Charting a course toward One KU Research

Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

The One KU initiative strives to better align all KU campuses and position us to work more collaboratively in pursuing our mission of research, education and service.

To facilitate this transformation for research administration across KU Lawrence and KU Medical Center, we launched the One KU Research Administration Council in August 2025 and empowered its members to catalyze collaborative research administration excellence across the University of Kansas. The council established a mission, vision and guiding principles/core behaviors at its kickoff retreat that provide a strategic framework for future change.

This framework will serve as the lens through which we study challenges and opportunities, devise solutions and take action — all in collaboration with fellow research community members, whose engagement will be critical to our collective success.

We encourage you to visit the One KU Research website to review the framework, which also defines the scope, key goals and membership of the One KU Research Administration Council. The site will serve as a repository for regular updates on One KU research progress, which will be shared in existing newsletters, targeted email messages and elsewhere.

If you receive an invitation to participate in a work group, share feedback via survey or listening session, provide data or use cases, or some other form of engagement — we hope you will accept and be candid. Your needs and aspirations will drive the design of our newly integrated research ecosystem.

We want to draw particular attention to the principles and core behaviors that will guide our work.

Guiding principles

Foundational beliefs that shape how we organize operations and make decisions:

  • Researcher-centered service excellence: Design services and support models that prioritize the needs of researchers while minimizing administrative burden.
  • Regulatory & ethical compliance: Maintain the highest standards of compliance, ethics and accountability across all functions.
  • Collaboration: Foster cross-campus partnership to promote clarity, fairness, cohesion and reliability across the KU system.
  • Consistency: Apply uniform policies, messaging, systems and practices to create a cohesive research administration and client service experience.

Core behaviors

Ways of operating that guide how we execute our mission, vision and guiding principles — the compass for One KU Research Administration Council behavior and engagement with our teams and communities:

  • Transparency: Ensure open communication and clear processes that build trust and support informed decision-making.
  • Accountability: Uphold shared responsibility for actions and outcomes through clear expectations and responsible data collection and reporting.
  • Continuous improvement: Commit to ongoing evaluation and enhancement of processes, structures and outcomes.
  • Employee satisfaction: Everyone should feel valued, engaged and fulfilled/able to thrive.

We will return again and again to these principles and behaviors as we work with you to align and enhance research administration across the One KU enterprise in service of growing and sustaining KU research. Please let us know if you have questions or suggestions.

Thank you for your partnership.

Respectfully, 
Matthias & Shelley

Matthias Salathe
Chief Research Officer

Shelley Hooks
Vice Chancellor for Research