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GSD Episode 9: Dr. Maya Evans
55 Plays3 months ago
Dr. Maya Evans joins us to unpack her path from tenure-track faculty to institutional research to strategic leadership and why higher education often mistakes analysis for actual strategy. We explore the moments that shaped her work and the questions she believes leaders need to start asking. A focused, honest look at what it really takes to move institutions forward.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
Maya's Role and Journey in Higher Education
00:00:21
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome to Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education. I'm Kevin and joined here as always with Fritz and Kelvin. Today we have the pleasure of having a conversation with Maya Evans.
00:00:34
Speaker
Maya joins us from the University of Wisconsin, where she currently serves as a internal education consultant. And I think we're we're all going interested in hearing what what that role actually means at Wisconsin and what her role means within higher education. So so welcome, Maya. Glad to have you here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Transition to Research and Institutional Leadership
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, so usually what we just kind of do is we're just, you know, just to conversation of of you and um I'd be interested interested a little bit in your journey in higher education. I think you are a little bit like many of us where we've been inside and outside of the ivory tower, so to speak. So we'll just be kind of interested in in how you got started and how you found yourself where you are right now in your current role.
00:01:24
Speaker
That sounds good. I always joke that when people ask about your journey, you get to a certain age where you're like, all right, I got to figure out when I'm going to start this story because we can here a long time.
00:01:34
Speaker
So I'll give you I'll give you a little snippets of the the full journey. So um coming out of undergrad, I went into a Ph.D. program in political science because I was afraid to get a job.
00:01:46
Speaker
I was like like the nine to five getting up. I was like, I don't think I'm quite ready for that. And so I went into this PhD program, frankly, not knowing what I wanted to do with it.
00:01:58
Speaker
While I was in the PhD program, um I was studying, it was at University of Illinois at Chicago. was focused on urban politics, doing a lot with like political corruption. I was an intern for the inspector general in the city of Chicago. was doing all of that sort of work and I had a research assistantship, I thought.
00:02:17
Speaker
And when I showed up for the first day of the research assistantship, the the professor, there were two of us, he pointed to the gentleman and said, I have funding for you. And he pointed to me and he said, and I don't have funding for you.
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, wow. And i I had just signed a lease on it, like literally had just signed a lease on an apartment, you know all those sorts of things. And so I went home like, okay, I got to find a job. i have bills to pay.
00:02:39
Speaker
And so I started applying for jobs. And I happened to apply for and get a position as a manager of research at Oakton College, just outside of Chicago. That was an institutional research job. So was, you know, survey work, some of the stuff that I had already done. And that's how I got started in higher ed. So I say never, I never knew that I would kind of land in higher ed permanently. I didn't know that I wanted it to be a professor, but I needed to pay the bills. um And so I had the good fortune of working under Trudy Burrs, who many people know because of her work in assessment and institutional research. And so she was a great mentor and you know it was a great start for me.
00:03:18
Speaker
So was working at institutional research for quite some time from Oakton to Mount Mary University, just just in Milwaukee, from manager of research to director of institutional research. That that was kind of where I got started.
00:03:36
Speaker
But I was finishing my PhD and my advisor said, the faculty job market is horrible. Why don't you just apply? You'll probably not get anything. Just give it a shot. So I was like, all right, I guess I came here to make something out of this PhD.
00:03:50
Speaker
Let me try to do that. Went on the faculty market and ended up getting a a position at Rhodes College in Memphis as an assistant professor of political science. I have to tell, I always tell people starting as a staff member and then an administrator and then going into a tenure track faculty position is probably the worst thing you could do. Because you when you're you know you're an administrator, you know the full institution, you know everybody. It's an IR, yeah? Yes, right. You're like under the hood. You're working with everyone. And then you go to this little corner and you teach these few classes and you don't know anyone. And it was a jarring experience for me. I, Frank, I didn't, I didn't enjoy it.
00:04:30
Speaker
That's the the honest truth. And I left after year. I can ask Maya, what years, like what were the years you were in You started you you started in your higher, higher role, Oakland, got into institutional research and then made this part of your dream.
00:04:42
Speaker
So I started my role as manager of research in 2008. Okay. okay And I went into my faculty role in 2012. So
Challenges in Academic and Administrative Roles
00:04:55
Speaker
it's four years in institutional research and then jumping into the faculty position. So that's a really interesting time to be in the institutional research space because a lot was changing. i mean, I know the...
00:05:06
Speaker
Obama administration did a lot, they changed lot of things. College scorecards are appearing. The Department of Ed was very aggressive in a lot of things. Gainful employment. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then, and you know, well, there's lots of there's, and then on the context around it, you know, you're coming out of, you have, and you're, then you're coming out the great recession. You've got, you know, OPM's land, you know, the dear colleague letter. So what a really interesting time to be in institutes research and then switch into the faculty world too, as you're saying. Yeah, and when I was at Mount Mary, so I went to Rhodes from Mount Mary. Mount Mary is mainly women's, their graduate programs also serve male students, but they did not have an institutional research office. They literally had a nun who would crunch numbers when they needed numbers. So when I was hired, they were preparing for accreditation and they needed someone to they knew they would get dinged if they didn't have this IR office set up. And so I was coming in to kind of build this IR capacity at this institution that was growing and changing and then decided to leave and go be a faculty member.
00:06:13
Speaker
yeah That's interesting. Yeah, because even like, i mean, just like you starting that department is also still dependent upon your accrediting body was the switch between IR becoming institutional effectiveness, being responsible for strategic strategic planning, being responsible for assessment. It wasn't just how many enrollments we had and and in how many faculty we have, but it was it was really more of the strategic aspect. And so, yeah, that's that's interesting. I do like that you said that i'm going from administration into faculty was like, because to me it is almost like moving from this big bubble to this very, very small bubble.
00:06:52
Speaker
and where departments and colleges are very concerned with what's happening in their space because they want to make sure their students are taken care of. And sometimes the the impermeability of that bubble within the rest of the institution. So that's interesting that you kind of you actually experienced.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah. And the reward structure is so different. You know what I mean? Like the incentives, the expectations, they're entirely different And so, you know, as an administrator, it was service to the institution. It was making the whole institution better. When I joined Mount Mary, they were changing from a college to university. So there was this like college to university strategy. um They were potentially facing significant enrollment.
00:07:36
Speaker
declines and financial pressure. And so they started this sort of creative campus identity and how they could become a creative campus. So all these cool things that were happening, plus the institutional effectiveness, right, the strategic planning, all of that, um and the service to the to the institution being what motivates you and then going into faculty ranks and it's, can you get the grant? Can you produce the research? you know It's a liberal arts college, so certainly you're teaching effectiveness. And I hadn't been, um I'm gonna say trained enough to to make that that switch in the incentive structure. And so when I showed up at Rhodes, I wanted to know what was happening across the institution. And, you know, the faculty and the department are saying like, no, you're you're here to advocate for this department and what this department wants and screw everybody else. you know, us against them.
00:08:28
Speaker
Do your research. Do your community service. Serve your students. g Don't go outside of that yeah incentive structure that you then landed in. yeah um Interesting. What I think is really fascinating about your path, Maya, is that you had a very early um immersion in the holistic aspects of an institution.
00:08:52
Speaker
You know, the finances, all the things, all the streams, whether it's students, revenue, expenses, whatever, you're you're seeing the whole enterprise. And then you're pulled, then you're put, then you put, went into, not put, you went into a space that I'm not going to make a blanket statement that faculty don't know anything about how institutions are run. That's, that's a bad thing to say, but a lot don't.
00:09:13
Speaker
So you're, then you you come in with this holistic knowledge about how institutions work because you were in that. And then you come into space where they're like, m you know, we don't, don't worry about that.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yep. Don't and not even don't worry about avoid it. Avoid because this, your path requires service, teaching and research. And I'm motivated by like,
00:09:36
Speaker
Grand challenges and big problems. Like, I feel like I'm naturally motivated by that. And so when I landed into institutional research and that sort of broader institutional effectiveness, it
Strategic Initiatives and Growth at UW-Madison
00:09:46
Speaker
fed that. And then went to the faculty you're like, what is this institution that I don't know what the challenges are? i don't, you know, outside of the strategic plan, I don't know what we're marching toward. I don't know what the leaders are talking about.
00:09:58
Speaker
you know, in the cabinet meetings and I used to sit in those cabinet meetings. And so it's disorienting because you almost don't know the college or the university. You just know your, your department. And so that was, and for someone who was especially ambitious at that time, it's like, okay, where is this path going to take me? If I almost felt like I contracted, you know, my, my role and my influence. And so then I felt a little bit disoriented ah about like, where is this career going? And so,
00:10:29
Speaker
Interestingly, after that year, Oakton called and said, Trudy Burrs is retiring. Would you want to apply for the executive director of research and planning role? Would you want, you know, would you consider coming back? And that was difficult for me because a tenure track position is treated like the holy grail. Like you never give, it like you can land that, especially at that time period, great recession, you know, the hot faculty hiring was not happening. If you can land that role, you don't give that role. yeah Um, so that was also challenging to make a ah decision to leave and to leave after one year, you know, even the, the department, the department at Rhodes that, um, took a chance on me, invested in me, all of those sorts of things to say, I'm outta here. I'm not gonna do this anymore.
00:11:14
Speaker
Were they gobsmacked? Why would you leave? What are you doing? Totally. Totally. And it was hard. It was hard for me to even step away from it because. that that sort like my rationale, you know, of like, I wanna go back into kind of administration, like for some faculty, it's like, who would wanna do that? Like why, you enjoy that? Who wants to do that work? You know, well you just land in that accidentally, you don't choose it. right um So that was, so I ended up going back to Oakden. I was hired into that role and I spent, oh gosh,
00:11:51
Speaker
three, four, five years, somewhere between three five years. I can't remember exactly how many in that executive director research and planning role. That was really cool because that was when student success became sort of the big topic of conversation and Oakden had joined Achieving the Dream. And so my role ah when I first started was disaggregating,
Challenges in Online Education Programs
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, all of our student outcomes data by race, ethnicity, gender, income, you know, that was when the big disaggregation of data push was happening to be able to understand student outcomes, you know, outcomes for different student groups.
00:12:30
Speaker
And that led, what we discovered in that data led to a student success working group and different initiatives and things like that that I was very much involved in. So I wasn't just kind of on the data side, but very much on um building programs and national initiatives and things like that.
00:12:49
Speaker
um So I did that role. And then um i had a former colleague who i worked at Mount Mary with. I always tell people when I was young and in school and people say, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And I used to be like, I work so hard on what I know. It is what I know. Like I worked hard at what I know. Now that I'm older, I i appreciate the the who you know is a huge part of the equation, right? um So former colleague from Mount Mary had joined UW-Madison.
00:13:16
Speaker
and let me know that UW-Madison was embarking on this big growth imperative, identifying new audiences, the Division of Continuing Studies was going to play a ah big role in helping with that growth imperative, and would i be interested in joining the university?
00:13:33
Speaker
And so a position was created for me in the Division of Continuing Studies. I was director of growth strategies. So I was like taking my research role and my research experience and my kind of program development experience to help identify new growth avenues for the university.
00:13:50
Speaker
So for the first two years, this is probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my whole career. We had a benchmarking effort. And I spent two years mainly traveling some virtual meetings to 25 different colleges and universities to figure out how they were approaching growth.
00:14:07
Speaker
And it was from University of Central Florida to UMass Amherst to Berkeley to Berkeley College of Music to USC. I mean, there's just a little bit of everybody. and All UW-Madison type institutions.
00:14:22
Speaker
That's amazing. And I'm not go i'm not surprised, but... Pirates of a very collaborative space, but that they were so open about oh wow that. That's, yeah that's a, I think it's a, it's a feather in everyone's cap to be like, look, we all, we all, we all do better and we all do better.
00:14:41
Speaker
But um what a great way to do it. A road show. I love it. It was a roadshow. I mean, the amount of people were like opening their books to us. We were meeting with the chancellor and the provost and program leads. And um at one of our ideas then was online programming, especially at the undergraduate level. So like when we were at University of Central Florida,
00:15:02
Speaker
They were so incredibly generous. Things that we do to this day are because of what we learned from UCF one online. um our whole We have had a whole build versus buy framework. Should we build it or should we buy it? It was from everything we learned from um from colleagues. So that was an incredible experience to be able to go take these teams on these different benchmarking visits and the learning from others It drove what we chose to do and what we chose not to do in large part.
00:15:33
Speaker
From that effort, ah the university decided to launch this portfolio of online undergraduate degree completion programs, yeah which is what I work on now. But I wasn't working, I wasn't leading the programs and I was still on the research and I was helping lead a dean's committee that was identifying new programs. You know, where do we have online courses already offered that we can capitalize upon? so i was still on kind of the research behind the scenes. And while I was doing that work, I saw a position at 2U edX. to you I don't know what to call We called it 2U. Some people call it edX.
00:16:07
Speaker
As vice president of and general manager to lead their portfolio with Morehouse Online. Because they adjusted their one year into standing up the Morehouse Online undergraduate programs. So I left the university and joined 2U. I eventually added Tufts and Emerson to my portfolio. It's a very interesting time to be at 2U. I will say that was very interesting.
00:16:33
Speaker
And then UW-Madison call. I have this history of people calling and saying, do you want to come back? We have a new... No, that's the best. They're like, wait, why don't you leave? Yeah, we need you. your own mission. doesn't quit, mate. You're just like... Throw her out there. She's going to collect some more information. She's going to bring it all back. Yeah, I was going to say, what a great way to... It's like being a forward recon. Like, okay, go work it to you for a bit. Get some inside information and come back. Come to our side of the table.
00:17:04
Speaker
That's absolutely what happened because by the time I had left, the university had launched... UW-Madison had launched this portfolio of online undergraduate degree completion programs that were bleeding money. It was... um a great vision and well-intentioned and not sufficiently socialized. The market research, we worked with a group of consultants.
00:17:27
Speaker
In some ways, the consults, I always say there's fault on all ends. In some ways, the consultants misled the institution, maybe not even purposely, right? Just in consultants give the best guidance they have available, right?
00:17:38
Speaker
um And then on the other hand, there were things the consultants told the university to do that the university said, oh, We don't have to do that. Well, know, thanks for the guidance. We don't, and the university should have done those things. Right.
00:17:50
Speaker
What was left was we were bleeding money. And I think we were three years into the portfolio and there were 20 students enrolled. The projections were 10,000 students in 10 years, 5,000 students in five years, we had 20 students.
00:18:06
Speaker
What was the bleed? Where was the bleeding? mean, which artery was hemorrhaging the most? Was it just too much spend on marketing or people or? Yeah. So the the chancellor at the time, Rebecca Blank, she's since passed away. Wonderful visionary, wonderful leader and had the vision for this and almost opened the pocketbooks. Right. I believe this is the direction we should go in. What we need to invest in this is what we're going to invest in it.
00:18:33
Speaker
match that with the university that's not all that eager to go in this direction. okay So then it becomes, if you want us to do this, you're going to have to pay to make this happen, right? Faculty developing courses are going to get paid 20 times what the industry standard is because we got to make it worth their while to create these online courses. So just unreasonable spend in those, you know, in those ways to get people to go on board.
00:19:00
Speaker
Negotiations that were made to support full-time faculty lines and things like that, you know, for a unit to say, you want us to do this? We need more faculty lines, tenure track faculty lines, and then we'll do it.
00:19:12
Speaker
So all that's built into the budget, right? Like all that that has to get paid for somehow. And then the marketing spend was just, It was huge, but at a time when I think everybody had huge marketing. We like we didn't know what to do. with Do we spend on awareness? Do we generate leads? you know What's our reach? Southern New Hampshire is on TV and they got a bus traveling,
Institutional Identity and Market Dynamics
00:19:35
Speaker
delivering diplomas. We got to do that thing. yeah So it was like, if we don't know what to do, we're just going to throw money at everything. We're all. Yeah, we're going to it all.
00:19:43
Speaker
Did you... um Were you trying to... Was it well who you're trying to serve? Wisconsin, upper Midwest, the US? Yeah. What was your audience? The target audience was Wisconsin mainly and some Midwest, but a fear that we needed to have national reach to be able to compete. Right. So it's like we we got, you know, we're the land grant. We got to serve the state. But to make this happen, we got to get people from, you know, every corner of the state.
00:20:11
Speaker
And the main sort of audience play then was, um, employer reimbursement and like those who are working. So like the guild in stride effort, that was where the focus was. And so we partnered with in stride.
00:20:26
Speaker
We had a wonderful relationship with in stride, but where the rubber sort of hit the road is, you know, in stride and Guild and others, their focus is really kind of frontline workers, right? They're your frontline employees who may have some credits, who want to earn a degree. And so they can kind of emerge out of the frontline work. And you have a UW Madison that's saying, yeah, we want to do this online, but we don't want to change our admission standards, like who we are to the market, that perception of quality, we're not bending that. And so you can't generate the enrollments that you need from frontline staff when they don't look like what your admissions
00:21:03
Speaker
you know office typically looks for in a student. And when they have plenty of choices, right? So this is this is not like, you know, University of Wisconsin, Manistat Online is the only online provider. And so you have like these, you know,
00:21:18
Speaker
So Chronicle has brought up the mega universities. So you have Southern New Hampshire, which you already mentioned, but then there's also WGU as well. And so when you have a plethora of choices, it's like, well, maybe I don't need to go to University of Wisconsin, Madison. Especially if those places work yeah and work with you, right? I've got this smattering of wonky credits.
00:21:39
Speaker
You know, I had some trouble in this course, so their GPA is not maybe high flying, cetera. You know, these, those places are, they put in the money to work with people, not only to get them in, but then support them to lift them, you know, to get them where they need to be academically to keep, to keep progressing. So, yeah but you're also competing across your system, right? I mean, this wasn't a system initiative. This was a Madison initiative. And so you had all the system schools also doing it online.
00:22:08
Speaker
right? at the same At the same time. Yeah. I will never forget one of our Dean's Committee meetings. We presented um some benchmarking. It wasn't just benchmarking. It was a competitive set.
00:22:19
Speaker
And in the competitive set was one of our system peers. And a Dean said, a Dean was very reluctant to to do this said, in no other conversation do I talk about this university in competition with that university.
00:22:34
Speaker
No other conversation. And now you want me to go back to my faculty and say we have we're competing with them when that's not who we are. And I think that's a global, like that's almost a global statement, right? Like you, it doesn't matter whether it's in your system or whether some other institution, but even like, mean, Calvin just mentioned Western governors, you've mentioned Southern New Hampshire. Anytime you bring up any of those types of schools, and this, I'm kind of going a little bit to your strategy thing, because I think that's like I think that's those are the things that a lot of schools miss is we want to compare ourselves against everybody who's just like us. And they're forgetting Southern New Hampshire enrolls over 100,000 students a year. Western Governors enrolls over 100,000 students a year. And those students are not doing graduate work. They're doing undergraduate work. And so when we talk about this cliff that's coming,
00:23:26
Speaker
there are schools that are actually reaching out to those those types of students, but they're also reaching out to the types of students that some of us, like to your point, like early career, never went to school, but I'm 35 years old and I wanna go back to school.
00:23:40
Speaker
i don't fit the mold in the model of a 17 year old coming to campus now. And so i think our definitions of, and I try to do this, you know, when I have, like our definitions of what a peer is and what a competitor is,
00:23:54
Speaker
in especially
Educational Value and Transfer Credits
00:23:55
Speaker
in the online space, yeah is not the same definition as your peer and competitor if you're trying to think about research dollars or you know some of the other things that you may be doing.
00:24:07
Speaker
And I think that's, so it's ah it is, I mean, it's even interesting, like in your own state, I don't consider that school a competitor. It's like, but their their students are going there. yeah So one thing like you, Maya, I'm lifelong student.
00:24:22
Speaker
been in higher my whole career, mostly in institutions, but I had a stint out in ah in a small OPM, re-up, sorry, relearn it, re-up is, need more coffee. um Well, you know, remember- You were at one, but you wanted to be at the others. is what One thing I learned there was and when I really honed my market research chops is that Your competitors, whoever shows up next to you in a search, if you're looking if you're if you're acting as a student would and you're looking for whatever, bachelor's this or master's of that, it's whoever shows up with you or higher than you in that search. yeah Yes.
00:25:02
Speaker
and that Because it doesn't matter who you think your competitors are. it's who It's who potential learners see. Yes, that's exactly right. And I will say, you know, there's the peer category and the competitor category. And I think that universities like mine, as much as I love UW-Madison, thinks it sits in a unicorn category, right? So even when we were within stride...
00:25:24
Speaker
And Instride's portfolio has multiple colleges and universities in that portfolio, right? And so it's like, but where UW-Madison? Like, they're naturally going to want to pick us. No, they're not, because the calculation is time, money, effort. It's not just this reputation play or this high-quality play that, and we I always tell people, there are a lot of high-quality institutions, right? It's not just what's on that ranking. There's there's quality everywhere.
00:25:54
Speaker
So that sort of we're a unicorn, we're different. They naturally want to come to us. It does not work in the online space in the way that it operates in sort of the residential undergraduate space. And that has been a real struggle of not just who we compete with, but how we think we're perceived in the market amongst prospective students. And frankly, what matters to us isn't really what matters to them in the end. Yep.
00:26:22
Speaker
it'd be up. I you know, our daughter is 17. She's already, as I say, the college apparatus is already turning for her. And so I've told her i and I joke, the thing that holds my computer up is my long Annotated copy of how college college affects students from grad school. But you know I told her, i was like, look, it doesn't matter so much where you go. It's that you finish.
00:26:43
Speaker
So like you said, quality is there is quality everywhere if you know what you're looking for and how to find it and how to do it affordably. But so that you know it's not 1966 where you can put your sandwich board out on the sidewalk We're in Madison, we're the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Just come here because you live near us.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah. I have a 16 year old son and we'll visit schools and ah he always asks, is it a good school? And I said, well, it depends on how you're defining good. yeah And it depends on what you're choosing to take advantage of. And I i was telling him he's a football player. So we went to visit ah a school last weekend actually related to football.
00:27:26
Speaker
And the coach was talking to me about the support they have for There's students completing internships and studying abroad and things like that. And I told my son, I said, that's what I want to hear. And he's like, well, why? And I said, because there are a lot of students who never know how critical those things are. You know, it's all, they're looking at where they're entering. I was one of those students. I ended up going to Washington University in St. Louis. It was like I had arrived. I was like every generation's dream in my family that I had made it to Wash U on full scholarship. And I sat in classes for four years. I did have some good experiences, but I didn't know the
00:28:01
Speaker
the plus, the additional things that I needed to do. so I was telling my son, good depends on what you take advantage of, you know not just this sort of objective measurement of what a good institution is. And I think some of our institutions like a UW Madison sometimes struggle with that.
00:28:17
Speaker
I got a total tangent side note. We overlapped. I was on staff. I was a grad student on staff there. I was a i did my master's in history there. So if you ever, if you know did you know did you ever take class with David Koenig?
00:28:29
Speaker
I did research with David Koenig on slaves who sued for their freedom in the St. Louis circuit courts. I built that website. I designed, built the freedom suits website with Peter Castor and David and Wayne Fields. Yep.
00:28:43
Speaker
He, will when you talk about faculty for a young person who would see a talent that you didn't see in yourself, he saw a, frankly, a research talent in me that I had no, I went into WashU thinking I was going to be a doctor because my parents were public school teachers and they said, do not become a teacher. but Like that was the that would rule. Don't do this thing that we're doing. was like, I'm going to go be a doctor. And everybody was always so proud when I said I was going to go be a doctor.
00:29:10
Speaker
But I hated science. But I didn't want to disappoint them. you Right? So I was like you know, that's... And so... I wandered into political science, wandered into David Koenig's class, and he was the one who first saw, i will never forget, sitting in a meeting and producing my research. And he was so impressed that I was like, oh, there are other things that I do that people can be impressed by. And I was on my way after that.
00:29:35
Speaker
That's incredible. Yeah, i I finished my master's in 2002 in Ivor Bernstein, if you remember who he was. He was my advisor. yeah and i But I really, I worked a lot with Peter Kastner, American Cultural Studies. And he was, Peter's like, will you, I was a web developer before grad school. And he's like, will you help us define design this?
00:29:53
Speaker
You know, so i I was always in the archives down at the old Globe Democrat building. And yeah, yeah and then I joined the staff and College Arts and Sciences and I was there till 2005. So we overlapped. We probably walked by each other and we never knew it. Wow, so that's incredible. um so that's That project still lives on. It's amazing. It it still lives on.
00:30:13
Speaker
it i still talk to people about it. The the court transcripts that I read where slaves were advocating for their freedom because they were promised their freedom and they're literally in the court representing themselves when they're seen as not a human, but they're in the court representing themselves. it mind blowing. Oh, it what blew my mind was that the what was so The Dred Scott case, what was so, ah you know, the thunderclap of it was not that they lost. it was that It was that they lost because there was such a tradition of those cases, them winning because, you know, you're transported to Illinois and like,
00:30:52
Speaker
You you're like, what was it if you touch free soil, you're free, free person yeah free person. And so our Minnesota territory, Fort Snelling, etc. So that I didn't realize that was the that was the earthquake of Dred Scott is that it disrupted this long thread of people suing for their freedom and winning. Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yes. Wow. Oh, we could, we could talk about this for ages. Apologies for my digression, but I was looking at your LinkedIn page. I was like, oh my God, she was a long shoe. Wow. Wow. That's incredible. that's Okay. Back to, back to, back to business. Back to business. So the university called me back. We're bleeding money.
00:31:31
Speaker
We think we want to close this portfolio of programs, but we just launched it a few years ago. Is there anything here? Should we keep this up? So I agreed to come back. um But wow, what a developmental experience for me because I realized after all of my years working in higher ed, the skill set that I didn't have. And I thought that I had it all.
00:31:53
Speaker
um There was so much work that needed to be done on building business models, the financial projection, the accurate enrollment projections, the accurate...
00:32:04
Speaker
um course offering site, like the schedule, when are you offering courses and how many will enroll because you don't want two students in the court, all of those sorts of things.
00:32:15
Speaker
Never had the experience building those and those were critical to solving this problem. so Sometimes on LinkedIn, very often I go on this sort of soapbox about education strategy and what I see as a deficiency sometimes in the strategy skill set that's needed to solve real business challenges that we have and we will continue to have in higher ed. It's not necessarily the student success challenge, not the persistence and retention. It's we want to do this thing. How do we make it work with all of these constraints that we have?
00:32:49
Speaker
We can talk for years about this. This is what I do. Yeah. Where I sit, but it's, really you know, it's, there was, and I haven't read it yet. the pew ah The Pew Research Center released, don't know if it's an article yesterday about higher education's uncertain fiscal future. And they're talking about all these things.
00:33:08
Speaker
There's still, you know, with that that one, what i the blurb I read was about how as things get tougher, it's for public institutions in particular, it's the flagships that are going to be able to survive because they have the brand, they've got more the resources. So those other campuses in a system like Wisconsin or Minnesota are going to really have struggles. And we you know we see that in here in Minnesota for sure.
00:33:29
Speaker
our job at our office is to try to help them, right? Help them through this. But, you know, there's still a ave huge, I'm not going to call it resistance. It's just a, it's a hesitation and a fear of doing what exactly what you're talking about is higher education, I'm not gonna call it business, but it it does take in revenue and it spends revenue. It sounds a lot like a, it's a very business in that way. It's an enterprise. yeah So unlike it's I think of it more like a household than a business, you know, a household has a mission. This is, they have a financial goal.
00:34:02
Speaker
So but it's, it's really, it's discomforting for people because they see universities as Where knowledge is made and people have experiences and it's all those things and it should be and it often has been. But my growing perspective is that it was of it was able to be like that for so long because there were so many resources coming to it, particularly during it after World War war i investment during the war, GI i Bill, ah you know the the late 50s, Sputnik, then the Higher Education Act. there's so There's this push resources that everyone could float, every department, because there's so much cross-subsidization and just outright resources, especially in the public.
00:34:45
Speaker
you know So of course, humanities, everything could be could be viable because there was just it was no end to demand and resources. And now we're we're we're seeing the other side of that.
00:34:57
Speaker
the other side of that table, that equation, and it's tough. But to me, there's still ways to, you can still fund mission. you know i i read somewhere that margin is mission. if you can create some margin, that can be put to work in other places to fund mission.
00:35:12
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and also that that sort of downward pressure, because not only do I think our colleges and universities will find themselves more and more on an island in terms of resources, but then our academic units are being told,
00:35:28
Speaker
You either have to make it work or there's there's no more support. There's no cushion from campus. Campus isn't going to subsidize your efforts. It's almost every unit for themselves in some ways, which I worry will stifle collaboration, will stifle some of the innovation because people are will close ranks and figure out just what they can do within their own backyard when we know how much interdisciplinary education, we know kind of the benefit of a collaborative degree for the types of career students are gonna be walking into or even just how careers will change over their lifetime that they need such a like multivariate skill set.
00:36:06
Speaker
And they may not get it as much because our units are saying, nope, can't cooperate with you all because we have to share the revenue and we don't have revenue to share. It has to all be ours. So that I think that downward pressure is going
Growth Strategies and Community Partnerships
00:36:17
Speaker
to grow over the next you know over the next years. and you know Just bridging over to the that what you're talking about, the what do learners need to thrive in a 21st century economy? As ah someone from the liberal arts and humanities who had a lot of things bolted on, like internships and experiences and technologies, really.
00:36:35
Speaker
For now, people say like, oh, you know, for so long we heard like, oh, what going to do with that degree? you gonna work at a barista with your history degree. Now it's, oh my gosh, we're going to work in ai You have to have all these soft skills and technical skills and humanities and liberal arts people. They all, they really get it. And I'm like, what have we been telling you for 30 years? Blah, blah, blah. So that's my, that's my rant.
00:36:54
Speaker
No, it's true. I was talking to my son on this college visit. but he was trying to understand majors and minors. And I was like, you almost have to think about it. Like, how can I triangulate myself so that I can start in this one career now, but then I'm going to pivot to another one later. And I'm like, i have a minor in Arabic because I thought it was cool to take some a different language. I had studied French my whole life. Oh, let's do this cool Arabic thing. I'm living on the edge. You know, now it's like...
00:37:20
Speaker
you wouldn't do that because you have to figure out the minor that's going to prepare you for the backup plan. It's a totally different exploration of learning. My undeclared jazz studies minor is very useful.
00:37:32
Speaker
It is from a collaborative standpoint. It's all collaborative, right? the Yeah, it is. Jazz is. It has to be. So, um, So tell us, like, does this bring us up to where you are now? Yeah, where I am now. So I've spent the last three years um turning this initiative on its head in some different ways. One, it was a centralized initiative. There were different schools and colleges offering degrees.
00:37:57
Speaker
ah We taught out several degrees and now we have a portfolio that's concentrated in the School of Business, three programs. You're still talking about the degree completion initiative. The degree completion initiative, that's right. And so it it was a loss to lose those degrees. I'm not going to lie. I really liked kind of the robust portfolio that we had. There has been something beneficial about kind of retreating into one school and saying, let's figure out how to get this right in this school before we take the show on the road to everybody else, which we do still aspire to do.
00:38:31
Speaker
um they it's It's also easier on the coordination, right? There's one voice about what they want to do. We've ended the focus on employer partnerships and we've moved to transfer. So all of our work right now is building up partnerships with technical and community colleges to build their UW-Madison online identity from day one. So we want students at these partners to, we want them to complete the associate degree. We will require that, but we want to be in collaboration from day one in their experience, attending our online events, you know building a sort of um academic and professional network with other students, all of those sorts of things. So logistics question. Oh, wait, go ahead. Go ahead. was going ask, so are you building direct transfer type relationships? Are you working, are you doing it
00:39:21
Speaker
campus-based students to online programs, or are you concentrating on community technical colleges that have online programs to online programs or both? We're doing both. We're doing both. We're hearing more and more from the two-year institutions that their students are taking online Courses, by and large, their own online learning population is exploding, but it's both. So we've been talking about what does a transfer model look like when the receiving institution is an online program and, you know, and we want them to know how to sort of do this online thing and what does that look like.
00:39:55
Speaker
um So that's been a large part of our conversations. We've slashed our marketing budget. When I started, we were spending, let's see, started three years ago, we were spending about $4 million dollars a year on marketing. Our target is that we'll get to half a million by the summer, ah to $500,000.
00:40:14
Speaker
um To do that, we've had to end a lot of awareness campaigns, you know kind of throwing the spaghetti at the wall and figuring out geo-targeting, where are the students, We think the technical and community college partnerships will help with that too. We know where the students are. We want to communicate directly to them. We'll have some Facebook, and they're not even on Facebook, a TikTok ad. I have a whole marketing team that will solve that for me. I'm still in the Facebook generation. Wherever they are online, we want to be we want to be there. And then we we are working hard to connect our faculty with the technical and community college faculty because we know the students are spending the majority of their time sitting in a classroom.
00:40:53
Speaker
We want their faculty to understand the case studies they're doing in our business classes, sort of what that experience is like and for them to have confidence in it so they can share that with their students as they're talking with them as well.
00:41:06
Speaker
So this is fascinating. um My logistical question, it's too many questions, but let's start with this one. So the audience question is, so let's say I'm 35 years.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I've dropped out of doing a psychology degree and I've got this smattering of, you know, first couple of years of courses. So is your model then to to work with that student, to put them back into it a community or technical college, complete the associate? Okay, so you're you've got a you have a very holistic approach to this.
00:41:40
Speaker
yeah It's not like we'll bring you in, we'll find a program for you here at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, or whichever campus it may be. You're using that. a It's a big funnel, effectively. Yes. We actively advise students to go to a technical or community college and finish the associate degree for a number of reasons. One, we know that supports their success. They built the confidence. you know They've completed the degree.
00:42:06
Speaker
they can come into us and complete a bachelor's degree. It helps us on the sort of business end. We don't have and we don't have an ah a university that is excited to offer online gen ed courses. there is There's not a lot of excitement about that. And it puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure we have enough sections of these gen ed courses especially when it comes like math and things like that. So they're helping us even by completing that associate degree because we'll have the business classes online, but the gen ed courses are gonna be harder. So it it helps us in the end to make sure they're completing the degree.
00:42:44
Speaker
um We also have what we call a pathway to admission. we've i say we've pushed the university as far as we possibly could on rethinking some of the standard ways that the university has operated, right? so UW-Madison is a place either you're admitted or you're not.
00:43:00
Speaker
That's it. Either you get in or you don't. And we've created this sort of earn your way in where it come in with a lower GPA or maybe you haven't done well in the last few semesters. We're doing a warm handoff to a technical or community college and saying, take a few more classes. We outline what those classes are, what GPA we expect them to earn, We check in with them to make sure that they're doing well.
00:43:23
Speaker
You meet what our agreement is, you're automatically into the program. So it's very much a perspective of the technical and community college is a good place for you on your academic journey, and it will position you for success once you make it to us.
00:43:38
Speaker
So correct me if I'm wrong. um Wisconsin is one system of higher education, all the technical and community colleges and the University of Wisconsin campuses, Madison and all, correct? Well, you have the universities of universities of Wisconsin, which are the four years, and then you have the technical college system that the technical schools are sitting in. But you're unique in that there's no Wisconsin State University. Correct.
00:44:04
Speaker
So, right you know, we have Minscue or Minn State now, Minnesota colleges and universities. So the Winona State and Bemidji State and all that. yeah where And we also have the University of Minnesota. And then we also have our technical community colleges. It was a big struggle when we started with the online programs where people are like University of Wisconsin-Madison has to be Michigan and Michigan State all in one.
00:44:23
Speaker
There's no Wisconsin state and online should sit at a Wisconsin state. That's who should be doing. That was the perspective. That's who should be offering those programs. But since we don't have a Wisconsin state, we're expected to do it all. There was a real tension there.
00:44:38
Speaker
But there's an advantage there in that you're not eating anyone's lunch. You know, University of Minnesota and MNSCU, the Minnesota state system, MNState, ideally we we dovetail.
00:44:51
Speaker
But this is where that financial pressure, just my personal and professional worry is that we're going to start to try to dis not dis not displace in a, in a mean way, but I'm not trying to be Machiavellian here, but you know, that pond is the pond, whether it's state, regional, national, how do, how do we work together, say in our system, in our two systems to not undermine each other's efforts? Cause you're doing this holistic lift. Yeah.
00:45:21
Speaker
but you have one less, in some ways you have one less boat in the water. yes So you can really, those relationships with those technical community colleges, it's very, there's less, there's there's just less, it's less competition's competition. yeah there's say less It's still there, but it just takes a layer out. I mean it's the same, probably same number of campuses and students and stuff, but it just takes a, it makes it more inter-campus competition than inter-system competition.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yes, that's absolutely correct. And, you know,
Personal Reflections and Career Choices
00:45:53
Speaker
we are the UW Madison online is the shiny new thing on the block. So when we talk with technical and community colleges, you know, they want their students to earn the UW Madison degree. You know, that means something to them and it certainly means something to us.
00:46:07
Speaker
And our intention isn't to we always use the word cannibalize. Our intention is not to cannibalize our other you know system peers. We want everyone to be successful. and believe that everyone can be successful, particularly if we still, as much as we possibly can,
00:46:25
Speaker
stay true to our space in the residential undergrads. I'm not saying we're an elite online. i'm not yeah i don't I don't support that, but to very much still carve out this space of what we expect from our students when it comes to admissions and give them a way in, but not take away from the great education that those other, and I firmly believe those other institutions can offer and are offering too. Yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
Maya, had a question for you about, so again, you you know you work within this centralized office right to offer these online programs in business.
00:47:02
Speaker
You mentioned something very interesting about the gen ed, you know some of the gen ed faculty are not really inclined to offer online sections. And so I was just curious about like transfer credit.
00:47:17
Speaker
So you do have the the community and technical colleges offering courses. But, you know, I remember just so a long time ago, I worked for a community college where someone at I believe it was like Lehigh University took.
00:47:33
Speaker
um like Over the summer, he took like an online course. And to be honest with you, forget if it was like in psychology or not. But long story short, when he tried to transfer it, it came down to a director of...
00:47:48
Speaker
of of the program saying, well, it's offered online, so I don't know if we can accept credit for this. And so i was just wondering if you you've experienced, have you experienced any transfer credit log jams?
00:48:03
Speaker
And if so, how you know how have you yeah politically you know um you know navigated those for for students coming from community college and community and technical colleges trying to transfer in?
00:48:19
Speaker
That is, and you you must be in my inbox and in my my list of worries right now, and I'll tell you what happened. we We've had these meetings with the two-year technical and community colleges and just great brainstorming, right? We're brainstorming. We're on the same page. We care about students, all the things they want to hear from us and we want to hear from them, and everyone feels good.
00:48:40
Speaker
And then we say, okay, step one, we're going to put together some transfer pathways, send us the syllabi, we'll get that up and running. We had a wonderful meeting with ah with a particular college, sent the pathway.
00:48:52
Speaker
he was not happy in his response because our other system institutions are accepting transfer credit, right? Course for course, for many courses that we're saying it can be an elective, but you have to come in and take this specific class. We reviewed the syllabi, you're not teaching what we need to teach.
00:49:12
Speaker
Or one other college student did something with their curriculum where a lot of the courses are like one credit courses. And so our faculty see this, this group of one credit courses and they're like, this doesn't translate into a three credit course for us. We're not taking that.
00:49:28
Speaker
And so that is, that is the thing that's keeping me up at night, honestly, because you have such autonomy over the curriculum, right? For each institution, for each faculty member. And we're doing great thinking about advising and marketing and events and all of that. But then the technical and community colleges are saying, wait, but our students are going to have to retake all of these courses with you that we have already awarded credit for. And your peers aren't doing this, right? It's not just this is the way it is in higher ed. There are other people that are going to award the 60 credits or the 72 credits, and they're going to come in and finish in one and a half to two years. um I have not cracked that code yet. I have not figured out the solution to that, but it is clear to me, not just it's a, ah it's almost like a goodwill issue, right? Because for the schools, they're saying, if you really care about our students, the way you say you care about them, why is this a persistent thing, right? We, we need to, you need to accept these courses in a, in a much better way than, than you are.
00:50:30
Speaker
go back to ah the academic department and tell them, you know, you better accept that it doesn't work that way, right? It just doesn't. i have to say, when I worked at 2U, I had a ah program director who didn't have experience in higher ed.
00:50:42
Speaker
we couldn't get faculty to approve a particular course at our our particular online program. And she said, I'm confused. Like if the provost is the boss of the faculty, like why doesn't he just tell them what to do? And I was like, oh, girlfriend, it does not work that way. he need to work a few more years to understand the answer to that question. like That's the last thing the provost is going to do.
00:51:05
Speaker
I'm assuming this person worked in 2U. Yes, they worked in Yeah, I've encountered that a lot in other places. I'm like, whoa, take a breath. Yes, yeah it does not work that way. So Kelvin, great question. We haven't solved it. And we we have to we have to figure out a way to solve for that. And I don't know.
00:51:24
Speaker
I think some people just get so frustrated. They don't know how to solve for it. That's like, it it is the way it is. Like, you know, if your students want to come, they just have to deal with it. I can't accept that, but I just don't know what the answer is.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that because I i don't know, the you know transfer credit continues to be an issue and CALE, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning has done some research, right? you're Really showing that when you actually are more open to transfer credit, it really helps with persistence and completion. And you know Kevin, I know you've been doing work in this space as well, kind of understanding the best ways to do transfer credit too and looking at some of the research so it's it still kind of boggles the mind because you know that what that example that i shared happened when i was like a director of online learning for community college in pennsylvania and back then that was like you know 2006 2007 so i feel like
Concluding Thoughts on Education and Skills
00:52:24
Speaker
now it's 2025 and we're still having these um these issues around transfer um
00:52:31
Speaker
which again, that was just focused on the pedagogy of the class. So it wasn't even like, oh, you took a community college course. It was like, oh, you offered it online or you took an online course. And maybe it's not as good as the face-to-face version that we have you know here on um um on campus. yeah Yeah. Transfer credit to me. Sorry, Maya. No, no, go right in.
00:52:55
Speaker
Transfer credit to me, i think, is the longest downfall to higher education in general. like in and it it's And we come up with all these ideas like workforce you know workforce skill sets and you know prior learning experience and all these types of things, but but nobody can address that history 101 is history 101 regardless. right It doesn't matter your point, Kelvin. whether it was taught online, whether whether it was taught by someone with a PhD or not. It's like, I just don't understand how we just can't get to a universal, we accept what we should accept. Even in, you would think, in very related spaces, it would work, you know? Like...
00:53:47
Speaker
between campuses in a system or, um, I don't know, we were talking about this at work yesterday. We had a long, two of my colleagues and I had this long discussion about, um, you know, student experience and coming, finding university and the programs, et cetera. We just, our strategic plan was just approved by the board regions. I believe it was yesterday. oh lot of they imagine there's a lot of online stuff in there. So, um,
00:54:12
Speaker
You know, I was just, my point was any, our goal should be, we just find all friction should be called out and squashed because friction, if a friction keeps a student out it, and this gets to the big, the long play thing about, you know, we want to have finances and revenue enrollment to do things.
00:54:31
Speaker
Friction prevents that. So whatever friction points there are, it's going to be uncomfortable. There are processes that are old and loved just because they are what they are. And that's that just gets in students way. So to me, just the transfer thing is just needless friction. i'm really understand, Kevin, this is like This is one of those perception things. why There's probably an an appreciable percentage of people who despise higher ed because they had a crappy transfer experience. like i did all this A former neighbor of mine, like I did all this work and then didn didn't transfer or whatever. I'm like, oh my God, like what is what are we doing here?
00:55:06
Speaker
And again, why do we think they're going to Southern New Hampshire? Why are they going to Western governors? Why are they going to Arizona State? like Because they have... created transfer policies that allow better transferability so I'm not wasting money, I'm not taking extra credits. like it To me, is' just like it's not even finance, it's just like the whole student experience, to your point. like Yeah.
00:55:28
Speaker
mike My husband was an adult undergrad and he started at a community college in Illinois. And I will never forget, he was applying for a a liberal arts college in Illinois. And they got his credit evaluation back and it was all the courses with E next. It was E e for elective. E, E. And he's like, what what did I do all of that work for? And the whole list is coming back as an E. It was so frustrating to him. And yet he was in the middle of it. So he felt like he had no choice, right? You can't, you don't want to go back and start it all over again. You're stuck in the middle. And you'd probably i mean imagine shopping around for an institution that would take those credits as satisfying requirements would have taken, that was the trade off. Like, what's the opportunity cost of spending how much time finding institution either in a proximity, maybe you were trying to find an on ground residential experience, i don't know, or online, I don't know what your husband was looking for, but what's it going to take to find that? So like, okay, this is this is the hand I see, this is the what I see is the best opportunity. So He ended up enrolling. he he um He accepted it and it took him way longer and at small liberal arts college tuition and no to finish.
00:56:38
Speaker
Yeah. So, so Maya, we're coming closer to the end of, of our session. Can I, ah can I ask you a personal question? Yes, absolutely. So, so your name is Maya Angelou Evans. Yes, it is. How.
00:56:52
Speaker
Yeah. how how has that like How has that impacted any portions of your life, having that namesake as your name? I look at it in two different ways, one in a funny way and one in a serious way.
00:57:06
Speaker
So um my parents named me after her, and I always tell them that they didn't do me a solid because they changed the spelling because they wanted me to feel like I had my own identity too, that I wasn't just her. So they changed the G into a J and I tell them now I have to tell people, yes, they know how her name was spelled. They didn't make a mistake. They wanted me to have my own identity. And they always joke. They say, well, you could be named after a Steely Dan album like your sister. So you should be.
00:57:40
Speaker
Nice. so but ah But on the kind of more serious point, usually when people see my name, they ask if I'm a fan of her per poetry. And I always say that my parents, remember, my parents were public school teachers in Chicago. My dad was a dean of students in the 80s. I always thought my dad would come home with blood on his shirts from breaking up gang fights. He was a gang prevention specialist. My mother taught in the middle of Cabrini Green projects. and They were true...
00:58:07
Speaker
public school advocates and I mean, students would come to our house on Saturdays to get additional support. My dad's athletes would come have lunch. My mom would make them lunch. It's very kind of surreal educational experience. yeah um And my parents named me after her, not because of the poetry, but because of her advocacy for black people in their civil rights and our civil rights. And so it very much relates to my work in education, even though I didn't, I always say i didn't purposely find myself in education, but when I was in high school,
00:58:42
Speaker
I, along with some friends, created a nationally recognized mentoring program that was part of the Minority Student Achievement Network. I probably always belonged in education, but was running trying to run away from it as much as I can. And so I like to think that in my advocacy for students, people always hear me say the minute we're not talking about students, we're going to make the wrong decision.
00:59:02
Speaker
When they are not at the center of the conversation, we're going to mess up. It's inevitable. And so I think that sense of like advocacy, belief in education as the great equalizer, I really believe in in educational attainment. and support for communities that have been locked out of sort of equal opportunity, especially in education, but just like socioeconomic opportunity writ large. Like that's what, that's why I'm still here.
00:59:26
Speaker
yeah yeah I still believe there's much work to be done there. And so I believe that's my service to having her name and doing justice to her name is still that sense of advocacy. Mm-hmm.
00:59:38
Speaker
That gives me chills. that that Thank you. Just the story of your what your parents did is yeah as educators in Chicago. It's incredible. We had a Xerox copy, a full office-sized Xerox copy machine in the dining room. like they were They were real teachers who who cared and just incredible careers. My mom is in her fifth d eighth consecutive year of teaching. My mom is well into her 70s and still in education.
01:00:09
Speaker
Good for her. yeah What does she teach? So she's now a library assistant. So she retired. She was a kindergarten teacher, became a principal, um and then retired as a principal, spent one year at home and said, I cannot do this anymore. I have a lot of life left in me and a lot to give. She ran the in-school suspension room for three years, which I always laugh at because there's this like old school school.
01:00:33
Speaker
older lady running the in-school suspension room. She had enough of that. And so now she's the library aide, but it's interesting for her because libraries are not what they used to be. She's learning makerspace and ah you three d printers and all this sorts of stuff. She's bringing her Arduino home or her Raspberry Pi. program look at the bread home yeah She's like, they're not quiet in the library anymore. I'm like, mom, it's not what the library used to be. They're supposed to talk. yeah Wow. That's great.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah. Well, anything anything else you'd like to share with us, Maya, before we... still want to hear, like, what do you like to do? Oh, gosh, what do I like to do? I don't know how to answer it. well I'll tell you how I can answer it. So, one, I have two kids. I have 16-year-old son, and i have an 8-year-old daughter, and I spend a lot of time being a parent. Right. And in some ways, I feel like have lost and I'm not saying that in in a sense of void, but have lost a little bit of what I like to do, because what I like to do is what they like to do. So I go to football games and I, you know, I do I practice my daughter. She's actually going to film a commercial this week. This is her her first audition. She landed this commercial. She's going to play an Olympic athlete. It's her life story. And so she's her as a little girl. I practice lines with her. um
01:01:48
Speaker
But I have a real artistic side. I used to throw clay on the wheel and create pottery and and things like that, that creative side. Sometimes I dibble and dabble in it. I took a class last year and enjoyed it. ah But really anything creative, art, colors, music, anything like that, that that drives me. That's what I like to consume and and do.
01:02:12
Speaker
you're just You're in your quiet phase. You're absorbing phase. That's right. I'm too busy hitting my son upside the head to make sure his homework is done on time. That's what I like relate. Your mom and dad coming out through the yeah head. yeah and All the data about the NFL, right? like There's only a certain percentage of the top players. Yes.
01:02:35
Speaker
Right. And even if you do get in, right, you got to be thinking about your next gig. Totally. Post career. So you got to thinking bigger than just today. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. He's into sports analytics. Interestingly enough, that's his thing. He wants to be a general manager. And he believes that having like an analytic skill set could give him this edge. He's not a kid that loves math, though. And so there's like the struggle for him of like everyone I talked to was really good at math and they loved math.
01:03:03
Speaker
And I don't love the math. I love the, like, analytic side of what's going to happen in this game. Yeah, just need to learn descriptive stats. That's how far you need to go. Let's have chat GPT do it all. Yeah, that's what I said. I was like, it's totally... Chat GPT. Chat GPT by way into a general media degree. Well, you know, that ah that space of sport sports media and communications is...
01:03:28
Speaker
really huge. You know, we have a neighbor actually he's from Scani. He's from ah lacrosse. Yes. You went to Madison. um His son is love sports. He's from sophomore high school, but he's not a great athlete. because we all can't be great. I'm like, he should be, like he can make a little a TV show at school because he he has all the analytics and the stats in his head. i'm like, that is where, and I sent him a link to a program we have with you. like this is There's so much room now yeah because of all these kinds of things on the analytics, the data, the stories you can tell with that and the choices you can make with it. You know like you can make decisions.
01:04:06
Speaker
yeah You have to play baseball to be in the front office. Right. that That he's very much enthralled in like the decision of it. Like, how do we take the data that we have and decide what to do and which players we pull together and all those sorts of things? And I tell him, A, a kid who doesn't love math can figure it out just enough to do the thing. that you know, we do things every day that we don't love doing, but we figure it out and do it just enough to make it work.
01:04:28
Speaker
um But B, that sports world has changed so much and you can carve out kind of your own sort of space in there. He's also my photography kid who I think could travel the world. He loves landscape photography. And I tell him I could see him just traveling the world and taking pictures of sunsets and mountains. But I think the most important thing, which is what my parents were very much, you have to have a path and you have to stick with that path, figure it out and and ride that path as long as you can. yeah And I'm trying to give him the, you got to figure out what what motivates you every day. And you have the benefit of figuring it out early and you have the support from your parents to figure it out and to be willing to evolve. And so his, the way I'm raising him when it comes to education is very different than I think i and similar generations were raised.
01:05:17
Speaker
Well, I think you really, you've given him a guide in that, and because we've talked about this in previous episodes, because each of us have done this. um You saw these threads really early, you know, like,
01:05:30
Speaker
or that led you to and out like you saw like, this tenure track space is probably not going to be where I want to go. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to pull this thread of ah your you were institutional research and faculty, but then you, you know, you, you have to take a chance, but you also need the, you know, you need some help to get there. Usually like you had a lot of great relationships, clearly, you know, someone saying, Hey, come apply for this job. So I think you, you've provided your kids with a great exemplar of that. Yes. and I didn't, I didn't have, I mean, I guess I had something similar, but you know, it it really helps us see how someone did it before you. Yes, it does. And I have to say, I'm grateful for the path that I had. You know, it's like your parents teach you the very best that they know. My parents knew ah a certain model of education, a certain model of working. My dad used to say, should have stayed at the post office when I was 19.
01:06:21
Speaker
That was his job when he was 19. I should have stayed at the post office because I would have retired from the post office. That was the mentality. Now it's how can you cobble together all the things you like to create a new contribution And I think our institutions sometimes struggle with realizing that that's the perspective that our students are approaching their education with. It's not what is this one major in this one degree?
01:06:43
Speaker
How can I string this together? Yeah, it's funny. I mean, that you bring that up. i mean, we we actually talked about that in our last podcast that hasn't come out but yet. It'll be released before yours is released. But that that whole skill set, the whole idea of bringing together, you know, not just academic things into your career, but all these other little things. So like to, to, um, Fritz's point earlier, like I can be a history major and do data analytics, right? Because I can go learn, I can learn that in a minor. i can go learn that from Coursera, right? Like there's ways to, and I think we're higher ed, I think is just missing the point that,
01:07:24
Speaker
very few people are going to go this linear direction what their baccalaureate degree is telling them to do. My career looks like spaghetti. My bachelor's is in agriculture. I am nowhere near doing what my degree was, you know, so... I tell people, my son is learning analytics from influencers, right? There are all these people who are posting that he's following and he's showing me what they're saying about what might happen on this fourth quarter drive and all these sorts of things that he doesn't have to wait to become an analytics or a math or a finance or whatever major. He's getting instruction from someone who's talking to him on his phone all the time. Yeah, there's this tension between this desire for linearity and someone, I can't remember, someone posted something about this, how
01:08:08
Speaker
We tell students they need these skills or learners. You need this degree of these skills. And then they start to get into a career path and then that shifts. And then, need well, now got to come back for more skills. Why don't we just teach them how to acquire skills all along the way? yeah So, um you know, I think just you knowing enough to do that next thing, especially unless you're a doctor, please, you know, complete your MD and your residency. Faster that skill. Please, please. But, you know, like,
01:08:37
Speaker
I actually think my liberal arts background and my humanities background and the creative parts of what I did, the research, all that actually makes me a me better in those spaces because i'm not I'm not like, oh, I only see the the world through comp sci or math lens. Like I see it through this broad social, historical, cultural lens. So I'm like, I'm going to put these things together. And people don't say like, you can't do that. But people are that's interesting. I'm like, yeah, I just did it. You know, like I didn't...
01:09:06
Speaker
because it makes sense to me based on these other broader to me, big picture, big, uh, you know, the big scope kinds of questions. So, um, I don't, to me, that's just, and higher ed can do those things. Like those skills, that knowledge and the ability to do that was actually fostered for me in college by my faculty and grad school. Like Peter Castor showed me this world really of what was called digital humanities. i don't know what they call it now.
01:09:32
Speaker
That was 25 years ago. so um This is, I've just, this is all to say I've really enjoyed our conversation. I have too.
01:09:43
Speaker
I have. I'll just say in closing, related to what you were just saying, i was talking to my son. I, I joke that he, he won on Valentine's day cause he got his girlfriend a monthly subscription to chat GPT. That was his gift. So you talk about a whole new world. But we were talking about AI and, you know, is is AI going to make us worse or better, you know, that sort of conversation. And I was telling him it should make you a much deeper and more creative thinker than you are. If you can clear out the the easy stuff, then you should expect more from yourself and what the solutions you're able to come up with, the creativity that you have. That's what it's like you should be expecting from yourself in this new age, not what it can do for you, but what can you do differently now? So I think we'll see more and that more from I hope we see more and more from that, ah more more of that from our learners.
01:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's wonderful talking to you all. no you know That was a great way to to end this, Maya. think Thank you very much for spending an hour or so with us. We appreciate all that you're doing. and We wish you the best of luck in what you continue to do and your children making the right choices and where they want to go and all of that. So for all of you listening, thank you for joining us. Again, another great episode on getting stuff done in higher education.
01:11:00
Speaker
Thank you.