On a June day in 2002, Roy Jensen, a pathologist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, was back home in the Kansas City environs, taking his young sons to basketball camp in Lawrence.
Bill Self, KU’s just-recruited men’s basketball coach, happened to walk through the gym’s door and Jensen, a basketball fanatic, was talking with him.
“I’m like living the dream, baby. I’m talking to Bill Self. You know, his first day on the job, first day in Lawrence, and I am having a great time,“ Jensen said, reconstructing the day’s events.
Just then, Jensen’s cell phone rang.
“Boy, I really don’t want to take this phone call, because I’m having a lot of fun here, but my wife was out on an errand that day, and so, just in case something had happened, I didn’t want to miss a call. And it was from the (913) area code.”
Jensen took the call. It was Barbara Atkinson, executive dean and vice chancellor for clinical affairs of the KU School of Medicine.
“So, I excused myself from Bill Self and started talking to Barbara Atkinson about the possibility of taking a look at the KU Cancer Center job. And that conversation went well, and at the end of it, I said, ‘Oh, by the way, would you like me to come by this afternoon?’”
Atkinson’s objective was to find someone gutsy enough to take on the task of securing an NCI designation over five years. To accomplish this, KU was willing to commit around $29 million—not even remotely enough.
As negotiations ensued, Jensen was adamant about one aspect of his recruitment package: a “hunting license,” i.e. a commitment that he would be allowed to raise money without having to pay the “dean’s tax.”
“Because I had seen things happen at Vanderbilt, where the director had gone out and raised money, and by some miracle the cardiology division had a new clinic, things like that, I just said, ‘I want no dean’s tax, and every dollar that gets raised for cancer gets spent on cancer—no, if, and, or buts. And I got a solid yes, absolutely, no question about it.”
This proved to be a sound strategic move.
It’s doubtful that anyone could have attained an NCI designation in five years, especially with all the setbacks, political battles and an economic crisis, but Jensen did accomplish the task in eight years.
“I told folks when I arrived that it would be a five-year process. And I think I largely adhered to that, if you cut me two years of slack, because of the civil war [between the hospital CEO and the dean of the medical school] and one year of slack because of the Great Recession,” Jensen said.
