Sustainability, Next-Generation Workforce Top Priorities for Kent State Facility Executive

12/3/2024

Doug Pearson is a man of many talents. In his work life they include facility management, teacher, writer and author.  

When he finds time away from his many responsibilities at Kent State University in Ohio, Pearson keeps active as a macrame and amateur lapidary artist. 

“I call him a Renaissance man,” says Melody Tankersley, the university’s senior vice president and provost. “He has so many experiences and he is so knowledgeable about so many things.” 

Tankersley was part of the search committee that brought Pearson to Kent State in April 2018. During the six-plus years since Pearson came aboard, it’s clear the university has been happy with its hire. 

“I just think it’s rare to find someone with as many skills and as much knowledge as Doug has and being able to pull it together and draw upon it so well,” she says. “We trust him so much." 

Reaching a goal 

Pearson has experienced it all during a nearly 40-year career in facilities management. He’s worked in all kinds of markets, including government, the private sector, healthcare and K-12 school districts – including the Madison Metropolitan School District in his home state of Wisconsin — before finding his way to higher education in 2010 at a nearby technical college. 

After four years at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, he moved to his current position as the associate vice president of facilities planning and operations at Kent State, a public institution with an enrollment of 30,000. 

Pearson is responsible for strategic and project planning for 10 locations, 2,500 acres and 8 million square feet while managing more than 400 employees and an annual budget of $25 million. 

Sustainability and energy conservation have always interested Pearson. That’s reflected in many projects at Kent State, where he wrote the university’s first sustainability plan, which includes implementing 9 megawatts of solar power and introducing a food waste-to-energy program. 

“Those solar installations have a guaranteed price point of two cents lower than the grid price for the 25-year lifespan of those panels,” he says. “Not only was it sustainable, but it helped to reduce our operating costs.” 

The food waste program takes food from the main campus dining halls, grinds it up and is trucked off campus to a company where it’s converted to methane that generates electricity.  

“We get a share of the profits of selling that electricity back to the grid,” Pearson says. “Those efforts, I’m certainly proud of.” 

Another recently completed project at Kent State was the opening of the $80 million College of Business, a state-of-the-art facility that is part of a $1.2 billion master plan at the school. Other projects included in that plan are a road realignment, renovations and new construction for campus buildings, a $13 million chiller plant upgrade and the completion of deferred maintenance projects. 

Tankersley credits Pearson with the creation and execution of the university-changing plan. 

“He is the architect and the contractor, the communicator and the peacekeeper,” she says of Pearson’s role. “He is the person it begins and ends with. We rely on Doug and his knowledge and experiences to guide every step of what we do in terms of our facilities.” 

The completion of the new business school allowed the university to demolish the old building, an important step as the university deals with the challenges that many public institutions are facing – including declining enrollment numbers and smaller budgets.  

How the university utilizes available space while balancing the number crunching is one of the bigger challenges Pearson and his team currently are facing. 

“We've had to take a hard look at our operating costs, particularly around square footage and how much do we actually need,” he says. “With the transition post-pandemic, we instituted more online learning. Kent State is the 16th largest public university for number of online source offerings.  

“We’re in the middle of a comprehensive space analysis to determine how many classrooms we actually need and if there’s some consolidation we can do with shared offices or docking stations, all aimed at overall reduction in our square footage.” 

Jill Jenkins is Kent State’s senior executive director for University Housing and works regularly with Pearson. Shortly after Pearson started at the university, they worked together on a facilities management implementation team to pull facilities operations into a shared model for custodial and maintenance services.  

The footprint for campus housing – 23 residence halls covering 1.5 million square feet – means Pearson’s and Jenkins’ paths cross frequently when planning capital projects and other operations. She appreciates her colleague’s ability to make tough decisions. 

“Doug is decisive and focused on the charge,” Jenkins says. “He has always had to navigate budgetary constraints with urgency. He can stand back from the way things have always been done and bring a new lens to the challenge. In his area, he has assisted with reframing work schedules, updating job descriptions and expectations to meet the campus needs while addressing budget cuts.” 

Communication is key 

While technical skills are necessary for a career in facilities management, Pearson also wants his technicians and managers to think beyond and develop their people skills to enhance their careers. He credits that emphasis for boosting his own career. 

“You work with a lot of skilled tradesmen who know technically how to deal with HVAC and electrical, roofing and all the building components, but I believe the vast majority of my job is dealing with people and personalities,” he says. “I’ve tried not to focus not only on my skills, but my staff’s skills in those human aspects, their level of emotional intelligence, their ability to engage in active listening skills.” 

Pearson, a 2022 Facility Champion, cares so much about the human side of the industry that he wrote a book about it. In 2021, he published “What Really Matters. A Guide to the Human Aspect of Successful Facilities Management.”  

As the title suggests, the human aspect is an important part of the profession, whether it involves selling projects and initiatives to the C-Suite or effectively communicating with staff members, other community leaders and students and university faculty. 

“Businesses expect facility managers to lead in a variety of ways – technically, socially, during times of crisis, and during change,” Pearson wrote during the book’s introduction.  

Handing the baton to the next generation of facilities workers is a passion project for Pearson, so much so that he’s working that topic into a second edition of his book. 

“I’ve certainly learned a lot during the whole process, and I see some things I can improve on,” he says of book writing. “One topic I’m adding is the current workforce and the challenges that we face, the lack of qualified people, and what it takes to hire good people.” 

Pearson’s position requires him to communicate with university leaders, students, peers, and employees under his leadership. In the city of Kent, with a population of just over 27,000, the university and city work closely together on many projects that benefit both entities. 

Dave Ruller, Kent’s city manager, is a regular partner when the city and university collaborate on projects. Ruller and Pearson worked together to build an outdoor ice rink during the COVID-19 pandemic when social distancing was the norm. 

“This was a first of its kind project in Kent, and Doug was masterful in building it from scratch to great acclaim,” says Ruller, who also joins Pearson as part of a senior leadership team for city and university collaborations. “The community rink was a big hit with community family members and students. Doug deserves a lot of credit for figuring out how to pull this off in an area that was highly visible but not designed for an ice rink.” 

Ruller and Pearson are working together on a $25 million road safety and beautification project that will reconfigure Main Street, which runs along the entrance to Kent State’s campus. Ruller's also hopes to replicate the university’s approach to solar power for the city. 

“His results on managing projects are consistently excellent, and that doesn’t happen by chance,” Ruller says. “It’s a credit to his ability to manage complex projects in a timely and effective way. Doug has an exceptional ability to plan the work and work the plan, with equal attention to the small details and the bigger picture.  

“There’s an art to the science of multi-tasking the many competing layers of projects, and Doug always seems to hit his mark to the benefit of the university and the community.” 

Doug, the teacher 

As if his contributions to the university as a facility executive weren’t enough, Pearson also finds time to teach freshman orientation at Kent State. 

“Dr. Doug” obtained a Ph.D. in Business Administration about the time when he realized facility management involves more than construction projects and asset management. He says the Ph.D. has helped open a lot of career doors.  

“A lot of leadership in higher education, they have Ph.D.’s,” he says. “I believe that when there’s a desirable position like the one here, and that those in human resources who do the first call on applications, when they’re wading out by degrees, they see that Ph.D. and it means a lot.” 

Pearson previously taught project and operations management courses at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. 

“I wanted to get a stronger connection with the customers that I served on campus,” Pearson says of the teaching experience at La Crosse. “Teaching is not an easy profession.” 

Kent State’s freshman orientation is a mandatory one-credit class that helps orientate new students on campus. His students are enrolled in the School of Architecture, so he takes them to construction sites, where they can talk with site superintendents and get a feel for the profession. 

It’s experiences like this that prove how much Pearson, though entrenched in a successful facilities career, continues to find ways to stay motivated and engaged. 

“Particularly here at Kent State, but at all my facility management jobs, I’ve always enjoyed the diversity of the work and that any day I come in, I could be dealing with 10 different problems that I had no idea I was going to deal with when I got up in the morning,” he says. “That keeps me excited and keeps me interested and gives me the opportunity to have a bunch of small successes instead of looking to one large success.” 

Dave Lubach is the executive editor for the facilities market. He has nine years of experience writing on facility management and maintenance issues.