with others, those new faculty members that you hire, are there any practices that are more significant than others in their formation?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah, I mean, obviously I think part of this is we have something a program where new faculty who are hired might not have a Jesuit background, we can put them through a program, so they can better understand where the Jesuits came from, what they stand for, and what it looks like when you are successful. So, historically, they need to understand that. Now we start that even in the interview process to understand so that they understand we are different here.
And then when they get here you know, the Jesuits talk about specific educational practices. So our Center for Teaching and Learning helps to provide services to our faculty. We do it at new faculty orientation, but even beyond that to say here are the ways in which you will engage with our students from a, you know, Ignatian perspective, from a kind of, kind of a Jesuit lens. So, you know, it doesn’t happen accidentally.
I mean, if you think about it as, as very few students go to Jesuit high schools, very few students go, and many, but in the scheme of all the different universities, few go to Catholic Jesuit universities, and you know, it is possible you hire someone who has come only from large public state institutions, and I think about that was my background, raised Catholic but was, never went to a Jesuit high school or a Catholic Jesuit university. I think it’s about getting people to resources that they need and hiring those people who want to do the work. And then you can make a difference.
Todd Ream: Yeah. When seeking to exercise such an understanding of the academic vocation there on campus at Marquette and within the Jesuit tradition and philosophy, are there any virtues that you believe are more important to cultivate or most important to cultivate?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. I think most important is this understanding that there’s a world greater than us, right? I think when we cultivate something that suggests that we individually have the answer, we individually are the solution, we individually can go out and do things, it’s about understanding that there’s something greater than all of us.
First and foremost, we do it collectively. We do it in the community. We do it understanding that we may think that we know what we want. And God will tell us in God’s own way that we don’t always understand it. And so I think it’s about, you know, allowing ourselves to give in when we are, feel sufficiently committed to doing that but also as understanding as we need to do that in community.
Todd Ream: Thank you. When seeking also to exercise such an understanding of the academic vocation, are there any vices that you believe are more important that we need to guard against?
Kimo Ah Yun: Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to people who lack humility. I think people who want to go solo in the world. I think that people who believe in that, like the highest priority is physical wealth, objects, I think, you know, engaging in climbing the ladder, because we want that nicer house and the nicer car and the nicer title and you know, those nicer vacations that I think those are all the things that get in our way from preventing us to become our, you know, absolutely best that we can be.
And I think when we pray together, we worship together, we read the Scriptures together, the messages become very clear about, you know, I think about talking about, you know, love others like I love you. The messages are simple about, you know, about loving, about acceptance. It’s about being the right kind of person, helping others. So I think those people who move away from the Word or the, or, those that we just have to, you know, figure out how do we get them on track if.
And it’s obviously gotta be something that they want, right? I can, as much as I want someone, maybe to have what many of our other students have, they cannot have that unless they have personally accepted that there is something out there that is bigger than them. And I think it’s, it’s just providing the scaffolding for people to get to that place, those who want to truly get there.
Todd Ream: Thank you for our final sort of set of questions now, I want to ask a little bit more about the Church and the relationship that the Church-related university shares with the Church. This sense of understanding of the academic vocation that we’ve discussed, in what ways is its health reflective of the health of the relationship that the university shares with the Church?
Kimo Ah Yun: They’re intertwined for us. So it’s interesting. So I’ve had the chance to meet Archbishop Grob, invited him to campus and he and I spent half a day together where we had lunch. I took him around campus. We talked about our goals. It was a phenomenal experience. I went to his installation. He came to my inauguration. In fact, he was there for Mass and was a part of that experience.
And so I think it’s, you know, it’s important to, to constantly be connected. But I agree if I like, I think how healthy the Church is helps us to be able to attract students to Marquette and how helpful we are helps to be able to keep students growing in their faith, which makes them more aligned with the Church.
I would say is it’s just a phenomenal experience when our, our students are worshiping and praying on campus together, you can see it and they will talk about it as that for some of them, right, it’s the deepening and over their faith, and that makes a college experience all worth it for them. Obviously, the degree so they can go out and find that right location when they leave Marquette. But any university can graduate people. What I would say is we’re successful when we graduate people who can go on and live a fulfilled life.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Kimo Ah Yun, President of Marquette University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and your wisdom with us.
Kimo Ah Yun: Thank you. I enjoyed our time together and look forward to having you on our campus sometime again.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
Todd, was the President aware that that the Williams Prayer Chapel on our IWU campus was modeled after the Joan of Arc Chapel on Marquette’s campus.