![\"Kimo](\"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/2024-kimo-ah-yun_edited-200x300.jpg\")
Kimo Ah Yun calls his personal history an \u201cunderdog story.\u201d He was one of the large number of young people across the United States who had the ability to do big things, but who came from circumstances where doing them was rare.<\/p>\nKimo Ah Yun calls his personal history an \u201cunderdog story.\u201d He was one of the large number of young people across the United States who had the ability to do big things, but who came from circumstances where doing them was rare.<\/p>\n
A child of parents who did not graduate from high school, a native of low-income Compton, Calif., someone who learned lessons about life from pumping gas. He became a first-generation college graduate who didn\u2019t really know what grad school was, but who had mentors who put him on paths to a\u00a0master\u2019s degree, a doctorate, a professorship, a deanship, a provostship, and, now, the presidency of Marquette University.<\/p>\n
Ah Yun thinks about all those who didn\u2019t make it the way he has. During a \u201cGet to Know\u201d program at Marquette Law School\u2019s Eckstein Hall on Jan. 17, he described his own path. \u201cI never expected to be sitting in this chair next to you,\u201d he told the program\u2019s moderator, Derek Mosley, director of the Law School\u2019s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. But Ah Yun added, \u201cI think about all the people who could have had that opportunity, and for some reason could not see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recalled a woman who was a schoolmate of his. She was \u201ca phenomenally brilliant person,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was smarter than every one of us in school,\u201d he said. \u201cBut she never saw it. . . . If you don\u2019t see the pathway, you can never get there. She could have done anything she wanted to, but she did not ever see a pathway for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of his roles as the 25th\u00a0president of Marquette is to help more people get on that pathway and to help all students, regardless of their backgrounds, to become the best people they can be. To Ah Yun, that is the heart of Catholic, Jesuit education and the heart of what he was inspired to do by his close friend and predecessor as president, Michael Lovell, who died in June 2024.<\/p>\n
Ah Yun told an audience of about 200 that getting an education so you can get a job is important, but that\u2019s far from all Marquette wants its students to set as a goal. Jesuit education means \u201cchanging fundamentally who you are as a person and how you interface with the world.\u201d It means making sure you have a moral compass that tells you what is right and what is wrong. It means growing to be someone who cares about others and who is engaged in helping others. \u201cA Jesuit education, to me, is positioning you to have a great life\u201d and to make everyone around you better, Ah Yun said.<\/p>\n
Of all the universities in America, Marquette, he said, has the highest percentage of students who are involved in public service. That was at the top of Ah Yun\u2019s list of positive things about Marquette. Asked by Mosley what he most relishes about his job as president of Marquette, Ah Yun said, \u201cTelling our story. We have a great story.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he also said that, like all universities, Marquette is facing headwinds as the world of higher education changes, including demographic trends that point to a smaller pool of students in coming years. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have rethink things,\u201d he said. While still focusing on students, Marquette is going to have to pull back on some things. For colleges as a whole, including Marquette, there will be \u201chard decisions, hard times, very disruptive,\u201d Ah Yun said. He pointed to colleges in the United States that have closed in the last several years and mentioned Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point as one of them.<\/p>\n
Ah Yun\u2019s path to Marquette is in itself a colorful story, even without reference to his challenging earlier years. He had been a professor in communications for two decades at California State College, Sacramento, where he got his bachelor\u2019s degree. \u201cI never thought I would ever leave there because it was home,\u201d he said. But he was contacted by representatives of a search firm that was aiming to find a new dean for Marquette\u2019s Diederich College of Communication. He put them off, saying he wasn\u2019t interested. But they were persistent. They convinced him to at least visit Marquette. He agreed but, he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t bring a suit,\u201d because he didn\u2019t intend to take the job. And the night before his interview, he went to a Marquette basketball game rather than prepare for the next day\u2019s session.<\/p>\n
He described aspects of his conduct during the interview as somewhat \u201csnarky.\u201d He said, \u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to impress anyone.\u201d But he was invited back for a second interview. He told the search firm representative he had no interest in the job and had a lot of personal reasons to stay in California. But they convinced him to come back and to bring his wife along. He began to take it more seriously.<\/p>\n
The key turning point was when Ah Yun was taken to meet Lovell.\u00a0\u201cHe was inspiring,\u201d Ah Yun said. \u201cWe were aligned in thinking about a student-centered university that was focused on transforming the lives of our students.\u201d His attitude changed, \u201cI knew I could come work for Mike,\u201d he said. And it went beyond that: \u201cI said I could be a better person if I worked with a guy like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah Yun became the communication dean and later the interim provost of the university and then the provost in 2019. After Lovell died, Ah Yun was named interim president and, in November 2024, in his ninth year with Marquette, he was named president.<\/p>\n
Marquette needs to stick to its core competencies, he said. It\u2019s not a university that aims to succeed by building online education. It\u2019s an in-person university. \u201cWe engage and transform people,\u201d he said. Marquette\u2019s leaders will need to do things ahead that show how they care for the institution itself\u2014but also show that the university has \u201ca foundation where we teach people to love one another.\u201d<\/p>\n