PHOTO COURTESY DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY

Serving nearly a decade as the 13th president of Duquesne University, Ken Gormley has announced he is stepping down from that position in 2026. But then he’ll take on a new role as chancellor to work with his successor and to help steer the Catholic university, which serves nearly 8,200 graduate and undergraduate students, into the future.

Here are nine facts (including a few lesser-known ones) about this native Pittsburgher.

• On his first day as university president on July 1, 2016, Gormley launched the IGNITE fund-raising campaign, with the goal of bringing in a third-of-a-billion dollars in 10 years. Six months before that deadline, it surpassed that goal — raising more than a record-breaking $335 million. Part of this has funded the university’s new College of Osteopathic Medicine, which opened in 2024. Other funds are going to dramatically enrich the law school; to develop or renovate learning spaces; to support programs, faculty, endowed scholarships and financial aid; to renovate the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse; to bulk up the endowment; and more.
• He started his undergraduate studies at University of Pittsburgh as a math major, according to a first-person account published in 2020 in Pittsburgh Quarterly.
• He wrestled a 900-pound bear in a sportsman’s show at the Civic Arena so he could write about it in his experiential column, “The Undercover Reporter,” in the Pitt News.
• He received his JD from Harvard University and later served seven years as dean of the Duquesne University Law School. He has continued teaching law as university president.
• He served as mayor of Forest Hills from 1998-2001.
• A constitutional scholar, he has written several nonfiction books, including “Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation” in 1997, about the special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. He also published a novel in 2021, “The Heiress of Pittsburgh,” which is part legal thriller and part love letter to his hometown.
• He met his future wife, Laura, at a Jimmy Buffet concert in New Jersey in 1984. They have four children and five grandchildren and have lived in the same house in Forest Hills for more than 35 years.
• He’s the first president in Duquesne’s history to have children attend the university or be wed there in the school chapel.
• He turns 70 on Wednesday, March 19.