This trailblazing leader envisions a stronger university with a smaller footprint

The cabin belonged to Bichelmeyer’s great-grandparents, and her father was born there. Bichelmeyer enrolled at KU as the youngest of 10 children and a first-generation college student, and she went on to earn four degrees, culminating in a doctorate in educational communications and technology. After working at other universities for two decades, she returned to her alma mater in 2020 to serve as provost and executive vice chancellor.

Bichelmeyer sees her journey from humble beginnings to the provost’s office at a major research institution as a testament to the promise of public universities, and she wants to preserve that promise for future generations. She displays the sketch not so much as a family memento, but more as a reminder that KU is a relatively recent, and potentially fleeting, presence on the hill. “This campus wasn’t here 160 years ago,” she says. “In another 160 years, we don’t want Mount Oread to go back to being empty. We need to serve as stewards. Our job is to keep the campus moving.”

Note that she didn’t say her job is to keep the campus growing. KU expanded for decades to meet a seemingly endless demand for more classrooms, office space, and research facilities. The university’s previous master plan, completed in 2014, called for 40 major building projects totaling more than $700 million. But soon after Bichelmeyer returned to campus, she and her teams discovered a $50 million structural deficit, a deferred maintenance burden totaling more than $750 million, and about 900,000 square feet of excess square footage. And like many U.S. universities, KU is confronting a demographic cliff, financial challenges, hybrid learning, and the uncertainties of climate change.

As she and other leaders began the master planning process for the next decade, they realized calling for continued growth would be irresponsible. “We were facing all these challenges and it became apparent that our job wasn’t to catch up to where other people were,” she says. “We had to leapfrog into the future.” That meant right-sizing, or responsibly shrinking KU’s footprint, which had never been attempted. Like her great-grandparents, Bichelmeyer and her colleagues would be trailblazers.

They knew measures like mothballing, selling, or razing underused buildings would likely stir up strong emotions, so they prioritized gathering data to inform and support a logical plan. “We can’t make good decisions if we don’t know the facts, and we can only do that through data,” Bichelmeyer says. “What do we know? How do we prioritize based on that knowledge and our strategic plan? And how do we move to act on those priorities?”

They engaged a team of architects and planners to collect and synthesize data and propose solutions. Following an 18-month process that involved compiling and analyzing existing facilities’ department data and gathering input from students, faculty, staff, and alumni, the design team created a three-part toolkit to help guide KU’s transition to a smaller, safer, more welcoming, and more cohesive campus environment.

The resulting master plan proposes only three new building projects over the next decade instead of the dozens called for in past plans. Rather than promoting growth, it provides a guide to identifying and divesting from underperforming assets, which allows leaders to focus on mission-critical goals like accessibility, discovery, education, and technology. Perhaps most importantly, it builds on the university’s existing strengths, enhancing spaces that reinforce the emotional connections students, faculty, and staff feel for their campus.

Such a dramatic departure from tradition can be intimidating, Bichelmeyer says, but she’s proud that KU is embracing a more sustainable future. “I could not be more excited about it. I love that students and faculty and staff brought their voices to say, ‘This is what we want this place to be.’ It’s truly a spirit of stewardship.”