Table of Contents
A long time back, Executive Vice Chancellor and COO Kennard Brown would wander critical site visitors by way of the decrepit and deserted Mooney Library Building in the coronary heart of the College of Tennessee Well being Science Center’s Memphis campus, demonstrating them its peeling paint, scarred wood, and falling plaster.
He was not airing the campus’s filthy laundry for no rationale. He experienced a system, a lot more of a vision, for what that creating and the many others adjacent to it could be, if he could influence these legislators, donors, and local community leaders that something so bad could come to be one thing fantastic.
As he retires from the college just after extra than 25 several years of management, that vision is now a reality, and it is certainly terrific. The renovated Mooney Library Building and the adjacent Crowe, Nash, and Nash Annex Properties, which opened in the spring of 2021, stand as a testament to his creativeness, inspiration, perseverance, and devotion to the college he has served for most of his job.
The Quadrangle, together with so a lot of other properties on the Memphis campus – the Middle for Health care Improvement and Affected person Simulation, the Pharmacy Making, the Most cancers Investigate Middle, the Translational Science Analysis Creating, The Plough Center for Sterile Drug Shipping and delivery Methods – bear witness to Dr. Brown’s tenure at UTHSC. Nonetheless, the way he sees it is that properties are a person point, but the campus he leaves is significantly more than bricks and mortar.
“The implications of these properties are much reaching,” he says. “But the magic is what takes place in the buildings.”
Early Times
Dr. Brown grew up in Chicago, and immediately after a brief time at Illinois Point out University, he joined the Marine Corps, serving a 4-year stint in an intelligence unit stationed in Rota, Spain. “I feel that was likely that maturation section in my everyday living,” he claims. “I’m not so certain I’d be the individual I am or see the environment the way I see it or be pushed like I’m pushed, had I not completed that.”
What adopted was what he describes as “school, school, school.” Initially, he attended what is now Southwest Tennessee Local community University. He remembers walking throughout the park to get to his condominium on Cleveland Street, seeing the UTHSC campus, and never ever dreaming that one particular day he would be 1 of its leaders.
He finished his undergraduate degree and a law degree at the Cecil C. Humphreys College of Regulation at the College of Memphis, a master’s diploma in public administration there, and in the long run a PhD in Health Results Analysis at UTHSC in 2008, just after signing up for the university in 1998.
He credits his grandmother, who raised him, with instilling in him a enjoy for education and learning, even although she couldn’t read or compose. “I believe about my grandmother all the time,” he suggests. “She constantly stated, ‘go to school, you are under no circumstances heading to go completely wrong heading to faculty.’”
Dr. Brown joined UTHSC as a clerk in the Standard Counsel’s Office environment, immediately after graduating from regulation faculty. His trajectory towards the prime administrative places of work was not prepared, but it was regular.
He turned the director of Affirmative Motion, just after then-Chancellor Bill Rice requested him to take into account the role to handle discrimination difficulties right before they grew to become courtroom cases as a more successful approach for the college. Immediately after serving 3 decades in that purpose, and starting to be acquainted with the campus society, he was named chief of staff for Chancellor William Owen. When Hershel Wall, MD, was named interim chancellor in 2007, Dr. Brown grew to become the govt vice chancellor in cost of the campus functions. He has held the situation ever given that.
Victories
As the govt vice chancellor and chief functions officer, Dr. Brown has led the everyday operations of the campus for the better element of two many years.
Early on, he states, he realized that if he did not have a prepare for its expansion, he would be continually placing Band-Aids on its aging structures,
He led the launch of UTHSC’s 2014 Learn Prepare for Progress, which outlined new structures to meet growing tutorial, exploration, clinical treatment, and assist demands. It also provided improved pedestrian routes, well-created green spaces and landscaping, notable signage, renovated structures, demolition of out of date structures, and updated housing selections.
The focus was to enhance UTHSC’s stature as an city tutorial health-related heart and protected its location as the nucleus of the Memphis Medical District.
“In 5 years, we’re either going to all be conversing about what a excellent job we did, patting ourselves on the back again about what we did to choose this community into the subsequent millennium, or we could all be on the lookout at each other ashamed of ourselves for squandering the prospect that we had,” Dr. Brown said in unveiling that program. “We are seeking to the former, as opposed to the latter.”
The chance was not squandered. An update in 2019 added to the prolonged-expression eyesight for the campus, linking it to the university’s potential strategic and academic programs, services planning, and capital appropriation requests.
With the Grasp Prepare, $10 million to $15 million in demolition, as properly as up to $400 million in construction has been accomplished, such as the new $45 million Delta Dental of Tennessee Building set to open in April. On top of that, there is strategy for the foreseeable future, including a new house for the Faculty of Drugs.
“I’ve been fortuitous since just about every administration, just about every governor, we have experienced in the 25 years I’ve been listed here has produced an investment,” he says. The return on that expense, he provides, is a much more strong health treatment workforce for generations to occur.
“Dr. Ken Brown has been the continuous on the UTHSC campus for about 20 yrs,” states Phil Wenk, DDS, CEO of Delta Dental of Tennessee, chair of the UTHSC Advisory Board, and a UTHSC Higher education of Dentistry alumnus. Delta Dental of Tennessee is the largest donor to the UTHSC College or university of Dentistry and provided money assist to make the new dental creating feasible.
“Whether a dean or a donor, you could often depend on him for solutions, as nicely as adhere to via,” Dr. Wenk claims. “Ken was also an remarkable leader, and his legacy will be that he ensured not only the Memphis campus was run in major problem, but also jobs at the extended campuses, like UT Medical Center and the speech pathology campus in Knoxville. Ken has been a good good friend and, whilst I know UTHSC will miss him, he has surely gained this retirement, and we wish him all the greatest!”
Outside of buildings, Dr. Brown has contributed significantly to the tradition of the university and to the community and state it serves.
Shelley White-Usually means, PhD, a professor of health economics in the Division of Interprofessional Education at UTHSC, was Dr. Brown’s adviser for his PhD. “Ken has been a winner of health equity/overall health disparities study, both via his dissertation work and in campuswide efforts at UTHSC,” she states. “His enthusiasm and passion have been to improve health and entry to wellbeing-producing means for Memphis community residents, especially those people who are vulnerable thanks to confined economic opportunities.“
It is difficult to imagine UTHSC with no Dr. Brown, she states. “On a own level, I will overlook Ken’s existence on campus. I recognize and worth a individual who sees a problem that requirements to be dealt with in purchase to strengthen the UTHSC natural environment and then contributes to the alternative in what ever way attainable, no matter if or not people efforts are composed as part of their task tasks.”
Edwin Jeffries, who arrived to UTHSC in 2018 as a superintendent for custodial expert services and now is the director of functions, states, “My tenure below at UT Overall health Science Heart has been phenomenal, all thanks to the management of Kennard Brown. His leadership necessitates and needs excellence, and mainly because of that, I have been capable to capitalize on so quite a few various issues like management growth and job improvement.”
What Dr. Brown has attained is phenomenal, Jeffries reported. “His eyesight is impeccable,” he explained. “He’s 1 of the few leaders that I know that appreciates a thing about everything.”
Moving on
Dr. Brown states he has talked with his family about retiring for a number of many years. He made a commitment when Chancellor Emeritus Steve Schwab, MD, retired to stay for a 12 months to enable the new chancellor during the first 12 months of changeover to the university, he suggests. Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD, joined UTHSC in February 2022.
“I needed the subsequent management to get steady,” Dr. Brown claims. “This was kind of the time for me.”
Dr. Brown suggests he feels “privileged and pretty, really proud” to have contributed to developing a campus that is “light years away” from the one he joined in the late ’90s.
“Dr. Ken Brown’s service to UTHSC and Memphis spans many years, UTHSC Chancellors, UT Presidents, and Memphis Mayors,” Chancellor Emeritus Schwab claims. “The architect of the UTHSC Campus Learn Approach, he oversaw advancement reworking our Clinical District campus. Possibly even extra long lasting, was his unfailing action and commitment to fairness, equity, and possibility for every person at UTHSC and Memphis, no matter of race, gender, religion, or social standing. He acted although other folks debated, influencing administrators, college students, faculty, and employees.”
For his efforts, Dr. Brown has been the recipient of various college, college student, group, and civic awards, including a 2017 Well being Care Heroes Award for Administrative Excellence from the Memphis Business Journal, inclusion in the Memphis Small business Journal’s Power 100 four years in a row, a commendation from the Tennessee Legislature, and the 2018 Visionary Leadership Award from the Popular Table Well being Alliance.
Anthony A. Ferrara, senior vice chancellor for Finance, recalls that Dr. Brown chaired the lookup committee when he was staying regarded as for the finance task. “The two of us strike it off from the moment we fulfilled,” Ferrara claims. “We’ve been each and every other’s counselor, associate, mate. There is not anyone extra passionate in my head for the betterment of the Health and fitness Science Heart.”
Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD, mentioned he recollects coming to UTHSC around 17 many years in the past to give Grand Rounds, and noticing that some regions on campus were being in negative form. That is no lengthier the situation.
“The establishment has been reworked by Ken,” Chancellor Buckley claimed. “It will be our resposibility to proceed the enthusiasm, delight, and determination he has shown to UTHSC.”
The Upcoming Chapter
Following leaving his day-to-day position with UTHSC on February 28, Dr. Brown will keep on doing work for the university on quite a few assignments as a result of the close of the fiscal year. 1st, while, a two-week trip on his Harley is planned. It could past longer if he feels like it.
“I imagine there will be a upcoming matter,’ he claims. “I have no idea what that is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”