After a search of more than four months, Marquette University has a new president – a first-generation college student who becomes the first person of color to lead the university.
Kimo Ah Yun was unanimously elected as Marquette’s 25th president by the university’s Board of Trustees.
The 59-year-old Ah Yun, who has served in the dual roles of acting president and provost at Marquette since June 10, succeeds Michael Lovell, who led the university from 2014 until his death on June 9 from sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Ah Yun, who joins Lovell as the Jesuit Catholic university’s only lay presidents in its 143-year history, joined Marquette in 2016 as dean of the Diederich College of Communication, later moving to roles as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Ah Yun said the basic mission at Marquette is to “go out there each and every day and make the world a better place in whatever you do. That’s what we do at Marquette University and that’s what I will continue to push.”
In a letter to the university’s alumni base, board chairman Todd Adams described Ah Yun as “a clear choice to lead Marquette.”
Ah Yun’s unanimous election by the board of trustees is the culmination of a search process led by the board and an 11-person search committee that began in July. The search committee and executive search firm Isaacson, Miller conducted a national review of higher education leaders and recruited a pool of candidates that included sitting presidents, provosts, deans and members of the Society of Jesus.
“This is a man that has been working and preparing and watching and doing the work,” Adams said at the news conference, “and we feel like he’s ready.”
In a press release announcing the news, Marquette said Ah Yun’s leadership roles over the past eight years provide will continuity on major initiatives including the Marquette 2031 strategic plan, and “builds upon positive momentum in increasing student retention rates, transforming the campus environment, finding more effective and efficient ways for the university to operate, and raising funds to grow the endowment so that a Marquette education is accessible and affordable for all students.”
Ah Yun made note of that three-pronged strategic plan in his introduction on Wednesday. “We want our students to thrive. We want a healthy campus and we want to care for the world,” he said. “What that’s going to require is for all of us to pull together.”
The university also cited the Student Success Initiative, which Lovell and Ah Yun launched in fall 2021. The program has contributed to record first-to-second-year retention rates, increases in students utilizing academic success resources, and the Lemonis Center for Student Success, which Marquette opened this fall.
Ah Yun also was instrumental in the Marquette’s fundraising campaign, according to the university, which raised more than $800 million, exceeding its $750 million goal.
A native of Compton, California, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communication studies at California State University – Sacramento and advanced degrees from Kansas State and Michigan State. He spent 20 years as a tenured professor at Sacramento State, where he rose to associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters and served as chair of the department of communication studies.
He lives in Whitefish Bay with his wife of 25 years, Catherine Puckering, who is a faculty member in the Diederich College of Communication. They have three children, Benjamin, 22; Molly, 21; and Haven, 17.
