Tucked away in Thomas Boyd Hall, Chancellor Sean O’Keefe sat down in his half-decorated office, breathed a sigh of contented relief as his first day on the job drew to a close and spoke to The Daily Reveille about what it means to be chancellor.
O’Keefe, former head of NASA, officially took the helm of Louisiana’s flagship university Monday.
“There are a lot of similarities between being the chief administrator of NASA and being the chancellor of a university,” O’Keefe said. “You spend most of your time motivating a lot of really smart people to achieve a mission objective.”
O’Keefe said several factors went into his decision to leave his position at NASA and come to the University.
“One of the main reasons was family consideration,” O’Keefe said. “I have three kids, and my two youngest boys — one a freshman in high school and one an eighth grader — are at an age where there are some great opportunities where they can really benefit from being here.”
O’Keefe said another reason for his move was the University’s focus on reaching its goals.
“This is a chance to work for a university that has clearly thought about where it wants to go,” O’Keefe said. “At NASA, we had a wide range of objectives being pursued at once, but at a university, you only have one main objective: to provide students with the most-enriching and highest-quality education possible.”
Though O’Keefe said he is excited to be at the University, he acknowledged the challenges his new position as chancellor brings with it.
“This is a diverse institution,” O’Keefe said. “It requires a lot of outside influences from different communities, and expectations vary widely within each community. The University is viewed as a catalyst for economic development, and that is a pretty hefty task to achieve.”
O’Keefe said he wants to maintain a relationship with the students beyond simply “being visible” and has asked student leaders where he should start.
“I talked to a lot of the student leadership when I was here in December, and I really put it back to them,” O’Keefe said. “I asked them to give me ideas on where best to begin in getting to know the students.”
O’Keefe said he would like to maintain a relationship inside as well as outside the classroom.
“What I’d really like to do is get back into teaching,” he said. “I used to teach a course in technology management. Teaching has always been a fulfilling experience for me.”
After a hectic first day, spent mostly in meetings getting to know the campus and its people, O’Keefe said he is looking forward to spending more time getting to know the campus.
“My first day could not have been more fun,” O’Keefe said. “I cannot wait until football season.”