Q&A With … Doug Girod

Q&A With … Douglas Girod

Douglas Girod is the chancellor of the University of Kansas. He is a physician and was the former vice chancellor of the University of Kansas Health System.

Q: Where is KU in terms of preparation for the fall semester?

A: We’ve started to reopen right now focusing on our research enterprise and getting our researchers and our graduate students back. We already made a commitment to be online for the summer semester not knowing how the timeline was going to play out, and now we’ll slowly welcome people back as we get them back over the course of the summer. 

Q: What did you learn from the spring experience?

A: We learned to do something that we didn’t think we could which was to get everything into a remote format in a week and a half, which is pretty remarkable, and everybody worked really hard at it. It was more difficult for some than others.

Q: I assume that budgetary problems are also a tough go as well?

A: The hardest part of that is the unknowns. Everybody’s trying to plan for an unknown future. If we knew what it was, it would be a lot easier to plan for it. We’ve already witnessed significant losses this semester with housing, parking and dining…