IMS Global: Serving as president of an American university today is a daunting task. What are some of the challenges you face that keep you up at night?

JK: There's a long list of things I worry about depending on the day and the circumstances. Clearly I worry about the financial situation and our ability to maintain quality. We in California, like every other state, recently went through a period of budget cuts that are a normal, cyclical part of public higher education. Shortly after I arrived here, I went through one year without budget cuts and then we had four years with budget cuts. Coming up with the bottom line that we need in order to offer quality is really a critical issue. However, universities must also face the reality that these budget cuts represent a level of funding that never will be restored in its entirety.

Other things I worry about include the increasing call for different kinds of accountability in higher education that we are not usually accustomed to providing. I think we're going to be called upon to demonstrate that students learn in ways that we haven't been required to do in the past. There are personnel issues that worry me and, of course, security in the wake of the incident at Virginia Tech. This is my own personal idiosyncrasy, but when I go to sleep at night, it's often the first time I have an opportunity to review the interaction I have had with others during the course of the day. I want to make sure that I'm treating people well and with respect. There's always a balance between being decisive and clear, and recognizing the fact that I'm working with people who care deeply about the university. There's never a moment in the day that I'm not the president of this university and it's important for me as a person to be sure that I'm ethical and responsible-for me, that means making sure that I'm being decent with the people I work with.

IMS Global: You've worked in higher education throughout your career. What changes do you see coming? What is higher education going to look like 20 years from now?

JK: I think there's going to be a lot more flexibility in the how, the delivery of higher education. I think there's going to be a lot more variability in the types of institutions people can choose from. There's going to be a lot more sophistication in shaping learning in universities to fit what we know about how learning occurs. Some of that is going to be done in partnership with technological tools, but the driver is not necessarily going to be technology. The driver is going to be that we understand how people learn. I think certification, which is what the degree represents, is not going to go away. That will continue to be important.

IMS Global: If you had not become an academician, what discipline would you have pursued? And why?

JK: I'll tell what realistically would probably have been my vocation and what would have been my Walter Mitty fantasy. If I hadn't been in academe, I believe I would have worked in a large corporation in human resources. My academic discipline is communication and I've always had a very strong interest in that discipline. I use my communication background in my job as president on a daily basis.

The fantasy is that I would have become a professional tennis player (laughs). I think tennis is a wonderful sport. I never did anything athletic as I was growing up because I was a klutz. In my mid 20s, I started playing tennis for the first time and it was a wonderful experience. I absolutely loved it. I never was good enough to have been a professional, but I think it would have been wonderful to have had that much physical grace and focus.