Ask Kim Wilcox what he does for a living, and he’ll tell you: “I’m a professor.”

Wilcox hasn’t been in front of a classroom in four years, but he insists he’s still a front-line educator at heart  and not an administrator.

He’ll return to a campus setting Monday, when he makes the move from executive director of the Kansas Board of Regents to dean of Kansas University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“I’m distant from this notion of knowledge, whether it’s sharing knowledge or creating new knowledge,” he said. “It’s one of the things I’m really looking forward to.”

Wilcox’s appointment as dean is the latest step in a career that was first inspired by a bad professor and included leadership grooming by KU administrators.

“I think what happens with people like Kim is people recognize they have real talent, that they’re good working with people,” said Chancellor Robert Hemenway. “People like that tend to get picked for responsible jobs. When they master one level of complexity, they move on to the next level of complexity.”

Unusual inspiration

Wilcox, 48, is a native of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. He started his college education at Michigan State University as a physics major but later switched to audiology and speech pathology so he could work more with children.

A computer science professor Wilcox studied under during his freshman year convinced him to enter education  but not because Wilcox was inspired by the professor.

“I sat there thinking I could do better, and someday I would,” he said.

He later earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Purdue University, then spent four years teaching at the University of Missouri before coming to KU in 1984.

He became chairman of the speech-language-hearing department in 1989. He also helped found the Native American Training Program, a collaborative effort between KU and Haskell Indian Nations University to train American Indians to treat communication disorders.

KU administrators took notice of Wilcox’s efforts and pegged him for leadership training.

They picked him to be a vice chancellor fellow during the 1994-1995 school year. He sat through top-level meetings and offered advice to officials.

After KU

Two years later, he accepted a one-year fellowship with the American Council on Education. He worked with the chancellor and president at Indiana University-Bloomington, where he focused on starting a multicampus strategic plan.

When he returned, he spent a year as special counsel to Hemenway, helping develop a similar plan  Initiative 2001  which included goals of more interaction between KU’s campuses, more outreach to Kansans and improving research and technology.

“He was headed in this direction (to become dean), if we wanted to go in that direction, early on,” said Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, who served as interim dean the past year. She has known Wilcox since the two were department chairs in the early 1990s and worked together on a research grant.

“He’s got the temperament for it,” she said. “He’s very bright. He’s very persuasive in an appropriate manner. And he’s likable, which goes a long way toward accomplishing what you want to accomplish.”

Part of that likableness comes from Wilcox’s percussive baritone laugh that cuts through loud receptions.

“His laugh apparently scared people in the office when he interviewed,” McCluskey-Fawcett said. “Some of the young secretaries jumped out of their seats.”

Hemenway said he thought the laugh was a sign of Wilcox’s personality.

“He has one of the greatest laughs in all creation,” Hemenway said. “It’s a habit, but it’s a habit that grows out of a general sense of good feeling toward the world, and an ability to not take himself too seriously. He takes his job seriously, but he doesn’t take himself seriously.”

‘Inside/outside candidate’

Wilcox will lead the largest of KU’s 14 schools. The college has more than 500 faculty members, almost 300 staff members and more than 15,000 students, or about 70 percent of KU’s enrollment. It has an annual budget of almost $90 million for its more than 50 departments.

The position pays $165,000 per year, which KU officials said was the average pay for CLAS deans in the Big 12. Wilcox replaces Sally Frost-Mason, who left in spring 2001 to become provost at Purdue University.

Wilcox was interim director of academic affairs for the Kansas Board of Regents during the 1998-1999 school year, helping set academic policy for the six state universities. He filled the regents’ vacant executive director position beginning in 1999.

Some faculty members have pointed to the advantages of hiring a candidate not as familiar with KU. Other finalists were from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University and University of Texas.

“If I were on campus, I’d be saying the same thing,” Wilcox said. “There’s good news and bad news for hiring somebody like me in that position. And on the other side, they know more about me, good or bad.”

McCluskey-Fawcett said she thought the benefits of Wilcox’s ties to KU would outweigh the concerns.

“Kim’s ideal, because he’s the inside/outside candidate,” she said. “He’s familiar with the university, but he’s been away long enough to bring an outside perspective.”

Research emphasis

Wilcox said he didn’t yet have specific plans for the college. But he said he was committed to Hemenway’s goal of placing more emphasis on research.

“What it really means is the entire operation moves to the front edge of knowledge,” he said. “Each and every day, all 30,000 people (at KU) are trying to move to the forefront of knowledge. I find that very exciting.”

Wilcox said the college was well-positioned to latch onto the new emphases of research. The area studies programs  which focus on Russia and East Europe, Latin America, Africa and East Asia  will continue to spread knowledge about other cultures as Americans shift more attention to world events.

And new developments in science will benefit both scientists and humanitarians such as historians and ethicists, Wilcox said.

“People question science in ways they haven’t in the past. Cloning is being debated,” he said. “We have the responsibility to explain these issues to the public.”

But improving the college will require money, Wilcox said, especially to recruit new faculty members and retaining others. And with a slumping state budget, that makes the funding picture like scientific research, he said.

“You yourself don’t know what tomorrow looks like,” he said.