The Backpage Interview Series

By Tim Faust & Eric Doctor     11/20/08 6:00pm

You know the guy who seems to run every club meeting you go to on campus? In a couple of decades, he'll be Kevin Kirby. Dr. Kirby, the VP for Administration, oversees almost every campus project you could imagine. He met the Backpage at the South Plant on Wednesday to chat about moustaches, the Predator aircraft, why he loves Rice and the Green Bay Packers.BP: We dug up the photo you had when you came to Rice in 2005. You used to have a pretty formidable moustache [see inset]. Where'd it go?

KK: I graduated high school when I was 16. When I went to work I was always the youngest person in the room for the first 15 years of my career, so I grew a mustache right when I got out of college to look older. My family had never seen me without it, so I let each of my sons shave off half apiece so they could see what I looked like. It makes me look younger than I really am.

BP: Have you ever experimented with other types of facial hair?

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KK: No, no beard.

The son of a chemistry professor with an ardent love for languages, Kevin Kirby grew up all over America. As an undergraduate at Syracuse studying chemical engineering, Kirby's research centered around the transfer of fluids between placental membranes. Though it was a "massive failure," Kirby was "hooked on research" and kept it up for seven years. After graduation, he worked on low-temperature materials for infrared sensors in night vision devices. Kirby eventually got a job in the military and was involved in the development of some really interesting technologies.

KK: I found a program where I would go out into the field with the Army .... I worked for the guy who ran the Army in the United States. I spent two years as his science adviser. It was great fun.

BP: What did you work on?

KK: I actually think it's a lot like what I do now. I think that ideas are relatively easy but implementing something is not. So, you see, while universities are places of ideas, actually getting something done at a university is hard .... That's one of the things I liked about this job - in research, most things would take eight, ten, twelve years to go from research to the field. When I was a science adviser I would do something that could be immediately used. I did some work for the Special Forces who would jump out of airplanes with shoulder-to-air missiles-

BP: Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?

KK: No, no. When you jump out of an airplane holding a big cylinder it's like a wing: you take off. We were trying to devise a little contraption where they could jump out without landing someplace they didn't want to go. We worked on things like that. Whenever you're wearing NBC gear - Nuclear/Biological/Chemical gear - you're all wrapped up. It's very hard to talk even over just a few feet, so we made some devices [to fix that]... Practical, hands-on things.

BP: After that advisory position, you worked under Ronald Reagan in the president's science adviser's office.

KK: Yeah, he was a guy named Tom Rooney.

BP: Did you work on STAR WARS?

KK: I worked on some things like that, yeah. I spent a lot of time working on sensors. A big part of what you would call STAR WARS are sensors. We spent a lot of time and money working on sensor technologies.

BP: Did it go anywhere?

KK: Oh yeah. Yeah. We worked on a project that, at the time it was classified - it's not anymore - used in Iraq and Afghanistan now. The Predator. At the time it was classified about what its capabilities were, but that was 20 years ago. So those things have very sophisticated sensor packages on them.

The MQ-1 Predator, formerly the RQ-1 Predator, is a remote-controlled unmanned drone that was originally designed for medium-altitude surveillance and reconnaisance. Variations of the Predator have been designed for everything from customs and border security to search and rescue.

BP: Wow, the Predator. So, you ever shoot a gun?

KK: No. No, I don't like guns.

BP: So you like the Army but you don't like guns.

KK: Yeah. There are lots of misconceptions about the military. One is that they like to kill people; that they like to fight. That's true for a tiny segment of the population, but for the most part they don't. The military is also one of the most highly educated work forces you'll ever come across .... 80 percent of all the general officers have advanced degrees, masters or Ph.Ds, because of their training ....

There's a view that the Army is very regimented and hierarchical, and that's true during peace time a bit, but during war it's very entrepreneurial. That's what drove the Russians crazy; it's that we were highly unpredictable in battle. Back in the '70s and '80s [after the Vietnam War], the military was not regarded the way it is today .... I viewed that what I was doing was good for the country and helped to save people's lives.

But I hate guns. I've never owned a gun, never fired a gun. I've had a chance to shoot a tank and things like that, but never done that either. I'd be terrible in paintball or whatever [Assistant to the Dean of Undergraduates] Matt [Taylor] said I'd be good at. I guess I'd be good at planning it.

When George H. W. Bush came into office, Kirby decided to go back to school. His boss at the time was a Sloan Fellow - a graduate of the one-year MBA program at MIT - and suggested that Kirby enter the program.

KK: When I first went to school, I couldn't wait to get out. I was younger than everybody else. I had never had a beer in high school, I wasn't shaving until I got into college. I was just younger than everybody else. I was pretty immature; I had never had a date.

BP: You sound like a Rice guy.

KK: It was a struggle. I did a lot of growing up in college, and I was just so happy to be out of college and go to work. But I was addicted to school when I went back. And when I went back the second time, another dozen years later, I loved it. All of my classmates were taking four or five classes, and I was taking eight or nine classes. I didn't want to leave! That's when I knew I really wanted to get back into higher education... I think people ought to keep going back to school. I think everybody ought to do that. You're never too old to keep going back to school, and learning; it's just a great joy to learn. I loved going back to school.

BP: Other than school, what did you do for fun?

KK: Before my kids were born, I played sports all the time. In school, out of school, after college, all year round. Tennis, basketball, softball, soccer, football, everything... In football I used to play cornerback. New York City in the '70s when I was growing up was going bankrupt. My school closed at 2 every day because they wanted to save on utilities. No football team, no after school clubs, no chess clubs. It was pretty grim. I ran track and field and played tennis, played paddleball. I played intramural football in college and used to play cornerback.

BP: Do you have a preferred NFL team?

KK: I've been a Green Bay Packers fan for my whole life. I get the NFL Sunday Package, which is every NFL game every weekend. I get it just so I can watch the Green Bay game. This fall, we were playing Southern Miss, where Favre went. [Athletics Director] Chris Del Conte was negotiating with them to play our game in Green Bay at Lambeau Field so they could retire Brett Favre's number in Green Bay. I thought "Oh man! I'm going to Green Bay!" It's a great city.

Tim, who lives 20 minutes out of Green Bay, decided to change the course of the interview, while Doc, a Redskins fan, moped.

Tim: This weekend against the Bears... We pulverized 'em! I would have loved to see it live! I had to watch Gametracker.

KK: Oh, it was great. I actually had to do interviews [for the Collaborative Research Center head], but I watched it when I got home on TiVo. I also watched it on my phone.

BP: What's on your TiVo schedule?

KK: Well, Green Bay Packers every weekend. My kids and I watch "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory," too.

BP: If you had to buy a Packers jersey today, whose jersey would you get?

KK: If I was getting one today, I'd get Charles Woodson, since I was a cornerback. Number 21.

While we were on the topic of general life advice, Kirby asked us if we'd like to hear an "interesting story." Of course, we said yes.

KK: So this is about leaving yourself open to possibilities, which I think is important for everybody. One of the great things about the Sloan Fellows program is that almost every week you get to sit down and have dinner with a Fortune 500 CEO. One night I was having dinner with Bob Campbell, the CEO of Sun Oil, a Fortune 50 Company. He was a Sloan Fellow in 1978 .... When he came back, it was the second of the big oil shocks in the country and [Sun Oil] made him the vice president in charge of human resources.

It was a time when they were laying off a third of their workforce, restructuring the industry, and so he said it wasn't just an ordinary time to be in human resources, it was an extraordinary time to be there. He said to us, "That was probably the best job I ever had in preparing me to be the CEO. Because I learned a lot about the importance of people and how you manage people in organizations. I never want to do that for a living, but for two years that was the best job I ever had."

I told my boss that when I got back, and he said, "Oh, yeah yeah yeah, okay, that's nice." So about four or five months later he fired our head of human resources, and he came to me and said, "Remember that story you told me? ...Are you interested in running HR?" I knew nothing about HR! It made a big impression on how I am today by - I've been pretty much a subject matter expert in every job I'd been in... but all of a sudden I was in the world of human resources... and for the first time in my life I had to depend on everyone around me.

I don't think I made a single decision by myself in that two-year period. Not one. Because I wasn't competent to make one. So that changed my style about how I interacted with people. So, like today, I make very few decisions. And I found that - most people think good leaders are very decisive. In fact, I think good leaders make very few decisions. I think David Leebron is quite extraordinary, but he makes far fewer decisions than people think.

BP: Then who makes decisions here?

KK: It depends. As long as you set the context and the philosophy, and you hire really smart people who are in tune with what you're trying to do, you let them make the decisions. I make a lot of decisions that a president might normally make. Or Barbara Bryson, who's in charge of FE&P, makes a lot of decisions about, for example, [South Plant] that I might normally make. But I don't think I made a single decision [about South Plant]. I think I might have made one about this fence. The height of the fence. (Laughs)

BP: Who decided the color?

KK: The architect.

Kirby showed us around the exterior of South Plant. The side of the plant that faces Wiess is composed of several increasingly-larger brick rectangles. Kirby explained to us that this entire side of South Plant followed a Fibonacci series. Wikipedia it. We asked him to tell us more about South Plant.

KK: The architect for this building is a guy named Antoine Predock, who did Dell Butcher a couple of decades ago and, last year, won the highest award in architecture. And I asked him, "Why do you want to do this project, Antoine? It's a power plant. Why does one of the great architects in the world want to do a power plant?" And he said, "Oh, this is going to be a very sexy project." That's when I started to get scared. And then his first rendering looked like this beautiful wilderness setting, and he had that bizarre smokestack coming up, and he said he was inspired by ancient Roman ruins, and so he said we'd have Saint Joe brick ruins. He's very mathematically oriented, so he's the one that came up with the idea for the Fibonacci sequence.

Kirby came to Rice in February of 2006. We asked him about his initial impressions of the campus.

KK: I fell in love with this campus the first time I saw it. I found out that - if you guys don't know this, it's really quite extraordinary - that our grounds crew and our custodians here have a mission statement: to make a positive first impression. I don't know any grounds crew or custodians anywhere in the country that have a mission statement. And these guys, they read business books. They teach English to each other, because many of them are Spanish-speaking .... They're reading business books like Good to Great, which you would read in business school, and they've got a mission statement.

And so, these guys - that is the secret of our recruiting. It's hard to get people to Houston sometimes... but I came on the campus, and I was just stunned at how beautiful it was. [On my first day], I met with all of the grounds crew and [thanked them for helping recruit me.] I'm not the only one, there are hundreds of us here. So they're our ambassadors. This is just a great institution. I'd send somebody here - I'd send my kids here before I'd send them any place. And [the grounds crew] has been doing green stuff for years. You can drink every one of the chemicals they use to clean on this campus, and at worst get a small tummy ache.

BP: Is that a bet?

KK: Yes.

He mentioned that he was supposed to first visit Rice in the fall of 2005 but was bumped by Hurricane Rita.

BP: You know, The Dalai Lama's first trip to Rice was also going to be during Rita, and as you know he had to reschedule as well. How else would you say that you are similar to the Dalai Lama?

KK: I have no idea. When he did end up coming, he came here on my birthday, so I convinced my younger son that the reason we got the Dalai Lama to come to Rice was to celebrate my birthday. He believed me.

BP: That's a hard act to follow. Are you an associate at a college?

KK: I am! Last night I was at the Will Rice Associates' Dinner. I go over there every once in a while, and I really like it. That's why people like me really like working here; we like the students. Otherwise there's no point [in working at a school].

BP: You seem to be really really happy about the direction Rice is heading. How long can you see yourself here?

KK: I came here because of the Vision for the Second Century. I'm terrible at jobs where everything seems static, and there's no change agenda; I get quickly bored. I'll probably be here so long as things are exciting, changing, and I can be in the middle of it .... The nice thing about this job is that you get to hire some really great architects. There are some buildings on campus, well - Wiess College is a disaster. But there aren't many on this campus. I've been on many college campuses, and the quality of the buildings, the architecture, how they're maintained - much better here than elsewhere.

BP: Can we quote you on that? "Wiess College is a disaster?"

KK: Absolutely.

BP: Last, but certainly not least: If there were an all-administration, all-Lovett Hall laser tag match, who do you think would win?

KK: Well, they've got Scott Wise, in Investments. He played baseball, he's a good athlete. Could they get Robin [Forman]'s son to play? He's a stud. Eleven years old. I'm surprised you haven't heard Robin talk about him. He'd be great. He'd probably kill the rest of us. At Allen Center? We'd field a draw. It'd be boring. Have to get Athletics involved to make it interesting.

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