Chief of staff position at KU won’t be filled

Budget forces chancellor's office to streamline staff

Chancellor Robert Hemenway has cut more than 100 jobs at Kansas University this year. Now the cuts are affecting his office, too.

Hemenway will not fill the position of chief of staff, a job created earlier this year that had been filled by Reggie Robinson. Robinson is leaving KU later this month to become president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents.

“It’s leaving a big hole,” Hemenway said. “But we’re also in a position where we have to streamline administration because of the budget.”

Hemenway created the chief of staff position in January as part of a reorganization recommended by the Pappas Consulting Group, based in Stamford, Conn.

Having a chief of staff reduced the number of people reporting directly to Hemenway and helped him set university policy. Robinson also served as a liaison to the Lawrence community and the university’s endowment, athletic and alumni associations.

Robinson, who had served as counsel to Hemenway since 1998, was paid about $105,000 a year.

Janet Murguia, executive vice chancellor for university relations, said the loss of Robinson’s position showed no one was immune to budget cuts.

“(Hemenway) is saying he wants people to do more with less and to multi-task,” she said. “A lot of people are dealing with less-than-ideal situations. I think the chancellor is setting an example that way.”

Divided duties

Robinson, an attorney who worked five years in the U.S. Department of Justice, said the changes he made in the chancellor’s office when he took the chief of staff job amounted to “tweaking” the old system.

The biggest new responsibilities, he said, included managing Hemenway’s cabinet, made up of eight top administrators, and his policy group, a larger committee that discusses broad university issues. He said he became a figurehead and contact person for the chancellor’s office.

Hemenway said Robinson’s duties would be shared among remaining staff members, though details have yet to be determined.

Mary Burg, executive assistant to Hemenway, probably will assume some of those responsibilities.

“We will be dividing his duties,” Burg said. “But some of his duties, like his ability to do policy analysis, his objective view of issues, weighing of pros and cons, frankly, there’s no one to step up and do them in the manner he’s been doing.”

Robinson declined to say whether the office operated more smoothly with one person in charge.

“I’m totally confident the people here are more than able and more than capable of picking up the pieces of what I’ve been spending time on,” he said. “These are things we’re working on anyway. We approach issues as a team.”

Other changes

The creation of the chief of staff position was included in one of two reorganizations announced last year.

The first, in the chancellor’s office, included title changes for several top-level administrators. It also named Theresa Klinkenberg, former director of administration, as chief business and financial planning officer and added two positions to Murguia’s office.

The larger reorganization, announced in July, was in Provost David Shulenburger’s office. Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, former associate provost, was named senior vice provost. JoAnn Smith, dean of continuing education, and Mary Lee Hummert, interim director of student affairs, report to McCluskey-Fawcett.

The change gave those officials more direct contact with top KU administrators, McCluskey-Fawcett said.

Other changes included having the director of the equal opportunity office report to Lindy Eakin, vice provost for administration and finance, rather than Shulenburger. And the directors of parking and the campus environmental conservation plan now report to Jim Long, vice provost for facilities planning and management, instead of Hemenway.

“The provost still has too many direct reports,” McCluskey-Fawcett said. “We’re still trying to streamline that.”