Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Melissa Frederick has accepted the position of Vice President for Human Resources and Chief Human Resources Officer at the University of Kentucky. Her first day in this critical position will be June 1.

As many of you know, Melissa currently serves as Associate Vice President for Human Resources at UK HealthCare, a position she has held since 2021. During that time, she has played a key role as one of the leaders charged with developing a workforce plan to address current staffing needs, while also projecting for future growth.

As we reported to the Board of Trustees last month, UK HealthCare anticipates hiring an additional 5,000 full-time health professionals over the next several years. This increase is necessary to meet our needs related to patient growth and to honor our obligations as the state’s premiere center for advanced subspecialty care.

Melissa has been our point person in helping us think through the strategies for recruiting and retaining that workforce as we continue to advance Kentucky’s health. We are a large, complex and growing university – one of the few in the country with a complete array of academic and professional colleges and programs on the same campus as a nationally recognized health system.

She is an ideal choice for this leadership position. Her understanding of our campus, the changing dynamics of health care and many of the same challenges we face in higher education more broadly will be essential in this role.

How we recruit, retain and take care of our people is a critical priority – so much so that it is one of the principles in our strategic plan. Melissa understands this priority and has made a career out of understanding workforce development needs within the context of large, interdependent and people-driven enterprises.

Prior to coming to UK, she helped lead human resources at University of Virginia (UVA) Health, an outstanding academic health enterprise.

During that time, she helped UVA Health confront COVID-19. Melissa also served as a project lead on efforts to address complex issues such as rewards redesign as well as the transformation of how Human Resource services were delivered, including tracking customer satisfaction and workload, among other things.

I am confident in Melissa’s skills and proven expertise. She is committed to public higher education, and I look forward to what she will accomplish during a time when we have so much momentum and promise in meeting our mission to advance this state in everything that we do.

I know you will join me in congratulating her as she takes on this pivotal leadership role at UK.

Thank you.

Eric N. Monday

Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration and Acting Co-Executive Vice President for Health Affairs