Student life exec to retire after four decades of selfless service
Kathie Stanley has prioritized students, colleagues and the institution since enrolling in 1982
It was 2007 and Robin Holmes-Sullivan, just beginning as vice president for student life, was caught up in hand-wringing as she weighed whether to make some tough changes. Would they go over? Would her team resist? What if she failed?
Kathie Stanley, her chief of staff, was having none of it. “We were in this meeting together and Kathie gets out a piece of paper and she writes, ‘It’s a new day,’ and slides it in front of me on the desk,” said Holmes-Sullivan, laughing. “She was basically saying, ‘Hey, you said you wanted to make a change. You need to buck up and take control of the situation and make it happen.’”
Holmes, now president of Lewis & Clark College, kept that piece of paper — and a fond memory of Stanley’s impact. “She was saying, ‘I believe in you,’” Holmes-Sullivan said. “It was huge in helping me become the leader I needed to become. I will always be grateful to her for that.”
Kathie Stanley came to the University of Oregon as a student in 1982 and never left. The chief of staff in student life has dedicated most of her life to the institution and now, with Stanley’s coming retirement June 30, many are expressing gratitude for a woman who for more than four decades has prioritized students while lifting those around her to new heights.
“Kathie’s love for this institution is so evident,” said Angela Lauer Chong, vice president for student life. “She’s stayed at the university for so long and built her career here because of her deep, deep love for the University of Oregon. This is not just a job for her. This is her community.”
“Goldilocks” school drew her
Kathie arrived at the UO in fall 1982 from North Bend, with Brian Stanley — her then boyfriend, now her husband of almost 40 years. What drew them then draws people to the university today: location and size.
“We came from a smaller town and the UO is an hour from the coast, an hour to the mountains, two hours or less to Portland,” Stanley said. “It afforded the opportunity to have the small school and smaller-town feel and for us that felt comfortable. It’s easier to navigate because it’s not like going to a school that has 80,000 students — it’s the opportunity to not feel like a number, to feel like people care about you.”
If that sounds like a recruitment pitch, it comes from the heart: Stanley has been recruiting students to the UO for decades — since she was a student herself, in fact.
A public relations major, Stanley also worked part-time as a tour guide. The admissions office picked up on her enthusiasm for the university and soon Stanley was helping with recruitment a couple weeks each year and even returning to the south coast to share the UO experience with students at her high school.
Jim Buch, director of admissions, could tell Stanley “had a lot on the ball,” he said, and after her graduation he gave Stanley her first full-time job, as his assistant. It proved pivotal for her; Stanley’s growth in the job sparked in her a philosophy about career development that guides her to this day: give people the support they need, she said, to “go be great.”
Buch and Stanley first connected over triplets — she’s a triplet and Buch has triplets. But what really struck Buch was his assistant’s similarity to a character on the 1970s sitcom MASH: Cpl. Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, who had an other-worldly ability to resolve Lt. Col. Henry Blake’s concerns, sometimes before he even knew he had them.
“Kathie was always a step ahead of me,” Buch said. “She was always anticipating. She paid attention to what was going on around her. She didn’t focus on just the one tree — she looked at the whole forest.”
Stanley noted, for example, that UO tours for prospective students and their families could be improved by being more intentional about the route, stops and, importantly, training the guides to ensure consistency — delivery of the same experience for every family.
Over the years, as Buch and other leaders offered Stanley more responsibility, she readily accepted. “I remember Jim saying, ‘We may open doors for you, but you have to walk through them,’” Stanley said. “I’m eternally grateful for the doors that were opened for me, but I’m also eternally proud of my ability to walk through them.”
And walk through them she has, in positions that have risen steadily to the upper echelons of administration: assistant to the associate vice president for enrollment management; budget and personnel administrator in student affairs; chief of staff to the vice president for student affairs; assistant vice president and chief of staff for student affairs; and today associate vice president and chief of staff for student life.
So what does a chief of staff do, exactly? Wikipedia says this person heads a complex organization and “deals with issues” so the chief executive doesn’t have to. Indeed, Stanley calls herself a “firefighter.”
But for Chong, vice president for student life, in thinking about Stanley what comes to mind first aren’t the fires her chief of staff extinguishes — it’s the historical context Stanley provides as Chong charts a course for the division. Chong recently restructured the division to align with the university’s strategic goals; in doing so, she was able to tap four decades of institutional background available just one office over.
“Having Kathie in the chief of staff role has really accelerated my education,” Chong said, laughing. “She’s been able to balance the knowledge of how it’s been done in student life with understanding that we have opportunities to do things differently.”
Stanley has brought that fresh thinking to her role with the Tuition and Fee Advisory Board, which reviews tuition and fees each year and makes recommendations to the president for rates that will be manageable for students. She was crucial to the creation of a program in 2020 that distinguishes the UO on the national landscape: the Oregon Guarantee, which provides each undergraduate UO student fixed tuition and fees for up to five years, regardless of inflation.
“Developing the program was a two-year effort and Kathie was a critical part of the team that really worked hard to figure out our parameters and get it set up,” said Jamie Moffitt, senior vice president for finance and administration. “She has this unique position where she really understands the students and works closely with them and also understands the administrative view and how to balance all of that.”
You won’t necessarily hear Stanley extolling her role with the hallmark program; some who know her say she has steadfastly focused not on promoting herself but on lifting others. “She’s not one who’s ever going to say, ‘Hey, look at me, look at what I did,’” said Kevin Marbury, former student life vice president, who supervised Stanley from 2016 to 2022. “She was always there to be supportive of you and to help you do what you do even better.”
Consider Amanda Rosenberg, Stanley’s executive assistant, who cites Stanley’s approach to supervision as a reason Rosenberg has stayed with the UO for nine years. “She has propelled me forward,” said Rosenberg, who has been promoted twice and now also serves as director of human resources for student life. “She gives us the tools and the skills we need to be successful wherever we go, which is an incredibly selfless way to supervise someone.”
Or Michelle Brown, associate director for enterprise device management, who was a student when Stanley hired her to build webpages and, over the years, rose to management under Stanley’s mentorship. “She instilled in me a deep appreciation for the student experience,” Brown said. “We’re not just pumping out degrees, we’re trying to raise up whole humans who are going to make the world a better place. I always felt under her leadership that we were going to do the thing that brought the most value to the students.”
Or Erika Swanson, who worked with Stanley from 2013 to 2018 as director of parent and family programs and is now a philanthropy officer for PeaceHealth. “She held a mirror up to her employees and said, ‘This is what you bring to the table, and this is how I can help you,’” Swanson said. “I’ve drawn on the confidence she gave me to feel very prepared to step into any discussion with any person at any level and know that I can navigate that. She doesn’t do things to climb a professional ladder, she does them because they’re right. She always was the first to celebrate someone’s journey, whether an employee or a student.”
Student life always top of mind
Reflecting on her long career at the UO, Stanley said it all goes back to the students.
In the early years, working in recruitment and admissions, it was about creating in new students the same excitement she felt for the promise of the UO. Over time, as she has risen within the institution, it’s been about ensuring that the UO delivers on that promise.
Stanley, who recently turned 60, said she feels great about the decision to retire. She is very satisfied with the contribution she has made to the university over the last four decades and she’s confident the UO will continue to thrive, provided it maintains the focus that always guided her.
“My hope for the institution after I’m gone is that it continues to remember that it is here to help students have these transformative experiences that they can use for the rest of their lives,” Stanley said. “If the University of Oregon never forgets that, we’ll be fine.”