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Date: February 11, 1999
Administrator at Oregon State to Become Vice President for Facilities
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Kathleen Mulligan, director of facilities services at Oregon State University, will become vice president for facilities at Princeton University in April.
Mulligan has worked as director for facilities at Oregon State for more than 10 years, overseeing the physical plant, environmental health and safety, and facilities planning, and managing the construction program for the 420-acre main campus. During her tenure at Oregon, she instituted architectural guidelines and design criteria for building systems to safeguard and improve campus architecture. She also re-engineered internal departmental processes to improve customer service and reduce costs, in addition to establishing training programs, newsletters and surveys for facilities customers and employees.
In 1996 Mulligan received the State of Oregon Management Association Excellence in Public Service Award for Best Example of Outstanding Achievement. The award recognized her work in developing the facilities services department into a "professional, customer-oriented organization which focuses on continual improvement." That same year, she was honored by the Pacific Coast Association of Physical Plant Administrators with both the Meritorious Service Award and the President's Award.
"Kathleen Mulligan emerged from a very large pool of able and experienced candidates," according to Vice President for Finance and Administration Richard Spies, who led the search process. "As she talked with me and others involved in the interview process and as I talked with people who have worked with her at Oregon State, it became clear that she's a person of unusual breadth and an exceptional leader of people and organizations. Gene McPartland is clearly a tough act to follow, but I truly believe that Kathleen will do a terrific job and be a wonderful addition to the Princeton community."
Before going to Oregon, Mulligan spent 10 years in the California public university system: she was executive assistant to the vice president for administration at the University of California, Northridge; administrative analyst in the contracts office of the Los Angeles Community College District; and financial aid business officer at California State University, Dominguez Hills. A 1973 graduate of Memphis State University, she also earned a master of public administration degree in urban planning and management there.
"I'm looking forward to working at Princeton, a place of intense architectural beauty and traditions, with a wonderful and unique sense of community," said Mulligan. Though she'll be moving from a campus situated between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean to a location between Philadelphia and New York, she can count on at least one environmental trade-off. It rains almost daily for nine months of the year on the Northwest coast, she noted, but "When I was at Princeton in January, even though it was bitterly cold, there was crystal clear sunshine; at Oregon we call that a Kodak moment."