Kennard Brown overseeing current $250-million project

By the time Kennard Brown was finishing his second year at Illinois State University in the mid-1970s, he realized college was just not for him.

He left school, joined the Marines and spent the next several years as an intelligence officer stationed in Rota, Spain. He left the service a new man – one who attacked college with a vengeance until he had more degrees and titles than can fit onto his business card.

Brown is now executive vice chancellor and chief operations officer for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) and currently is overseeing a $250 million campus building, demolition and renovation project.

“This is a career trajectory that I would never have guessed, hoped for, or anticipated,” said Brown, who has a law degree, a master's in public administration and a PhD in health science administration and is a Fellow of the American College of Health Care Executives. “I wish I could say I really, really loved school and that this was some thoughtful strategy that was laid out, but it just kind of evolved.”

The evolution, though, has been a steady one, much to the benefit of UTHSC and its 4,000 students in six colleges as well as its 2,138 full-time employees in the Memphis area. In the past 15 years at UTHSC, Brown has worked in areas of law, equality and diversity, employee relations and a number of other areas.

Now, as executive vice chancellor and chief operations officer, Brown focuses his efforts on the future design and appearance of the campus, which includes 40 buildings with 3 to 5 million square feet of space.

Projects include a $49 million Translational Science Research Building, which is nearing completion; some $70 million in renovations to buildings on the Historic Quadrangle to begin soon; $6 million in ongoing renovations to the Lamar Alexander Building and the UTHSC library; completion of the $60 million Pharmacy Building; construction of the Multi-Disciplinary Simulation Building soon to begin; and construction of the Plough Center for Sterile Drug Delivery Systems set to begin this month.

Phase 2 will mark another $200 million to $300 million in construction, while Phase 3 will include a $180 million Women’s and Infants Pavilion planned with Regional One Health to provide state-of-the-art maternity, fetal and women’s healthcare.

“Dr. Brown served as the primary architect of the UTHSC master plan,” said Steve Schwab, MD, chancellor of the health science center. “The plan was drafted by a third-party consultant (Perkins + Will) after extensive consultation with Dr. Brown and members of the Chancellor’s Cabinet and the deans. It was vetted with faculty, staff and students, as well as key outside stakeholders. Dr. Brown guided the entire process.”

The campus master plan unveiled in October calls for at least 15 new buildings for expanding academics, research, clinical care and support. The plan also outlines improved pedestrian and bicycle routes, traffic flow, parking, green spaces, landscaping, signage, housing options and 10 renovated buildings.

“I’m just a bit player,” said Brown, who’s off a good bit on that self-assessment. “I’m fortunate to work around a bunch of good guys. We basically extended invitations to virtually every member of the general assembly. When the UT trustees held their meeting here, they saw how dated the environment was. I was fortunate to come along at a time when our turn (for funding) came."

Brown said the investment in the 103-year-old university’s infrastructure is crucial to attract and keep the best students and faculty in the nation. In competing with other schools, he added, the goal is for the campus to be closest to the top, not farthest from the bottom.

“The stakes are very high,” Brown said, “and we need to keep the people we train because that affects the health status of the people in Tennessee. So goes your health, so goes your jobs and so goes the economy of the state. The product we produce is a very, very valuable contributor to the state. For a $110 million state appropriation to have an economic impact of in excess of $2 billion, that’s a pretty significant return on investment for the state.”

How Brown came to be the chief landlord, so to speak, of such a sprawling operation is sometimes a puzzle even to him.

As he got into his new role, he found himself tending to piecemeal projects like power plants in one building, air conditioning upgrades in another. Soon he had a laundry list of individual repairs that needed to be done.

“Then it dawned on me that I’ll be chasing my tail like this forever, so I thought let’s stop the merry-go-round and systematically figure out a process, whether it’s building by building or college by college,” he recalled. “I thought let’s break it up by mission components.”

He began with a plan to improve the academic environment by renovating classrooms and adding state-of-the-art flat-screen monitors. Then it was upgrades to research labs, the clinical environment and space for administration and faculty.

And so was born a five-year master plan that was not necessarily a new concept, but one that had been bouncing around for some time though never articulated or put to paper.

“Then it was going to the state, asking for money and staying with a really, really solid game plan,” Brown said. “We have old buildings that need to be torn down. We asked for demolition money for years and ultimately they gave it to us. We just finished about $5 million of demolition.”

Some of the projects and improvements in the plan are funded and underway, while some are expected to evolve during the next five years or so.

“We want people to come to Memphis to get cured,” Brown said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be one of those destination places (for advanced health care). We don’t want to be a best-kept secret.”