Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
GSD Episode 4: Get to Know Fritz Vandover
16 Plays1 month ago
We conclude our getting to know your hosts episodes with Fritz Vandover, whose unexpected path during (and out of) a Ph.D. in American History started him on his unique career path in higher education.
Recommended
Transcript
Opening Banter and Episode Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
All right. Welcome everyone. How are y'all doing? Good. Good. Good. Monday morning.
00:00:21
Speaker
welcome everyone are y'all doing good good good good monday morning It is Monday morning. It is. i'm a rad dad, as you can see.
00:00:33
Speaker
I don't have one of those cool cups. No, I don't either. um My other favorite is one that says, you don't have to be crazy to work here. We'll train you. That's pretty good.
00:00:44
Speaker
I feel like that's pretty accurate. That's like the higher ed motto. yeah We need t-shirts. Yeah, exactly. Forget the brand of the athletic department.
00:00:56
Speaker
Just start wearing start wearing that.
Guest Introduction: Fritz's Career Journey
00:01:00
Speaker
So here we are. This is our fourth episode of getting stuff done in higher education. And we have the privilege today to learn from our third podcaster, Fritz, and how Fritz got into higher ed and what we all need to know about Fritz so we can all kumbaya around the rest of our episodes that we're going to be doing.
00:01:25
Speaker
Thanks, guys. Happy to be here. um So my path into higher education started, it actually started late in college. So I went to DePaul University in Indiana, go Tigers, D3.
00:01:40
Speaker
I graduated in 1998. I was a history major and I loved it. Loved every minute of it. I had a wonderful ah advisor named John Schlatterbeck and he was a 19th century Civil War historian kind of guy.
00:01:56
Speaker
and So I was a history major and I was on a declared jazz studies minor. We'll get into all that stuff later too. But i after I graduated, so I had graduated in 98. I had a job. i got a job at Anderson Consulting. So this is, you know, the run up to Y2K, the tech sector is going nuts. The web is proliferating. What is this thing? What is it going become?
00:02:22
Speaker
There's no you really e-commerce yet. It's not really woven into you know you couldn't you couldn't buy You know, you couldn't buy a pack of t-shirts on Target yet. There was no Target.com. So I'm working at Anderson and I'm thinking and this is a good this is a good way to start off. I live in Chicago, Lincoln Park.
00:02:40
Speaker
And so, you know, I'm getting tech experience, learning how to code, learning how to build. I'd never coded before, but I was really good in math. It's actually my highest grade in college was calculus freshman year.
00:02:52
Speaker
And so um I'm learning a lot, but I'm also realizing... ah, long-term, I don't think this space is for me, you know? Um, it just wasn't really kind of who I was.
From History Major to Tech: Fritz's Early Career
00:03:03
Speaker
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri in a small suburb out right on the edge of the city called Webster Groves, kind of a 19th century bedroom community that as the city grew, it just, you know, became part of the, the Metro.
00:03:15
Speaker
So my parents, um, my, my dad is from St. Louis. My family has been in St. Louis since like 1830 something insane. um My parents, they bought they settled back there in the early 70s.
00:03:28
Speaker
My dad grew up there. um And after his schooling, settled back there in 1971. They still live in their house. Same house they've been in since 1971.
00:03:40
Speaker
So, um you know, he was a he has a graphic design background, became a, worked at a small firm. So I've been in the creative world for so long.
00:03:52
Speaker
Between that and my mom, who worked in, I know it sounds weird in San Luis, but worked in the television and film industry. So you're shooting a commercial. she's She was the set dresser, or often the set teacher, because she had a teaching license from way back in the 60s.
00:04:06
Speaker
So she would she had a prop shop. she you know you i need a bunch of I need a bunch of clothes to make people look like they're from the 1950s. Okay, I got you covered or whatever. I need a jukebox too and all this.
00:04:18
Speaker
So I was never really, i didn't grow up with a parents or really anyone who was in a corporate world. My grandfather was a surgeon. His wife was a nurse. So, you know, um my dad was a lawyer. I didn't grow up in that kind of world. So I i didn't, I knew it was a good way to start, but I really quickly saw that this isn't the path for me.
00:04:37
Speaker
So i'm thinking about what am I good at? What do I like? And really the thing I liked the most, I loved being history major at the research, the writing, the learning, and and not that I taught, but so I thought this is the right path for me to to be a history professor because it's what I'm, I was really good at it. I did a great senior thesis. I was a runner up for an award that they had, about my thesis about the American revolution and two businessmen who are on different sides of the of the conflict.
00:05:04
Speaker
It's out there. If you want a copy, I can get you a copy. ah So I thought i wanted I want to go to graduate school and become
Mentorship and Web Development Transition
00:05:12
Speaker
a history professor. So I went back to DePauw, drove down from Chicago.
00:05:16
Speaker
This is like the spring of 99. Met with my advisor, John Schlatterbeck, John Dittmer, who I'd become friends with he after I graduated. He's like, Fritz, call me John. You don't have to call me Professor Dittmer anymore.
00:05:27
Speaker
And then ah another professor, a French history professor named Dennis Trinkle, who was seven years older than me, and he became a really important mentor for me. And all of them said, being his professor is wonderful, but if the job market is awful. So this is late 90s.
00:05:44
Speaker
It's bad now. It was already getting, it was bad then. So they said, if you're going to do this, you need to be and you need to be at the front edge of what technology can do in the field, both in teaching and research.
00:05:57
Speaker
we They said, we don't know what it's going to do. It's so early days. But if you can be really at the front edge of that, you have a better chance. There's also a guy named Glenn Keeker, who is a Latin American history prof who was very important too in this conversation. So um I thought, okay, so i'm working at Anderson Consulting. I'm getting the certainly getting the tech skills. I'm going to keep pouring into that.
00:06:19
Speaker
That was more, you know like corporate clients so i wanted to do web development because that's really where they said what the web can do in those spaces of research and teaching head to that direction so i pulled the lever ahead my dad he was the president of a small graphic design firm i was very close to the vice president since i was in high school guy named rich murphy and i said i want to learn web development i've got some chops from from anderson he's like come work for me i'll pay you a small salary but you know in st louis then I could get a great apartment for 500 bucks a month or 400 bucks a month in a great part of town by actually pretty close to Washington University.
00:06:56
Speaker
And so I did that. I moved to st back to St. Louis and I started applying to grad schools and I applied to, you know, real programs like Princeton and University of Virginia and the University of Indiana or Indiana University. So ah Washington University and, um,
00:07:14
Speaker
as i'm a as I'm building up in this web development space. So, um and I got really good advice along the way. So it took me while to remember, but there was a professor at Indiana named John Bodnar, who I went to do a visit because I applied.
00:07:30
Speaker
And he said, whatever you do, don't borrow money. No offense, Kevin, don't borrow money to do any kind of degree in history or the humanities. Go somewhere where you get funding.
00:07:43
Speaker
Like, okay, that's that's really good advice. So i I think I got in there. I don't remember if I got funding from them. i got into UVA. I was accepted. I had some conversations with Ed Ayers, who was like a very important historian of the New South, the post Civil War Reconstruction era. He was there at the time. i think he was still in the history department. He wasn't a dean yet.
00:08:05
Speaker
He hadn't gone to University of Richmond yet. He was like, I can't offer you funding. I would love to have you with your background. It really sucked because I don't know who knows what my path would have been had I gone to UVA. Maybe I would have gone continued.
00:08:17
Speaker
So but i I get a I get a full funding offer from Washington University. It's perfect. It's like seriously less than a mile from where i already lived. So the it worked out really well. And so there was a professor there who ah named Peter Castor. He's still there. I think he's he's higher up now. i don't know if he's at a dean level, but he certainly he directs all the history and American culture studies programs.
00:08:39
Speaker
and we're still in touch occasionally. So if you're listening, Peter, i hope you're well. um So he was there and he is at the, he went to UVA. So he is very much immersed in digital humanities, using the web and teaching and research.
00:08:52
Speaker
So he and I became very connected quickly. And so I walk in and I've got these technology skills that no one has, you know, ASP, ColdFusion, relational databases, you know,
00:09:08
Speaker
data enabled websites, which is still new. Like this is pre-Web 2.0 that everyone talked about in the early 2000s. So, um you know, he's like, great. The minute I walked in, they're like oh, you do this stuff?
Digital Humanities at Washington University
00:09:20
Speaker
Great. You can do this project. We're trying to develop this online database of of these records. And we want to do this program where we teach graduate students how to how to develop multimedia and presentations, basically,
00:09:36
Speaker
short films about their research that's more accessible and that lay people, people not in the field can understand so that they're, you know, they know how to talk about their research. So it was great. Like I had all this, I got right to the front of line, all these things.
00:09:50
Speaker
So I'm moving along. I'm in like my first, second year and I'm realizing, you know, this is really great stuff. I'm really interested in this. And then I'm also realizing what, how long is that path going to be to be a history a history professor?
00:10:04
Speaker
To get my degree, you know, it's usually six, eight years to get a PhD in humanities, which is a long time. And then I really realized as I'm watching other grad students in the program, I will have very little sovereignty over and control over where I'm going to live if I want to get a tenure track job.
00:10:21
Speaker
So I'm like, ooh, I don't know if I want to finish this thing. ah So i I took an off ramp. at the masters, I still did a master's thesis that I had so much fun writing. It's about the lumber industry in the US South post-Civil War and how it was um this confluence of interesting ah factors like technology, policy policy related to essentially you the The forests of the US South were were largely held off from being consumed and logged out because of policy during the reconstruction year where.
00:11:01
Speaker
um you You know they couldn't locals could not Confederate veterans could not access it to mine and log because of their. affiliation with the rebellion.
00:11:12
Speaker
And so, um you know, it really was a large resource for a long time. And so it was basically how that became how that whole system of, you know, robber barons and lumber barons came into the south and the local versus ah national economic factors on it it was a really fun project. And I learned some really interesting things along the way about the social dynamics.
00:11:37
Speaker
ah Jim Crow and ah race, all sorts of interesting things. So finished. I always joke that I i ah you graduated and walked. you know I got my diploma, had my mortarboard on a Saturday, and I joined the staff on Monday.
00:11:52
Speaker
I joined the technology staff of the College of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 2002. And along the way in 2001, I became really close to a staff member in that team who had done his PhD in English comparative lit named Gavin Foster.
00:12:10
Speaker
Gavin's CIO at Gettysburg College now. I hope we can have him as a guest sometime because he's also a really important early mentor. He taught me how to he taught me how to use how to build things in Macromedia Flash back in the day.
00:12:23
Speaker
So Gavin was an important influence on my early career as well. He showed me a lot of what could be done in this space. So, you know, i'm I'm digging into digital humanities and projects to the university.
00:12:36
Speaker
So I still worked with Peter Castor lot. So one of the fascinating things is um the circuit court of St. Louis, this is where the Dred Scott case came through before it went to the Supreme Court in the late 1850s.
00:12:50
Speaker
So, but they were, call we call them freedom suits, I don't know if they're still called that, but there was, they had never, the the two enemies of historical records, they were never burned and they were never flooded.
00:13:01
Speaker
So they were all there. So there was dozens of his history of freedom suits in the pre-Civil War era, slaves who were transported to say the Minnesota territory,
00:13:13
Speaker
by military personnel and or Illinois, and they would sue for their freedom and they would often win. So the real ah real a rupture with the Brad Scott case is that he lost at the Supreme Court. Most times those cases often they won. The minute you touch free soil, you are a free person. So all those records were there, bound up and you know and string and and wax, you know the red tape, um coal dust in them. so I got to figure out and set a whole process for digitizing them, cataloging them, and making them available online in a partnership with the Missouri Department of, I can't remember the department now, the state. I mean, it was in the the Secretary of State Office, Historical Records Project. So this is great stuff. I'm i'm the one developing it.
00:14:02
Speaker
So I did things like that for a couple of years. I continue to teach ah um workshops about how to present, you know, how to develop things in flash that grad students and faculty could do things. So one really interesting project was a Kathleen Muldoon is her name. She developed a small module about the human pelvic floor, which is a really hard topic to teach that point.
00:14:25
Speaker
I remember saying, you know, they use coffee filters and it's hard to visualize unless you're operating on a cadaver. And often in a cadaver, it's not, the anatomy you know, it's, it's not really, it's, it's not well preserved anymore or something to that effect. So she built this online module that helped visualize it and a, an anatomy prof who,
00:14:44
Speaker
And in anthropology used it. wrote a paper about it. like So this is really exciting, interesting stuff. Yet I still have this itch. ah you know I want to keep going. I didn't necessari necessarily want to be a faculty member, but I wanted to keep building out some kind of career in higher ed at this intersection of technology and and topics, humanities, science, wherever.
00:15:06
Speaker
so um i So I in the think it was in 2004, I was kicking around like, maybe I should just go back in the program at Wash U and finish my PhD. So I talked to my advisor, Ivor Bernstein. It's like, yeah, you can do it, you know, yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I remember I met with Dennis Trinkle from DePau again. At that point, he was CIO at DePau. He's not a history, or a French history professor anymore. And he was at an alumni event. i went to it in St. Louis and he's like, don't just get a doctorate in higher education policy and administration?
00:15:36
Speaker
I'd never heard of this field. I'm like, oh. Yeah, because I don't want to be faculty. And I know I can be faculty and then go through the faculty administrative route, dean, all that stuff, be a long path.
00:15:48
Speaker
It's like, no, no, if you don't want to be faculty, you want to be in the tech side, the academic technology side, just do this route. It'll take you where you want to go. so i started looking at programs. So, Fred, sorry, real quick.
00:15:59
Speaker
So how did that faculty mentor of yours go from being, how did they become a CIO? Oh yeah, Dennis, we should, I think he's in our list. We should interview Dennis sometime. So just just real quick, like how did he become a CIO? French history professor, right? He got his PhD in the University of Kentucky in ninety early 90s, mid 90s.
00:16:20
Speaker
Started teaching French history. He was an adjunct at DePaul when I was there. Also very, he was doing, he was developing coding and games and things, is I think as a kid and in high school. So he also had these non-official tech experiences. He wasn't a computer science major, maybe minored or something.
00:16:37
Speaker
So he had this whole corpus of knowledge and experience. And then as he was bringing them together, he saw the same thing. like I'm not going to get the path I want, and maybe not the career I want out of a history professor role.
00:16:49
Speaker
So as he was teaching adjunct at DePauw, they're like, you need to keep doing this stuff. So they eventually made him a professor of instructional technology. This is like early two thousand And then um he just kept going towards that route. So then he became CEO at Valparaiso for a while.
00:17:05
Speaker
Then he was back um at a state level in Indiana doing this how to build technology effectively into curricula from K through 16. This is in the mid 2000s, late 2000s.
00:17:18
Speaker
So then you get into the just the tech sector of workforce development, really. So this is why I think he'd be a really interesting guest sometime because he's just got this really interesting path.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, Apparently at one point he was a wine buyer. So he'd go to France a lot, which sounds like a pretty sweet gig too. It was like a side hustle in grad school or something. So um anyway, so, but I saw this itch. So started looking for programs.
00:17:45
Speaker
There was not a program at, there was not a program at Wash U doctorate in higher education policy administration or administration. There wasn't a program at SLU, St. Louis university. It wasn't a program at university of Minnesota or excuse university Missouri, St. Louis, UMSL.
00:18:01
Speaker
Mizzou had one in Columbia. Um, and I looked at others like Loyola, I think of Chicago. at this point I'm engaged to my now wife, Stephanie, she's finishing grad school in 2005. She has a doctorate in physical therapy from Wash U. And so we're looking at where are we going to live, et cetera.
00:18:21
Speaker
And so she's from
Integrating Tech in Teaching at Macalester College
00:18:22
Speaker
Minnesota. She's from Duluth, Minnesota. Her parents are from the iron range, the range. So, um, her, she's younger than me. She's five years younger. She wanted, she was initially before she met me, she was gonna move back up here to the Twin Cities to start her career.
00:18:38
Speaker
And so she said, would you be interested? And then there's a program at the you know University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, the flagship campus of the system. And I'm like, this could be good. I got i applied, i got in So that's, we're moving to Minnesota. This is 2005. We moved here in May or so of 2005, right after she finished her DPT.
00:19:00
Speaker
So I start, and I'm still really interested the technology, academic technology and higher education. um So I entered the PhD program and I'm At the time i was working for a small, and I've referenced this before, a very small higher education marketing and communications company, tiny, like five people called the Lawler Group.
00:19:25
Speaker
And I was really fortunate. So this is where I first get my look inside the admissions and marketing space of higher ed. I was, you know, I'm 29, 30, had never been in that space. So that was a really important education for me.
00:19:39
Speaker
I started there in the spring of 05.
00:19:42
Speaker
Oh six, that spring of oh six, the university and the department, my advisor, Darwin Hendel, I applied and got a graduate assistantship. So I was doing one course at a time initially in the fall of five in my program in the spring of oh six.
00:19:58
Speaker
Now I have an opportunity to just plow through this thing. I get a little stipend that'll pay for the mortgage. My tuition's remitted. i took four courses a semester.
00:20:09
Speaker
for four semesters plus summer courses in 07 and just plowed through that, plowed through that coursework. Cause I wanted to get it done. We didn't have kids at that point. We're just married. She's starting her career.
00:20:22
Speaker
you know, it's a good time to do that. So I did that spring of 08. I finished my coursework, took my oral prelim, did my written, actually i did my written prelim, fun story. I bombed my written prelim at the first go. I was just too much information.
00:20:36
Speaker
like It was, it was those days when You went in a room with a computer that was not connected to the internet. You got three questions and you had to get two of them right. You know, what is, you know, Kolb's theory of student inclusion or whatever. I've forgotten all the Forgotten it all.
00:20:52
Speaker
It's all in here. How college affects students. Pasquerelle and Terenzini, the Bible, which now holds up my computer. So, yeah, so then I,
00:21:05
Speaker
I finished my coursework, I did pass my written and my oral prelim, and my plan was to do research about um instructional technology in ah small colleges, how that's developed, choices made about how to implement it. um And so, i but then I was very fortunate to get a job at Macalester College in St. Paul here, a small liberal arts college, like 2000 students, really great institution, you know, in the top whatever, 20, 30 in the u s And in the academic technology side, I am, ah the role is called Academic Information Associate. ands still They still have them. So we were academic technology support staff in by disciplines. I was in the humanities.
00:21:51
Speaker
We had one in the social sciences, languages and fine arts, and the ah physical and physical sciences, let's call it that. So I started there in the summer of 08. And...
00:22:02
Speaker
and ah So I'm in a faculty office in the and Old Main, so I'm on the English department floor with all the history department, classics, all those folks, philosophy. And so i started there and I had this, i was there for nine years and I had a nine year really intimate education, in-depth education about all things higher education, ah small institutions and then bigger, as I'm also doing my research and writing my dissertation.
00:22:33
Speaker
And I had some really important mentors there. One was named Brad Velvis. He was another AIA in social sciences. We called him Papa Bear because he's he's just retired. And he was a really important mentor for me about how do you do this and do this role and also do research and dissertation at the same time because he had done his PhD in um learning sciences or something to that effect. I'm getting a little rusty.
00:22:57
Speaker
Anyway, so and this is great. So I'm immersed with faculty all the time. I'm working with faculty. I'm supporting teaching and research. And this is where all the things I've done before. So my academic background in history is important, even though I'm not going to say i just have master's, but you know, when you're in a world of PhDs and you a master's,
00:23:16
Speaker
You know, you have to be careful and and you're in an in an academic technology role. I learned quickly, not because of big mistakes, but you have to you can never purport to be faculty in a setting like that because it doesn't play well.
00:23:28
Speaker
But i they were so amazing and respect, not respectful. They were supportive and they brought me they just welcomed me in, you know, like. come to our meetings, they told me all all the cultural nuance of their world, teaching, research.
00:23:44
Speaker
It was like being a little anthropologist, getting to accompany them in all these spaces. I'm also there, and Brian Rosenberg, who's now ah frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education, he was president from like 03 to 2021. So I'm there in the prime of his presidency.
00:24:03
Speaker
pre-COVID, post-Great Recession, or during and post. So in faculty meetings, we're open to all staff. So once a month, I'm at a faculty meeting, just sitting there listening,
00:24:14
Speaker
soaking it in, watching it all happen. And that was like a masterclass in that world. Really important. Seeing how the governance, faculty governance happens, the intersection between the administration, CFO, the president, provost, and the faculty as as a body, that tension occasionally and that give and take.
00:24:36
Speaker
um It was just a really great nine years with them. I loved i loved working there. And in a lot of ways, I still, I miss it because Again, I'm in a faculty faculty space.
00:24:46
Speaker
I get to see it all happen. I'm in the classroom with them a lot, working with students. One my favorite memories is so ah Professor Andy Overman. He's a classics professor, archeologist, Roman archeology.
00:24:59
Speaker
and But he got really in, so this is a like 2010 or so. he you know Middle East peace, Middle East conflict. So he wanted to bring students from egypt into a conversation with students from Israel remotely.
00:25:18
Speaker
And this is like, ah Zoom didn't exist. I think we're using Skype. I had a little webcam set up, you know, a microphone ah set up next to it. putting it up on the screen with a crappy projector. I mean, like holding it together barely, like I would have to mute our mic when they were talking to drop the feedback. It was, but you know, this was, this was great experience of helping people connect where they normally couldn't connect at all because of political con and conflict barriers. So, and that was one of Andy was kind of skeptical at first. Like, I don't think you're able to do this. I don't think that I think this is a bad idea.
00:25:55
Speaker
And he became a really ah really ah great champion and someone who really could see the potential. Another one, Daylan English. I mentioned her before, before we recorded.
00:26:09
Speaker
She is a professor of African-American literature um and Afrofuturism is her subject and her you know her area, her specialty. And she was, you know, everyone was rightfully often skeptical of the role technology and humanities because of just how technology and human and human spaces interact over the course of history a lot, lot lot of skeletons.
00:26:36
Speaker
But you know I showed her, look, we can do this. We can portray your scholarship this way or your teaching. And she was she saw it she's like, I'm in. i This is what I need. Because she wanted to be able to portray, ah to take clips of media, say of you know James Brown or Janelle Monae or these artists performing and as examples of afa Afrofuturism and annotate them and do things you just couldn't do on paper.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so she saw the potential of that. So again, she went from being appropriately skeptical to understanding how to co-opt these things. not to be, they're not subject to their whims and you're not, they're not controlling your scholarship or your teaching or your, what you're producing. You're actually controlling them and what they do for your teaching and your scholarship.
00:27:23
Speaker
So I still, I still do that. Let's co-opt this thing. Yeah. You're skeptical of it. So am I actually, but let's bend it in a way that makes it work for you.
00:27:32
Speaker
Okay. I've been talking a lot. and need a breath. Where do you all want to go? you Oh, we got to get up to now, right? Well,
00:27:46
Speaker
so early on, I mean, I think thatre like there's this fine line between like library science. like If you think about the stuff you're doing with the historical society, collecting all those things, like that's like but you could have went the library science route, like really thinking about how to bring, because that's a whole lot of go pieces that they're doing now versus this technology within higher ed And so I think that piece, I think is just interesting, like how you made,
00:28:21
Speaker
i guess, a conscious choice to do technology ask things within the higher ed realm versus you could have went almost any, I mean, I was like early tech, right? Like you could almost went anywhere.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, I could have. Um,
00:28:43
Speaker
youre Yeah, I never really thought about it like that. It it was a lot of intersection with library sciences and what they were doing. um learned about like Dublin Core metadata standards, you know, and how they relate relate to what we're doing with um these freedom suits and the project we're doing to try to make them available. So, oh my gosh, yeah, we have to use a standard for the metadata we're collecting so that it can then be aggregated in and federated with other similar resources. So the American Memory Project was huge back then, I'm assuming it still is is as an example of how do you make giant troves of historical materials available online to the public.
00:29:21
Speaker
um it's It's really, looking back, it's just, it was an interesting time. And I just, I could see this string laid out by people who were giving me these little nuggets of information, like my advisors,
00:29:33
Speaker
understand technology and how it intersects with what we do. We don't know yet where it's going. We have ideas. Be it in that space, be at the front edge of it. um You know, my friend and now colleague, Gavin Foster, who was doing this stuff in the mid nineties, late nineties, when he was working on his doctorate,
00:29:51
Speaker
um
00:29:54
Speaker
you know, all those early experiences with faculty at Wash U, Peter Castor, another person who could see the space and it was very undefined, but you could, I don't know, like I could see this space. Like wanna go there.
00:30:08
Speaker
i still, you know, i i I taught a little bit. I don't i haven't taught enough. And i was um i feel like I've got, out not got away with something. I feel like I was very, I was able to negotiate around that in a space where I'm with people who teach. McAllister's very teaching focused.
00:30:24
Speaker
ah research is very much a part of their tenure and promotion path. Don't get me wrong. But teaching excellence is part of the experience of being a Macalester student, but research is as well and for faculty.
00:30:37
Speaker
But I was getting entree to these spaces where I'm not going say I had no right being there. i've asked like the Andy Overman, who I mentioned, the professor of classics, I remember asking him, how important is it? Because at third points, you guys done this, you're working on a doctorate. like We had a baby at that point.
00:30:53
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you know, like, when am I going to sleep? and there are points when I'm like, do I, should I, do I even finish this thing? You know, like I'm tired. It's a long road. There are these big peaks and troughs of productivity.
00:31:07
Speaker
So I finished my prelims. Then we had a baby and I had a new job. Then I like, oh, nine, 10, I did my data collection. And then we like built a house.
00:31:20
Speaker
Then I like started doing data analysis and writing, and then we're going to have another baby, you know? So it was, long it was, took me. And so I finished my, it took me five years after I finished my prelim stuff to defending. So the spring of 13, I finished and defended.
00:31:38
Speaker
it was actually one of the best phases of my career. was just, everything was great. Not in the world, but for me and my so my wife Stephanie, we had a young child, we had another one on the way. i would go down at night and hide in my little office in the basement, put on my lucky hoodie, drop in a pint of chai to like rev my brain up and just write. It was great. I put my headphones on, my my good music and nature sounds that I like to write to.
00:32:02
Speaker
It was like this really insular but really fun time of just being immersed in my little project, my little family. And in the spring of 13, got to take some parental leave. So Leo, our son, was like four months old.
00:32:16
Speaker
And so I took my parental leave at Macalester. And I remember walking around campus at the U. And he is in a stroller and I had copies of my dissertation in the bottom to take him to my committee members and drop him off. So it was just like this fun little period of life where all was right. You know, I get to finish.
00:32:34
Speaker
was great. But yeah, I always feel like I've been finding these little areas where And it's weird to say people don't think hire is entrepreneurial, but it's this own little entrepreneurialism. Like you see these opportunities and you're like, want to poke on that and go in that direction where some people might be like, what are you doing?
00:32:53
Speaker
There's nothing here. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I loved your your description of the of your path today because it... um You know, it it reminds me too of just like some of the things that we've been talking about, just finding those opportunities.
00:33:11
Speaker
Like, you know, when i was trying to, you know, get into online learning. I mean, that was relatively new for me. And there there just happened to be, you know, like it would be interesting to to actually like look at, if if you could go back and look at the Chronicle of Higher ad around the time that I was looking for that job at Northwestern State, just to see well how many,
00:33:36
Speaker
how many directors of online or oh yeah program you know program managers of online there were. wonder if could scrape the Internet Archive. that's her you know yeah I wonder if there's anything in there from that institution's website, and the Internet Archive, about their staffing.
00:33:54
Speaker
Staffing is always a really interesting area for me. that My dissertation, which is about how small institutions adopted, built, adapted online instructional technology is what we called them. We didn't call ed tech yet.
00:34:09
Speaker
Um, but the staffing was part of what I looked at. I always found because I was in a place where we had what we call the liaison model. I'm out. I liaise with a certain column, a certain silo of a discipline. I'm in a disciplinary corridor.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yet there were some that were expertise. So expertise focus. I only do, ah you know, web projects. I do media projects for or programs and faculty members.
00:34:35
Speaker
I do this or that. So they're very expertise focused. So staffing has really always been a really interesting subject for me and how we do this. Even now, and the where I am at the University of Minnesota, how do we staff for our team and other spaces? How do we staff to help online programs develop and scale?
00:34:55
Speaker
You know, I had a question for you about like, you know, I know, you know, you complete your master's and in history and then and then eventually you got your your doctorate in education, you know, higher ed.
00:35:12
Speaker
I'm wondering for you, just given this given the fact that you you know you, you know, after you got your master's and you started working full time, like if you hadn't gone,
00:35:25
Speaker
um back to graduate school, do you think your path would have been somewhat similar in the sense that you were, you know, open to collaborating with others? You saw the future of the use of technology? Like, do you think the doctorate kind of helped you or, you know, or or not? Like in some ways, because I bring up the question because sometimes I get asked like, oh, do I need to to get a doctorate in order to do what you do now.
00:35:57
Speaker
Right. And I struggle a bit with that because I think it it allowed me to be in the room where it happens. Right. But then you just talked about how, hey, you were already a staff member. So you were allowed to join these meetings and conversations and to build trust with faculty.
The Value of Advanced Degrees in Higher Ed
00:36:14
Speaker
So I'd love to hear your thoughts about whether or not that going back to graduate school was you know, helpful versus maybe just in a parallel universe where you didn't do that.
00:36:28
Speaker
but ray You see that version of you still being successful and and and doing cool things. i So I wondered, I struggled with, as I'm doing the PhD hired policy administration, why am I doing this? Is it just for me, my own edification?
00:36:44
Speaker
um Why am I doing this? And but it was it was a strategic move in ways. I wanted a PhD because I wanted i wanted to do the research. I liked the research.
00:36:57
Speaker
And I wanted, basically, if I was gonna be in this space in higher ed and not have gone a faculty route, I wanted to have ah doctorate because I wanted to have ah credential that's sort of unassailable, but undeniable.
00:37:11
Speaker
And i I remember asking Andy Overman again at Macalester. We'd sit in his office a lot and talk or just have coffee. And i remember as I was, one of the points I'm like, this is a really long path.
00:37:22
Speaker
I'm in the middle of it and it's hard. I like it, but oof, you know, i'm I'm like years into this thing. Should I continue? Does it matter? And he said, yes, it matters. It matters in an academic institution because it means you get it.
00:37:35
Speaker
you get fat You get the research enterprise. You understand what that takes. You can speak to these things. I mean, higher ed, you have to be able to speak largely from experience when you're in those settings, administrative, academic, et cetera.
00:37:50
Speaker
Even staff, you have to have experience, which is why when we talk about in our episode about why we're doing this, one of the things I'm going to say is like we have experience, the three of us.
00:38:01
Speaker
ah To me, it's hard for people to come in and say, higher ed should do this when they've barely ever had a cup of coffee in an institution. They've been adjacent or never in one. I struggle with that. That's where I'm like, shh.
00:38:15
Speaker
um But he said, look, it matters. This matters a lot. And we you know we'll talk about this at some point, but I'll drop it in now. All three of us are in the Fulbright Specials program.
00:38:26
Speaker
Kevin is a recent addition to the roster for that really excellent program. You, Kelvin and I have been through it. We've had our we've gotten our grants and done experiences. That PhD, that doctorate was really important then to be able to get into that program.
00:38:41
Speaker
You don't have to have one to do it. um But you know I wanted it so because that's what I thought it would really do for me. so But i I do occasionally people ask me about Should I do a doctorate in this or that?
00:38:56
Speaker
And I tell them, first of all, don't borrow any money to do it. i i try to pass the helpful wisdom along I got. um and that you it's a slog, it's gonna be hard. You're gonna doubt yourself at a lot of moments.
00:39:08
Speaker
But in in a lot of ways, it's a calculated it's a calculated move. you have And you have to make that calculation. I can't say, oh, you should totally do this, or no, you should not. I met at a listening session for our upcoming strategic plan at the university. I went to a, you know it was like a collaborative workshop. what What should we focus on? And there was a student who was just finishing ah There was a doctor, she was a doctoral student in history, American history at the university of Minnesota.
00:39:35
Speaker
And she was also then like, I just like, I want to go to law school too. And in my brain, I'm like, not to be totally pragmatic. Like, what are you going with that? But I'm like, what do you envision?
00:39:46
Speaker
Where do you envision that taking you? And it's all that needed in a world that is in the world in higher ed now that is unkind to frankly, unkind of faculty.
00:40:00
Speaker
There are, you know, faculty is a, is a, is a profession is a, it's a very hard space to be in. So, but I tell people you have to make that choice. I can give you my perspectives, but it is really your calculated move.
00:40:15
Speaker
You have to envision that space that you want to be in that you think is the place for you. I, for me, was the intersection of technology and higher education and academics and research. And i wasn I was alive at a time when there was a growing need for that. And people who were like, i don't, we don't, how do we get into this now? How do we get into this? Oh, you're interested and you have some basic proficiency and competency.
00:40:38
Speaker
You know, another important person, Dr. Elaine Berlin, she was the associate dean at the College of Arts and Sciences at the time at Washington University. She was like, you do this stuff? Great. I'm going to take you and I'm going to have you doing these workshops and doing this and that. She was she was great.
00:40:54
Speaker
She was a wonderful, wonderful mentor and supporter. So I love all that. I think there's there's two think there's two pieces to it right? so there's...
00:41:07
Speaker
is the doctorate necessary for the things that we do? I think that's the big broad question, right? Like, do you have to have a doctorate to do these things?
00:41:23
Speaker
So to where i was kind of going with with the the idea of the doctorate is the question of, is it necessary for the things that we do or Have we created these dec degrees at this level because we just think that's the right thing to do?
00:41:47
Speaker
So oh yeah so I'll use nursing as a really good example.
00:41:56
Speaker
You can get an associate's degree. You can get an ASN, Associate Science in Nursing. You're an RN. You are a registered nurse. You take the qualifying exams. you can You can do everything that a nurse can do.
00:42:10
Speaker
And then we went and we created the Master of Science in Nursing for people who want a little bit more, or actually we also have the Bachelor of Science in Nursing. And so now in the past five or so years, all these hospitals are coming back with their accreditation standards for running a hospital and saying,
00:42:30
Speaker
well, you're not going to be as accredited or as valued if you have a whole bunch of ASNs running around. So they all need to go get a BSN. And so we we as higher ed went created through our accrediting bodies for CCNE and others and said, okay, well, here's the pathway to go from ASN to BSN. It doesn't give you any more clinical work. It's it's all it's all classroom.
00:42:51
Speaker
It's all didactic classwork, right? to begin To get a bachelor's degree. You already know everything at the associate's level. And then we did the the masters and then we do the DNP.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yep. Right. So we've just created these pathways of just move like, Oh yeah. Do you need to move? Do like your wife has is physical therapist. She has DBT. They used to do bachelor's degree.
00:43:15
Speaker
Right. It went to masters and then it went to doctorate and we got rid of all the other pathways in between. Yeah. She was one of the first classes while she went in early on doctorate physical therapy. So the class of 05 was the first.
00:43:28
Speaker
think class of 04 or 03 was the first one to, they were all in on the d the DPT. And now what's really fascinating to her and frustrating, she's 20 years into her career on the nose, is that it's not giving her the professional opportunities she really wants, which is to branch off the clinical work into the quality assessment, quality improvement. She's finding that um you know people with bachelors of nursing and maybe masters are having more opportunities because Honestly, I don't know why, because they have, I don't know, it's it's really fascinating. So I think there's a, in some fields, it's it's like degree inflation.
00:44:06
Speaker
What is that extra, what is all that extra getting you? So I think yeah it's a great question about in our world of higher ed, especially in the non-faculty, the staff side, administrative side. Do you need a doctorate? What does it get you?
00:44:19
Speaker
Here's something i'm and to I haven't thought about it this until this moment that you brought it up. I don't think, so I am an adjacent. I came, met bachelor's in history, non-declared minor in jazz studies, a master's in history, American history, doctorate in PhD and hired PhD in policy administration.
00:44:38
Speaker
I don't think ah going around is is easy now. Like if let's say I had a, let's say i got a PhD in history or had a PhD in psychology, like Calvin. Could someone in a non-technological field, I mean, do do you have to have a PhD or master's in instructional design now to get into those spaces?
00:44:57
Speaker
Because that's the space where I see so many people going, instructional design, ID, ID, ID. Could I even crack into that space? Frankly, I wouldn't want to, I've kind of done instructional design stuff. I wouldn't want to do that. like I don't want to be doing Canvas and all that crap anymore.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah, but but i think we would i even have. a Would we have a shot? we were in the time when like, it was like a wide open Wild West. Like we need people doing this. We don't know. There was no, there were no technical academic degrees to get there. You came in with some sort of adjacent disciplinary background.
00:45:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at a lot of the people that run online programs. I mean, they came through the academic realm. of a PhD have no training in the technology side, have no training in the LMS side, but because many of that, many of those positions were tied to delivering of an academic program. And so that was, that that resides with the faculty. Right.
00:45:53
Speaker
So, but I think there's still, for those kinds roles, there's immense value because And you're an example this, you've taught a lot. My boss, Eric Watkins is a horticulture professor. He's actually only 0.6 the vice provost of distributed learning.
00:46:08
Speaker
He's 0.4. He's still in the college of, you know, food, agricultural, and natural sciences. um He does turf grass research. So if you, he gives me free lawn advice. It's great.
00:46:18
Speaker
um But his experience teaching online is one of the reasons that helped him get that role in his teaching experience and He knows how programs are, program approval processes, course approvals, because he has that from all of his academic years that you would never, it's just a purely administrative technical, and let's say academic technology route, you would never get that in implicit in the in the weeds experience.
00:46:48
Speaker
So that's where it's like calculated decision. You want to get this, you want to go this route. You got to just roll your dice on what you think is right. And obviously talking to a lot of people about how did you get there? How did you get there?
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah. But so I, I guess the other thing I was kind of thinking is, I think it also kind of depends on what you want to do. Right. Like I think to answer for you to answer Kelvin's original question, which was, did you really need the PhD to do what you were doing and could you have continued on that path? I think the answer is yes, but for you to move up in the organ, like it's almost like like there's like these these hanging chads, right? of
00:47:33
Speaker
you want to You want to move up, so you need to have a certain credential or you need to have a degree or you can't be, like I used to be at a community college where you couldn't be a dean unless you had a doctorate degree, right? Like it was just a line drawn in the sand. It didn't matter how many years of experience you had, didn't matter how much you did instruction, didn't matter what, like but that was just the line of sand. If you want to be a Dean, you have to have a PhD, you have to have a doctorate.
00:47:58
Speaker
So it's kind of like that same thing, right? Like you were doing really well in the world that you were with the credentials that you had, but did you need that to get to the next level?
00:48:14
Speaker
No one told me you need it. It was again, it was something where I i don't want this sound arrogant, but I wanted a credential that when I walked in a room with
Transition to University of Minnesota: Tech Innovations
00:48:28
Speaker
deans, provost, vice provost, faculty, that it was to signal something that I i'm i'm a i know what your world is like I'm not going to purport to be that. I would never purport to be a faculty member.
00:48:46
Speaker
I haven't taught a ton. I would love to teach more. I've tried to like adjunct this and that. It just hasn't worked out. I've done a little bit. So I did some pre and first semester of COVID the spring of 20. I taught a little one credit course that was a hoot about like data, um data analytics, telling stories with data.
00:49:06
Speaker
ah But I don't have the teaching chops to really say, oh, i'm I've got faculty experience. And I don't do that. I would never because i and I'd probably fall flat on that. um But, you know, i wanted I wanted to send a signal. If I'm going to try to really climb up in an academic space, I want the potential that rhymes, that harmonizes with most other people in the room.
00:49:29
Speaker
and I think that's the key, the academic space. Yes. Right. Like, I think that's And Calvin can probably weigh in more on this more than and I can because I've not tried the tenure track either.
00:49:43
Speaker
But I also think if you're, I'm just talking biases, right? Like biases within height within the world of higher ed. And I think there are biases, even if you have a doctorate.
00:49:55
Speaker
If you didn't go through the tenure track process, you're still not quite seeing the same way because that took a different rigor. That took a different element of work and all of those types of things. But that's just kind of my lens of faculty that I've worked with at ton of different institutions, you know.
00:50:15
Speaker
well and i think this may be kind of go ahead and And having those conversations was still kind of like, well, you know, this is how we do it here in the engineering program. And it's like, well, yes, but curriculum is curriculum at the end of the day.
00:50:32
Speaker
Kevin, what were you going to hop in with? Because I can segue into something. I'm not hearing you right now. We lost your sound, Kelvin. Sorry about that.
00:50:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, you you all brought up a good thing, too, about think thinking about the culture. Like, for example, another example is like college presidents, right? There are many schools where a college president doesn't have to have a doctorate, but then there's faculty pressure because they want to have someone at that in that role that looks like them, right? Or at least understands the academic enterprise from, they've walked the walks. from they like they can Now they can talk the talk.
00:51:12
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so I totally get that. I mean, I worked for a community college where i was really pushing to try to get a promotion because, you know, we were expecting our first child, our daughter, Kate.
00:51:24
Speaker
And I was told that, like, my boss was very supportive about me being a dean. But then i think, you know, we had this similar conversation about, well, even though you have ah a PhD, you know, you haven't really been in a tenure track role.
00:51:39
Speaker
um And it was only later where I think they decided to maybe create more of an executive director role, which would have been, so I wish I can go back in time and and had advocated for myself. How about... Hey, here's a different title you can think about. Right.
00:51:55
Speaker
Well, sir so here, this actually good segue to the next phase of my career. So 2017, I... Well, first of all, I had this amazing experience.
00:52:05
Speaker
The spring of 2017, the CTO at Carleton College, Janet Scannell, who's still there, I did a And the CIO at the time at Macalester, Jerry Sanders, she had this idea of doing a job swap.
00:52:22
Speaker
She wanted to take me for three months down to Carleton College, which is like 40 miles away in Northfield, charming little town. And then she was going to send Austin Robinson Coolidge, who was a tech director on her team, to Macalester. We were you going to switch roles for three months.
00:52:39
Speaker
So going down there would give me a chance to manage a team um and manage budgets and all sorts of other stuff. And for Austin, it would give him experience being right next to faculty, right along with them.
00:52:53
Speaker
um and supporting the academic enterprise more so than he was in his role down at Carleton. So that was a great experience. So for three months, I hoofed it down Carleton every day um and got to learn a ton from her and the people on the teams, the team that I manage who were very generous to let me come in and, ah ah you know, to do that role.
00:53:15
Speaker
It was funny. Janet said, she's like, was like, what can I do? What are the limits? She's like, well, you can't fire anybody, but you can pretty much do anything else. So I'm great. Okay. So that gave me a lot of insights. But in 2017, I was ready to move on from Macalester, partly because honestly, as much as I adored being in a small liberal arts environment, I went to college in a place like that.
00:53:35
Speaker
Most of my career was there. Washington was a bigger institution, but I loved Macalester. But small liberal arts colleges are a, the pressure was already on them then financially. And I felt like i don't want to just be relevant in that small slice of higher ed. I mean, I think SLACs, as we call them, small liberal arts colleges, I think they graduate maybe one and a half, one to one and a half percent of all college graduates every year.
00:54:02
Speaker
It's tiny. Yeah. So even though there's a lot of institutions, they just they're just small. So I didn't want only be relevant in that space. And I felt like it was a space that was starting to, you know, the the the ocean's rising on them or it's eroding that little island. So I secured a secure role at the University of Minnesota in the College of Liberal Arts as an academic technology staff person.
00:54:26
Speaker
one of the big pushes was they were going transition from Moodle to canvas over like a two year run. Um, and they wanted that they wanted someone who, I mean, I had been immersed in Moodle for years, um, at Calister and even ah there was like a Moodle. Um, I want to say it was a bore, but I was treasurer for this, like the U S Moodle community. So, um, I knew Moodle in and out as far as an admin and and teaching.
00:54:54
Speaker
So, And that was a great opportunity because it's a space I'm comfortable with. So it's liberal arts disciplines. I did get to work with faculty a lot. And I also, this is when I really yet another space where i'm like, Ooh, there's some opportunity there.
00:55:09
Speaker
I dove in and become a, became a tableau. I'm gonna say an expert, but I came really dangerous because we needed, we're a small team. There was like three technologists like me and we had a ah team lead who was a very, one of my better bosses ever, Chris Lopez.
00:55:27
Speaker
She, we needed ah like, we have a huge, biggest college in the system, bigger than every other campus, really. How are we going to eat this elephant? Tons of Moodle use. Got to go to Canvas. We have a two-year space. People like CLA, that college, they're not going to make it. There's too much to do.
00:55:43
Speaker
So what I did is I learned... I figured out how to make a dashboard that showed us what we had in Moodle, the presence of courses with content by department, by everything, all these factors, where we needed to go so that we could manage this transition. Oh, that department has tons of Moodle use. We need to go in there and figure out how to do it.
00:56:02
Speaker
It used to be ah like a come as you are shop for the academic technology. You come to us, faculty, you come to us. My so my ah argument was, no no, no, We need to divide this up by disciplinary
Expanding Horizons with ReLearn It
00:56:13
Speaker
corridors. We each take a corridor and then we really make relationships, beat the pavement, make relationships in those departments so that we can make this transition happen. And so, you know, it was a stepwise adoption.
00:56:26
Speaker
Every semester in the run-up, we could see who's doing it. I had a daily, like an hourly feed from Canvas. Who's editing? Who's not? Who's doing stuff? So then we knew, okay, we need to go to that department and give them a workshop or whatever.
00:56:38
Speaker
just make ourselves available or that particular liaison available. And it worked fall of 19. We were ready to go with the cutoff moves done. We were good. We had like a brief cup of coffee and then, and then COVID hit in the early 2020. It was awful.
00:56:55
Speaker
Just as far as workload and insanity. for instance, were they using Moodle for supplemental or was that their actual online courses? Well, the College of Liberal Arts had very few at that point, almost no online courses pre-COVID. So it was very much a complement and a supplement to in in-person instruction.
00:57:15
Speaker
So, um you know, I... i But I wanted, this is when, okay, again, I'm starting to scratch at something. Like I've been ah long time, what, 19, 17 years in the ed tech space.
00:57:28
Speaker
I'll be honest, I was getting bored with it because in the early 2000s, we were building things. And I only came to this realization recently. We were building things, building stuff for teaching, building stuff for research.
00:57:39
Speaker
Now in Canvas, it's like, everyone, we're going to implement a new font. i'm like, okay, it it became so incremental, that it stopped piquing my interest in my, my innovative brain.
00:57:52
Speaker
So along the way, and this is part of the doctorate, I was becoming more interested in the bigger questions, like, how do we how do we adapt to this online space in a way that still you the values and the the history and traditions and the good things about liberal arts, and humanities and all those things that carry forward and and go into that space. We're not just, you know, becoming overlorded by the technology.
00:58:17
Speaker
So I started, i wanted to get into that space and I was frankly having some challenges because again, my background was all in this ed tech space. So in, after the brutal experience of COVID, i And this is about when we became acquainted, Kevin, is I took a vice president role at a small OPM, online program management company called ReLearn It.
00:58:41
Speaker
I was there for about a year and a half. Part of it was a very strategic move because I wanted to gain more experience on that, you know, within the online space, meaning building programs, administering them,
00:58:54
Speaker
And that gave me a lot of experience I needed because I was writing contracts. I'm on the other side of the table now. So I have all this knowledge about how higher education works from the inside. And now I can bring that experience to bear on creating relationships and programs and frankly scaling those programs.
00:59:13
Speaker
So I wanted to do that and I knew I wouldn't be there forever, but I wanted to do that so that I could then keep growing in that space. I wanted to transition away from doing it to ed tech and academic technology in the institutional space to these bigger questions about how do we develop this online program space not just post COVID, but in general, like how do we do this? And because to me, that's, that is, it's not the only future of higher ed, but it is going to be a big part of it. And I wanted to be in that space. Again, I could, I wasn't the only one seeing this, but I could see the opportunity there.
00:59:48
Speaker
And like, how do I get there? And like, I have to make a leap out. I'm not getting the opportunities in. So I need to make a leap out to elevate and Kelvin, you're in both of you, Kevin, you you've done this a lot more than me, but you've moved out to move up, moved out of an institution to a company or
Current Role and Future Aspirations at University of Minnesota
01:00:02
Speaker
to another institution. So That's what I did. So then ah early 2023, wanted to, you know, I, there's time to move to a new space. So i um i left ReLearnIt and I was able to get this role in the Office of Distributed Learning at the University of Minnesota. So we were part of the provost's office. We're very small.
01:00:23
Speaker
We have our vice provost of distributed learning. We have our assistant vice provost who does a lot of the policy and the state reg stuff. And ah frankly, just a lot of opportunity sifting across the system.
01:00:38
Speaker
There's me, I'm an analyst. And then Paula McDonald, who is another analyst who leads a lot of our, she leads a pilot for degree completion. And she's also doing a lot of project management in as we're supporting online programs. So I got a long story, we're at an hour and two minutes into this. this is That's how I've arrived at this moment is this, it's kind of been meandering, but it's been a it's been a fun ride so far and I'm just turning 50. So I have a lot more ride left if I yeah ah hope to retire.
01:01:10
Speaker
No, it's good. I mean, I think you know you've you've really always been, and correct me this isn't correct, but you've always been, connected to technology.
01:01:22
Speaker
Like you got early early into, hey, you know, Y2K web development as part of the things that you've been doing. So like you haven't really like left that technology space.
01:01:39
Speaker
It's true. And like I would say I'm similar to that, right? Like when we my first job at Arkansas was technology related, And I've really not ever gotten out of that space.
01:01:55
Speaker
And Kelvin's probably the opposite of us a little bit where ah you you kind of fell into that online world as part of your faculty role, leadership role in that space. and so then I feel like once you did, Kelvin, you started really pulling, not even a string, you started pulling a rope.
01:02:12
Speaker
Yeah. yeah well Yeah, I mean, it's it's an ecosystem play, or at least that's what I kind of realized yeah back then. And even now in my micro-credentialing work now, like it's bigger than just um like I need a technology for a course. Like I realized because of the online programs, like, man, you got to think bigger. Like you got to think about the LMS, you got to think about the SIS, how it interacts. Yep.
01:02:38
Speaker
Then you got to like figure what other technologies can you use to support student services. So yeah, it's almost like a drug. Like you kind of get addicted to like, Oh man, you got to like solve for all these different things.
01:02:50
Speaker
You know i and know, so that tells you the path of how I've got here. Not really the why, I mean, the why, why am I still in higher ed? Cause There are, i mean, there's a lot going on technology that this plays in. And you've both been it and in organizations, companies that are, they're connected to higher ed, but you know, where you're supporting higher ed from the outside, but there's a lot of opportunity. I mean, there's big salaries and all that. Why am I still at institutions? Why do I do this? To me, i really, to me, this is about being in higher ed is about
01:03:24
Speaker
To me, this is the right place for me to feel like I'm contributing something positive to the future.
Reflection and Mentorship's Role in Career
01:03:29
Speaker
Helping people at the end of the day, whatever level they are learner, 18... 22 and adults, et cetera, graduate students, certificates, whatever workforce development. It's, it's how I feel like I'm best suited to contribute to the positive things that can happen for those people in that space.
01:03:47
Speaker
And that's important to me. That's okay. That helps drive me. That helps get me, that got me through when I was like, why am I doing a PhD again? Like, am I going to finish this one? My wife's like, honey, it's been six years. Are you going to finish this thing?
01:03:59
Speaker
So, um, that's really what it is for me is that I feel like I'm contributing to something positive. And I have, you know, like everyone's got to look in the mirror every day and that helps me look in the mirror be like, yeah, you know, this is a right kind of fit for you.
01:04:12
Speaker
um And so, and to me, it is, it's, this is the space that's most fascinating to me. So, you know, I do the market research for lot these programs um and you've, I don't, I'm not a macro economist, but now I feel like And Kelvin, I know you do this a lot.
01:04:29
Speaker
ah You too, Kevin, but you're like, how in the world do we figure out what is the right thing to offer so that when people take that thing, whether it's a micro-credential or a degree of some level, that that's gonna prep them not just for a job, but a career, a life that they can adapt to, because you have to be able to adapt faster and faster, it seems.
01:04:50
Speaker
So that to me is, that is like, it's like the ultimate puzzle Every day, I feel like I'm trying to solve a puzzle. I'm trying to, not close my eyes, but we're trying to throw these javelins out into space.
01:05:03
Speaker
And so they hit the bullseye that's moving around. you know i just There's a great article I read this weekend about ah someone, an economist saying, AI is not what's keeping young people from, young, early career people from getting jobs.
01:05:17
Speaker
The economy is sputtering. We've just missed the signals of it. and they're And companies are investing in ai literally the chips, the NVIDIA chips, because it's a safer bet, though expensive, than hiring when they're terrified to hire right now because of all the uncertainty in the economy, because of tariffs and all sorts other things.
01:05:37
Speaker
So to me, that's like... Those are the things I dig for because I'm trying to figure out, well, that is a computer science degree worth it now, given the, the, the, you know, AI is coming for every job mentality, except for plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, apparently. um And so it makes it really fascinating. You want to get it right. You got to get it right.
01:06:00
Speaker
um For the sake of the people who are going invest in their education and the you know where's public institution the states can invest money at some level hopefully so it's a it's a great space to be in ah love it i would agree and i you know ah just calvin mentioning micro credentials i i love right now the fact that i am dabbling in both <unk> degree programs and the micro credential space um and having those conversations to really say how how can we embed some other little things
01:06:35
Speaker
into academic programs to give our students a leg up, right? Like having that conversation with the history department to say, what if they learned data analytics? Like what if they had the opportunity to get data analytics as part of a research class that they were doing or or something else or learn AI or anything. maybe that Elevate them just a little bit more.
01:06:57
Speaker
and you know, what's funny is that that is the experience I had as an undergrad. So I graduated from high school in 94, went to DePauw. DePauw at that point, and I mean, I know it still is. I'm not the most involved alum, but um part of DePauw was you do internships, no matter what you're doing.
01:07:14
Speaker
you have winter term, you do internships, you do things, you bolt things onto that experience of your history degree. So I'm doing history stuff. I'm writing thesis paper, et cetera, et cetera.
01:07:25
Speaker
But you know, you were, that's the reason I got a job at Anger's Consulting is, Hey, he's good in math. He's done internships. Like internshiped at an intern at a jazz club in St. Louis, think my senior year for winter term, I'm writing press releases. I'm driving artists around to radio interviews. I'm, you know, like that's great.
01:07:41
Speaker
So that is why I had a future. It's not because I had a, bachelor's piece of paper, I mean, yes, I could write really well as a history student. and But to me, every degree, especially bachelor's, you have to bolt things onto it that show your applied ability.
01:07:58
Speaker
So like you're saying, data analytics as part of a history degree or humanities degree? Yeah, absolutely. Because that shows you can apply things. And it's not to mean you're just some you know, you're somehow like beholden to, you're just going to go work in a corporation or whether you want to or not, it just, it gives you the ability to adapt. And that's what you have to do.
01:08:20
Speaker
Cause you can, you can do a comp side degree or a physics degree and not bolt anything onto it and be as equally irrelevant as a history major or whatever. Like you can be irrelevant in any field.
01:08:31
Speaker
So it's what you bolt onto. It's like, tell people who are like, Oh, I'm going to go get a bachelor's this or that. I tell them, double major or minor in something practical or very relevant right now, because that makes you broadly broadly appealing in your career. you just you broaden your career horizon.
01:08:49
Speaker
so Yeah. That's the tag part of the tagline of our work with Microprudentials, broadly educated, specifically skilled. Oh, yeah. so That's awesome. I like that. Trademarks. I'll put a trademark in the... I say you need a trademark that somebody doesn't take it.
01:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, seriously. So, um yeah, you know, i i I don't know what the next phase will be for my, I mean, I'm saying I don't know. I know what I want my next phase of my career to look like more of, but I'm still, I understand, this is one that that job exchange, and we one of the reasons i'm really thankful for Janet Scannell pushing for this and all the mentor mentoring she gave to me is that i I came to understand the difference between leadership and management.
01:09:32
Speaker
And I got to, I've managed people now. That experience, I managed a team at the University, at the College of Liberal Arts at the university for while when I was there for those three and a half, four years.
01:09:43
Speaker
I managed people at Relearnit. I did it great. One person told me at Relearnit that was really kind. She said, you're the best boss I've ever had. That was really, really thoughtful. I i will always appreciate her saying that.
01:09:54
Speaker
But i realized that, you know, can you can't really do both. full, full tilt, you got to kind of pick one. And I'm, I'd rather be in a space where I am now where I'm, I'm connecting things, I'm tinkering, but I'm not managing a big team. Because if you're going to do manage well, if you're going to manage people well, and be really good to them as a manager, you got to be really devoted to that.
01:10:16
Speaker
You can't half ass it because they know and you don't do right by them. You you stall their career out while you're standing on their shoulders or their faces. Cause I've had my face stand on stood on while someone's managing poorly and trying to elevate themselves.
01:10:31
Speaker
um So I like the leadership side where, you know, you're getting to knit these things together and push the envelope into spaces. that I think that's a better fit for me. I like mentoring people a lot.
01:10:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, i don't know I mean, I did the up sea of mentoring and I think it was, it was great to, to be part of ah that mentoring opportunity to- So you were a mentor?
01:10:57
Speaker
I was a mentor for someone in APSIA. I mean, I would even do i would even be a mentee if I could get the right mentor. yeah um you know even Not even in this space, but I've also played around with doing, and it's not to try to get into a provost role, but to do like the ask you provost um institute or some other provost institutes just to get kind of like exactly what you're talking about like just how to start to think about things in a different way yeah just to put a different lens on stuff rather than oh i'm going to do this because i'll you know i want to become a provost or just what's the skill sets that i'm missing you know that would make me a better manager and leader at my organization but i'm not i don't have a
01:11:50
Speaker
and maybe this will be the place where I do it, but I don't have a really, don't have a mentor right now with the pace of things and life and stuff. That's something I'm lacking. um so this has gotten me, this has gotten me thinking about it again. Yeah.
01:12:06
Speaker
Maybe you two will be my mentors cause you, yeahs what you are yeah, yeah. well just on me in your orbe Yeah. We'll just be the podcast mentor group and, um, we'll just kind of shepherd you along, but, um,
01:12:18
Speaker
with With that, Fritz, I mean, that this was great getting to know you, hearing about your background and how you got to to where you are. And I hope everyone that's listening to this really feels like they're connected to Fritz now. And we look forward to having more presentations and more podcasts and talking about other things about getting stuff done in higher ed.
01:12:38
Speaker
And I'm excited to now we can now that we get this out of the way of talking about ourselves, now we can start talking about stuff, getting stuff done. We can talk to people. We can talk about really important topics now. Exactly. Great. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in and um we'll check you out in the next podcast.