Small College America

Small College America Webinar Transcript
"Guiding Through Change: How Small College Presidents Are Leading Through Uncertainty"
Dean Hoke: I'm Dean Hoke, and I'm joined by, of course, my co-host, Kent Barnds. Today's webinar is titled "Guiding Through Change." It brings together three rather remarkable presidents who are navigating the complex realities facing colleges today. Kent?
Kent Barnds: Thank you, Dean. We do have an outstanding panel with us today representing different institutional profiles, but all sharing the same mission-driven focus that makes small colleges unique, especially in the U.S.
So before we dive in, I'd like to briefly introduce our three panelists who are joining in this conversation today. We have Dr. Anita Gustafson from Presbyterian College. She is the first female president in Presbyterian's 144-year history and took office in 2023.
President Gustafson has deep liberal arts experience from both Presbyterian College and also Mercer University. We're glad to have you with us. Next panelist is Dr. Andrea Talentino, who is in her, I think, actually fourth year, right? At Augustana College, where I also work. Andrea is my boss. She brings experience prior to coming to Augustana as president, as provost at Nazareth College in New York. And she brings with her a focus on strategic transformation. It's great to have you, Andrea, with us.
Our final panelist is Tarek Sobh, who became the eighth president of Lawrence Technological University in 2022. Dr. Sobh combines engineering expertise with academic leadership. We are delighted to have each of the three with you and to engage in this conversation. Dean, I'll turn it back over to you.
Dean Hoke: Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to have you all join us today. To our participants, people who are listening today, you'll notice that all of our presidents, who are very accomplished administrators and academicians, are also all post-COVID presidents. They all started since that time. So it isn't exactly that they've had quiet time, shall we say. It's been a rather interesting couple of years for everybody.
I do have a quick note and I'd like to repeat what Kent said. We will be taking questions today. Do text them in the Q&A box. And if you can do that, if you hear something that you want to ask about, go ahead and put that in advance. We'll do the monitoring and if we have time, we'll go ahead and ask those questions. But let's go ahead and begin our conversation. Kent, will you lead us off?
Kent Barnds: You bet, I look forward to it. So our first question is going to hit right at an important topic, and I'd like to direct this question to President Talentino and also President Gustafson. Our question is: How are you specifically addressing enrollment challenges? And what are your strategies for achieving financial sustainability while preserving what makes your institutions distinctive? And if I could, I'd like to start with President Gustafson and then we'll go to President Talentino. Thank you.
Dr. Anita Gustafson: Glad to be with you all today. So happy to be engaged in this conversation. And obviously, enrollment is key to probably all of our institutions because we are enrollment driven and dependent in many ways.
You know, COVID has a long tail and our class of 2025 was a very small class. They were seniors in high school when we had a full year of COVID and hence we never recruited well, or maybe they didn't even attend college in large numbers, but our numbers with that particular class were really low. So we have just graduated that class. And so we are experiencing an overall enrollment growth and we do have new students coming in. We're about up between eight and 10%. We don't know yet, but one of the things is South Carolina is a state that's growing. And so that does help us. About 60% of our students come from South Carolina, but we have to be very vigilant because we can't guarantee that that will happen another year.
What we're doing strategically is focusing on transfer students. That's a population we have not really targeted in the past. And a lot of that is hard with the traditional liberal arts education program, because we have very robust general education requirements and we are working with our faculty to be more transfer friendly. And so that's where we have really experienced a bump this year. We also have worked on a retention committee to improve our retention—we created a retention committee from across the board to work on that as well. And we have seen improvement in that. But I think really it's all hands on deck and we're really trying to focus on that.
In terms of financial sustainability, we try to also make sure that when we build our budget, we build it on conservative numbers, right? So that we're not trying to overextend our budget. I think that's a really key on sustainability—making sure you're being realistic on that. And also just focusing on your core identity as a residential liberal arts college with three graduate programs. So there are some things we've had to pull back to campus and eliminate where we were trying to do some operations away from campus and they just really weren't paying off for us. So strategically for financial sustainability, we've just had to look at absolutely everything we do and look at the data to see what our students are most engaged with.
Kent Barnds: Great, thank you very much. Andrea, we'll turn to you.
Dr. Andrea Talentino: Illinois is not a growing state. So this is definitely something we're always thinking about. Thank you, Dean and Kent for having us here today to talk about this.
So when we think about enrollment, I mean, we've sort of approached that from two levels. One is kind of the macro level of the institution and really using thoughts about how we attract and retain students at Augustana as the guiding force for how we structured our strategic plan. So as we thought about developing our strategic plan, which we completed about a year and a half ago, it was finalized in January 2024.
We were really thinking about what we call the four R's: recruitment, retention, revenue, and results. And so making sure that those things were driving the strategic goals that we put into the plan and the initiatives that we were thinking about crafting for it. So we try to kind of preach that around campus to get everybody thinking about the four R's and really use them to drive. And then more specifically, as we think about enrollment, and Kent is a great leader in this...
You know, every year our enrollment team is developing their strategic recruitment objectives. And so we're always trying to adapt them to each year and what we see emerging. And so a year or so ago, we were focusing, you know, in addition to the overall numbers, we were focusing on things like adding enrollment counselors who speak languages other than English. We were focusing on working with community-based organizations in other cities.
And this year we're sort of looking more at our early decision as a place. That's never going to become our kind of primary driver. But if we can up that number, then obviously it creates a little bit of relief on pressure in other areas, as well as how we really focus on Illinois. It's become more and more heavily recruited. There's fewer and fewer students there. And so how do we win our backyard is a big piece that we look at.
And then similarly to Anita, as we're thinking about budgeting, we try to budget out—we budget actually 11 years out. And I always say that that's a little bit like the weather, right? Once you get past day three or four, it could rain when it's supposed to be sunny or vice versa. So we're cognizant that those far out years, a lot of things are going to change. But by doing that, we also really keep ourselves conscientious and allow ourselves space as we see red numbers rising to have a multi-year kind of ramp to make changes to what we're doing so that we can begin to alter kind of what those budgetary realities are.
So it's that combination of sort of trying to have a pretty far outlook in addition to, as Anita mentioned, being conservative about our numbers, which often drives folks on campus crazy, but really kind of keeping ourselves honest about what we think is possible. So I'll just quickly add, even thinking about the demographic cliff, that's already something we factored into our recruitment numbers. And so we're planning sort of if there's lower incoming, then what does that mean for what we have to spend in outgoing?
Dean Hoke: Very good, thank you. I'd like to talk about the current state of your institutions and particularly about morale among your own leadership teams. Given the recent federal and the demographic developments, the financial aid delays that we've all been seeing, and also in terms of international delays that we're seeing in visas, etc., I'm curious a little bit about how it's affecting your enrollment and administration, your travel restrictions, etc. But I'm trying to get a bit of a feel for all these changes that have been happening that were a bit unexpected, I think, for all of us. How you're addressing those right now and a general feel right now from your own leadership team. How are they feeling about that? Dr. Sobh, I'm going to ask you to lead off.
Dr. Tarek Sobh: Well, as Anita mentioned, I think my response is going to be very different, given the nature of the school, obviously. So from an academic point of view, you would expect a comprehensive doctoral technological university to not only embrace, but invest very significantly and expect all of its faculty to heavily use AI in the curriculum, ranging from AI applications for construction and/or architectural design to AI applications in business and analytics to artificial intelligence applications and even the health sciences and various other degree programs.
And for us, I guess, and for our faculty who have been at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence algorithms in myriad of fields from computer vision to business analytics to design, et cetera, this did come very naturally. And that's a good thing.
And I think the challenge, and I wouldn't probably use the word challenge, but the actual amazing opportunity is using AI for business processes and making things more efficient and leaner and so on and so forth. A couple of examples, our marketing, branding, public relations department, right? Using AI for development of marketing campaigns or branding campaigns or, you know, brochures or online materials, including audio and video and imaging and so on, is 100 times more efficient and faster and cheaper and more productive than not using AI.
Using AI for other applications and business processes, and in our research and economic development division, or for our administration and finance division for managing budgets and making conclusions about budgetary issues and reasoning and so on and so forth, let alone communications. Again, a lot more efficient if you're using the right artificial intelligence generative AI application.
But again, like everybody else within the business process as part of the institution, the incipient and efficient usage of AI is work in progress, right? Because it's not the academicians who are using it, it's our colleagues, right? You know, in the various non-academic departments who need to embrace and as Anita mentioned, need to be trained on the usage of AI. We're kind of lucky that the culture of the university and the academic side of the house has embraced AI and is helping colleagues in the non-academic part of the house embrace and use AI in many areas, including enrollment management, branding, marketing, and such.
Dean Hoke: I'd like to switch over to the student experience and the evolution that we have been seeing over the past couple of years, which is rather remarkable to me. How are you adapting student services and overall student experience to meet the evolving expectations anywhere from mental health support to career preparation to technology integration, which we've been talking about, while maintaining academic rigor? Thank you, Dean. Well, I think there is no escaping it. It has been a stressful time in higher education in general and probably more so for several sectors of higher education, including private universities and private universities that are smallish or smaller in size than the bigger ones.
Overall, I mean, for Lawrence Technological University, we're kind of a little bit different given our orientation towards technological education. We are one of very few universities in the country that are technological by mission, vision, and name. In our case, we are also doctoral, comprehensive, and private, independent. And these characteristics are only true of literally 13 universities in the US. There are 13 universities that satisfy these three criteria of technological focus, independent, and doctoral, comprehensive.
So in many ways, our programming, given the surge, of course, and the need for technological education and technology and technologically trained professionals in all disciplines has been serving us well from a domestic growth point of view. The needs in STEM are dramatic, the needs for engineers, the needs for computing professionals, the need for technologically trained professionals in business and in analytics. Even in such areas as design, architecture and health sciences, has driven interest into the type of programming being provided by Lawrence Tech. So that's the good news. The good news is a domestic interest and a significant shortage in STEM workforce that a university like ours is training students to do and to be proficient in. Our theory and practice model serves us well also.
But of course, when it comes to, for example, as you mentioned, the international students and international education, of course, we have a problem like every other engineering school in the country, public or private university. We are seeing a decline and we have seen a decline for the first time in quite some time, actually, obviously this semester, in the number of enrolled international students. The same statement probably would be true of every single one of the universities in the country that is home to a college of engineering, and there are 300 or so such universities, from big publics to small privates.
It's a challenge and it is pushing us to be innovative in terms of the global type of education that we probably need to do. We all know that global education is not having lots of international students on campus. It is much deeper than that in terms of relationships and in terms of work with international universities, branch campuses, etc. And it is pushing us in that direction.
The third piece, of course, is the limits on the graduate student loans, especially for health sciences. And we have a growing graduate health sciences set of programs in areas like cardiovascular perfusion, physician assistant, and then the other professional schools. That does present a challenge and it is starting to make us get into conversations with banks and other entities to try to help mitigate the effect of the reduction of the student loans. We do not have a medical school as an example, but that's where really the impact is going to be significant. Graduate health sciences, in which there is a shortage obviously of professionals and the limitations on the annual loans, is going to probably restrict the capability of many students from going into these programs.
Finally, and that's the last piece in terms of federal policy research, most of our research as an engineering school or as an engineering-focused, professionally-oriented university in terms of sponsored research is very defense-oriented and, in many cases, oriented towards energy and hard tech and so on and so forth. And fortunately, because the portfolio is not that diverse or extensive, the reduction in the overhead or the indirect cost on the grants have not been dramatic on us, but it has existed, not substantially, but not unsubstantial either. We're trying to diversify our research portfolio and try to attract more institutional grants in addition to our typical research, sponsored research grants, to try to get away from that particular issue.
Overall, optimistic in terms of the needs for our programming regionally and in science, technology, engineering and math. Cautiously optimistic, but of course, a little stress amongst the leadership team because of the losses in particularly the international enrollment.
Dean Hoke: Dr. Talentino, how about you?
Dr. Andrea Talentino: We're hitting on all the tough topics today, right? Speaking of morale first, I mean, I'm really fortunate. I have an incredible senior leadership team, and we've dealt with some, you know, in my short years at Augustana, we've dealt with some pretty tough things. But the last year has certainly been harder because it's just been so constant, right? As you address one thing, another thing comes.
I do think that one of the things that's been very helpful is, you know, just kind of the overall team spirit in the sense that when one gets down, others can pull them up. And then another one has their turn to kind of go down. And so it's worked that way. I think what's been a bigger struggle for us and for the senior leadership team in terms of morale has been the overall campus and particularly probably the last eight months or so.
There's just so much uncertainty, so much worry, so much anxiety. People are hearing that from their teams or hearing it across campus. And so trying to figure out how to mitigate that when, you know, very much like COVID, we don't have a lot of the answers either. Sort of everybody's waiting to see what happens next. Right. And you can kind of plan, but you're never sure. So I think that's been the hard part and that's what's been most wearing on people. But I think we've managed to find ways through it.
One of the biggest concerns for us was certainly the spring international students. That's an area that we rely on. About 20% of our student body is international students. And so as we were confronting the travel restrictions and the pause in the State Department issuing visas and things, that was a big worry. And, you know, the senior leadership team met to really think through different financial scenarios. If 25% fewer students show up, what does that mean? If 40% fewer show up, what does that mean?
Mostly because of the incredibly hard work of our enrollment and particularly our international enrollment folks, I mean, we've done pretty well in that area and I actually like to knock on wood or formica or whatever it is that's around me when I talk about that, but we're going to be able to bring in as of our latest numbers today close to 85% of our original goal of international students, which is pretty extraordinary and I think probably one of the few places in the country where we're going to come that close.
Not only was the hands-on kind of constant communication a big help, we are not reliant on graduates. So we're mostly talking about undergraduate, which is easier to get through as Tarek was sort of talking about. That's been—graduate has been particularly hit.
So we're feeling okay there, but that does remain an area where there's concern and how vulnerable that will be in the future. And then, you know, as we were talking a little bit about the financial aid impacts.
We have one important advantage, which is that we already have a program through which we, for high-achieving, high-need students, we meet 100% of need for them. And that's thanks to the very generous donation of one of our alums, who was a first-gen student whose life was transformed by Augustana. And he went on to be extremely successful in his career and really is very committed to giving back to our institution. And so he's made that possible for us.
So there's a large group who would be impacted by the financial aid changes for whom it's less of a current concern for us. But then there's a lot of folks in the middle, right, where parent loans are being squeezed and caps on borrowing are being squeezed. And so that's something that we're going to have to really continue to manage. I mean, we, like all schools our type, are extremely generous with merit aid. But as we go into this new kind of world and see how some of these tension points begin to build, that's going to become a stronger and stronger sort of point of focus for how we figure out education.
Working that out in a way that's positive and maintains access for students, which is, of course, what we all want, but also ensures that the college can be strong and financially sustainable, like we talked about in the first question. So there's definitely still places we're working through, but we do have some buffers because of some of the things we already have in place.
Kent Barnds: Very good. Great. Our next question is going to go to President Gustafson and President Sobh. This is about the intersection of artificial intelligence and technology and investments. What we think our listeners might be curious to know is where are you investing or pausing related to AI and ed tech and why and how are you balancing innovation with fiscal responsibility? Since if you're anything like me, I get an invitation from somebody who's going to help me with some AI initiative several times a day. So we'll start with you, President Gustafson.
Dr. Anita Gustafson: My guess as a liberal arts college president, that mine might be very different than Tarek's, you know, as a tech school. But I will just say this, it's a challenge. AI is of course a challenge. I think, you know, it's hard to stay abreast of the rapidly developing field. Interestingly, we have a father of one of our football players that is incoming that started asking me questions when his son was being recruited about AI. And he works for Microsoft and has come in and done amazing workshops for us, for both faculty and staff over the summer. So that's been really wonderful. So we're certainly trying to do our best in figuring this out.
Some faculty will adopt AI in their work and in their assignments. Others don't want to have anything to do with it. They reverted to the Blue Book. I've always been a Blue Book fan, I'm a history professor. But I think our faculty are working and struggling through that. We certainly have upgraded our systems. We're working on our servers right now.
And we also know that graduates in a liberal arts college in particular, they need to understand AI. They need to know how to use it in order to be competitive in the job market. So we have, I think it's kind of partnered with an external agency to do micro-credentialing. We found that we weren't capable of doing it. So we are getting that delivered to us and we're paying a fee for that. But then that allows all of our students to have not only micro-credential in AI, but many other tech fields and other fields.
And then we're going to be able to open that to our alumni as well. So we're still working through all of this. And in terms of innovation and fiscal responsibility, you know, we need to innovate for the future. And I think the challenge is always with a very tight budget. It's balanced, but it's tight.
We need to have donors help us to get the runway going for some of these innovations, whether it's hiring a new professor in a new field or the technology that may be needed to deliver some online courses, all of that is a challenge. So we have to kind of work with that fiscal responsibility as well. And I just really think that we need to focus on workforce development and what our students are able to do after they graduate and really focus on telling that story as well.
The other thing I'll just say is that we did establish a technology committee that has representation from across campus, faculty, staff, et cetera. And that group is looking at ways that we are using technology, where we're falling short, where we need to invest, and coming up with a long-term budget because we did replace many of our computers. It was before I got here, but it was during COVID. And so all of those are going to go offline at about the same time. So we have to be much more strategic in how we handle our technology.
Kent Barnds: Thank you. Tarek, we'll turn to you.
Dr. Tarek Sobh: Well, as Anita mentioned, I think my response is going to be very different, given the nature of the school, obviously. So from an academic point of view, you would expect a comprehensive doctoral technological university to not only embrace, but invest very significantly and expect all of its faculty to heavily use AI in the curriculum, ranging from AI applications for construction and/or architectural design to AI applications in business and analytics to artificial intelligence applications and even the health sciences and various other degree programs.
And for us, I guess, and for our faculty who have been at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence algorithms in myriad of fields from computer vision to business analytics to design, et cetera, this did come very naturally. And that's a good thing.
And I think the challenge, and I wouldn't probably use the word challenge, but the actual amazing opportunity is using AI for business processes and making things more efficient and leaner and so on and so forth. A couple of examples, our marketing, branding, public relations department, right? Using AI for development of marketing campaigns or branding campaigns or, you know, brochures or online materials, including audio and video and imaging and so on, is 100 times more efficient and faster and cheaper and more productive than not using AI.
Using AI for other applications and business processes, and in our research and economic development division, or for our administration and finance division for managing budgets and making conclusions about budgetary issues and reasoning and so on and so forth, let alone communications. Again, a lot more efficient if you're using the right artificial intelligence generative AI application.
But again, like everybody else within the business processes as part of the institution, the incipient and efficient usage of AI is work in progress, right? Because it's not the academicians who are using it, it's our colleagues, right? You know, in the various non-academic departments who need to embrace and as Anita mentioned, need to be trained on the usage of AI. We're kind of lucky that the culture of the university and the academic side of the house has embraced AI and is helping colleagues in the non-academic part of the house embrace and use AI in many areas, including enrollment management, branding, marketing, and such.
Dean Hoke: I'd like to switch over to the student experience and the evolution that we have been seeing over the past couple of years, which is rather remarkable to me. How are you adapting student services and overall student experience to meet the evolving expectations anywhere from mental health support to career preparation to technology integration, which we've been talking about, while maintaining academic rigor?
Dr. Talentino:
You know, I was just talking to our dean of students earlier today, and we were kind of talking about this as well. But so student success and supporting students well is one of the three goals of our strategic plan. And so we've really tried to get people at Augustana to think about what it means to be student ready as an institution. And by that, really focusing on the viewpoint of the student, not, you know, not what we think students need, but what students actually do need. Right.
And trying to really become more student-centered that way has been both positive but also difficult because there's a very strong tendency in any institution, right, to sort of go with the systems and structures and processes that we have, really then trying to reimagine them from the point of view of a 17, 18, maybe a 20-year-old transfer student who are coming in and how they perceive it. But as we've done that, we've sort of focused on two key areas. One is really...
...and processes. That's the non-sexy part, but it's one of the most important things because it's the backbone of how students interact with the institution, especially some of their first interactions. So we had a terrific group that led an onboarding kind of assessment process this year that was designed to completely reduce student onboarding, make it more simple, reduce the number of clicks and places they had to go, the number of times they had to put in their email and their ID and all those kinds of things. And the kind of frustrating, it's much better now.
And, you know, Kent was the leader of this and did a terrific job. The frustrating thing is that the students who came in this year will never know that because they didn't know what they might have had to do before. But we know that it is much better and already has just reduced the number of questions and complaints and issues that we've gotten from students. We've also looked at things like our billing processes, when and how we bill students.
Our how we manage insurance, particularly for international students, all those kind of things to kind of re question what makes things easier, hard and how can we make them easier, even if that's harder for us. Right.
The other side has been really that substantive side in terms of how students connect with the college, how they experience belonging, how they catch on to things. We have a lot of student clubs, but that doesn't always mean that students are going to join them, right? So how do we think about from the very beginning about making sure that we're helping students find the things that are meaningful to them. So we've revamped our peer mentor program. We've developed a peer recovery network for working with our mental health counselors. We started success teams a year ago. Every single student at Augustana has a success team of people that, you know, they get to know early on or should get to know early on. We discovered that giving people a success team is not the same as helping them meet the team. So there's some more work we have to do there, right? I had a mother who called me up halfway through the year. I heard about these teams, but my daughter has no idea. So—
You kind of learn, right? It's, it's not only can you have the water, but you got to bring the horse and show them how to drink. And, but that's important, you know, to your point, Dean, students have changed, their expectations have changed. And so, you know, we can't take things that we used to take for granted. And so we have to really think carefully about how we get students to catch on and connect. And then we've done that academically too. We started a new STEM center where students in all STEM disciplines have access to meeting with advanced peers, to meeting with faculty, getting supports at odd hours, all those kind of things. And that's the other thing I'll add that, you know, I think we're also reconsidering what the time is that students want to engage.
We're here 8 or 8:30 to 4:35, right? But that's not always convenient for a student. I kind of learned this from my own son who just started his freshman year this week, and he comes alive at 9 o'clock. So if you want to have a meeting with him at 11, he's good for that. 11 p.m., 11 a.m. is a whole different challenge, right? Yeah.
So really trying to think about things from the student perspective and recognize that that means we must change. And I will say that was not an easy message for our employee base because there's a presumption. Well, we're doing things well and we care about students. And so we've really had to help people think differently, caring about students is different than working in a way that is best for the student. And you can care, but not be working in a way that's best for the student. And we have to make sure that those two things go together. Very good.
Moderator: Dr. Gustafson, how about you?
Dr. Gustafson:
So I would echo a number of the points that Andrea made in terms of looking at the systems from right from the beginning when students engage with PC and we were trying to do everything we can to continue that engagement, you know, as they're applying and depositing and things like that. Once they're here, of course, that's a different story. And one thing I'll mention is, you know, when students are coming, students of today pretty well known they don't have the reading skills and the math skills that previous generations have had and COVID could be blamed for that for sure technology but I think that that is building up those skills are really important but it's also kind of to Andrea's point.
It's really important and it's not easy, but to have faculty realize that, okay, they're not coming in with their math skills for a physics class. So perhaps the first couple of weeks, you need to focus on those math skills before you just jump into things, right? So there's ways that our faculty need to be thinking about that. And so, you know, on the academic side, we also are offering different kinds of support in terms of academic success plans and things like that. But in terms of the overall student life, we have a division that we call justice and community wellbeing. And that is an area where we are trying to really circle around our students.
That includes our counseling and we do have two full-time counselors, but we augment that from counselors that are in graduate programs that are needing internships and they will come in for a semester or a year at a time. That's also a really good way to diversify that staff. Both of our counselors are women. That allows us to have men in that mix as well and et cetera, meeting the needs of the students.
About a third of our students are first-generation college students. Again, that's probably different than it was 20 years ago here, but that's who the students are in South Carolina as well. We really have had a mission on helping those students. We have a program called PresbyFirst Plus and it has been named the first gen forward network champion. So it's a consortium of schools that are focusing on first-generation college success. We bring them to campus two days earlier than everybody else. We have special programs for them.
And I think that that has been, it's been a really good bonding experience for them as a group, but also for them with the college. And so I think that's something that has been really successful. We have wellness services, of course, it's affiliated with a local hospital. So it's not costing things for us. And we do allow for telehealth with that.
And we do have a full-time now accessible education person who can work with students who have special accommodations. And what that does is it takes some of that burden off of the faculty that used to have to manage all of that. And finally, I will mention that we have career professional development office as most of us do. And the focus there is on vocational discernment and career preparation, but we've partnered with NetVue in a lot of our work about this vocational discernment. If those of you who are not familiar with that out of the Council of Independent Colleges, I really do recommend that you look into that because they have grants available that can help all of us in these kinds of programs. I think all of that supports our academic rigor, but we, as Andrea said, always have to look at the student and what they're capable of and how to bring them along.
Moderator:
Thank you very much. A lot of similarities, but enough differences and approach that it's really helpful, I think, to our listeners. All right. I'm going to remind our audience that you can submit any questions that you might have through the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. We'll be taking some questions as we wrap up the pre-interview.
I have some advanced approved questions. So I have a question for Tarek and for Andrea, and I'm going to limit you to a response of one bold move your college has made recently to stay ahead, whether it's a program innovation, a partnership, or a strategic pivot.
What's one program that you would identify and how did you decide if it was a good fit for your institution? And we'll start with you, Tarek. Please.
Tarek:
Sure. Traditionally, Lawrence Tech has had four colleges since the 60s of the last century. These colleges were engineering obviously, which is the genesis of the institution 95 years ago, architecture and design, college of business and college of sciences and arts. Again, very much oriented towards technological advances and very much oriented towards ensuring the students within any of the disciplines that we teach are very technologically savvy at the end of their journey.
Two years ago, we established our fifth college, the College of Health Sciences, which really marked the very first venture of Lawrence Technological University into that particular discipline or area, which was thought to be a very bold and quote-unquote, non-traditional move by many of our constituencies and alumni and friends.
And obviously the reasoning was not very dissimilar from the reasoning of sorting out the degree programming. As there is very, very significant need for technologically trained professionals in business tech and fintech, you know, architectural design using technology and so on. There is an immense need within the field of health sciences for professionals in the various disciplines who are very well trained in medical technologies and health technologies. Med tech and health tech is the growing, I guess, sub-discipline, one may say, of every discipline in health sciences and healthcare, from medicine to dentistry, to physical therapy, to cardiovascular perfusion, to nursing, and graduating and ensuring that healthcare workers are very well trained in the most recent advances in technology within their fields, whether that be in robotic surgery or medical record keeping or usage of AI to read MRIs and CAT scans and X-rays and so on and so forth, and automatic diagnosis and personalized medicine is really the wave of the future and it's becoming more and more crucial and expected of newly graduating healthcare workers.
So it was quite a bold move, you know, to establish a new college 80 years or whatever, you know, 50 years or so after the last one has been established on campus as our fifth college. And thankfully, we have grown programs in nursing and physician assistant studies and cardiovascular perfusion. Yeah. Allied health sciences at undergraduate, undergraduate level, and with many more in the planning, and have been successful at establishing the requisite clinical partnerships for the students to get eminently trained before they graduate.
Moderator: I have a feeling many of our listeners are writing a list of all of those programs that you may be listed down. So thank you for sharing that bold move. How about you, Andrea?
Dr. Talentino:
So we and I'm really glad I got this question, by the way, we in the spring this past spring, we started a community development corporation. And this is really designed to help us be good partners with the city of Rock Island where we're based.
We've talked about the neighborhood for years at Augustana well before I got here, and folks were talking about it when I came. It's a great and really wonderful kind of living laboratory, but it is not an upper middle class suburb of a major U.S. city. And so when students who do live in the Chicago suburbs or other places come and see it, it doesn't look like what they're used to. And that's been a little bit of an Achilles heel for us in recruiting over the years because prospective students and their families come and then, well, we really like Augustana, but we don't love the surrounding areas. So it's been an issue for the college. And the college has talked about it, but it's never really engaged. And so when I first came, I said, well, you know, this sounds like something that we need to do some work to help with. And we can't just really rely on the city to do things that will be beneficial to us. And so I started talking about really developing a partnership with the city and then the Community Development Corporation came out of that.
As we first presented this idea to the board, they kind of wondered why we would do that. You're supposed to spend money on campus, not outside of campus, but it didn't take very long for them to really understand the concept that, you know, our borders are blurry.
We're right in the middle of the city of Rock Island. Our students live in the city of Rock Island. One of our residential requirements is that in your senior year, you do not live on campus in campus housing. You live in housing in the city. So we always have students who are engaging with it. And then, of course, our employee workforce is engaging many of them with the city. And so we really committed to putting our money where our mouth is and thinking about investing in things outside of campus, but with the overall goal of not only benefiting campus of course, but also the citizens and residents of Rock Island. And all of that is very true to our mission and our, the kind of Lutheran principles that are founding. One of the most important Lutheran principles is service to neighbor. Luther considered that essentially sort of evidence of how you get close to God because serving your neighbor is really doing that work. And so it has been an incredible and exciting experience for us so far.
Our goal is to help drive economic development in the city of Rock Island, particularly around the perimeter of campus, by working and pairing with developers to purchase properties that then we can renovate and turn into mixed use areas where there's retail on the first floor and there's housing on the second and third floor. We've already started purchasing some properties. We've also purchased some homes that were for sale previously right on our perimeter.
And it's been, I'd say most of all, a great partnership with the city. When I first talked about it, they thought it was a great idea, but I don't think they really believed we would do anything. And then when I came in with our draft documents that we wanted to finalize to send to the state of Illinois to get the CDC approved, they were just ecstatic. And so they've been terrific partners and really helpful to us. They also the city has some reserve seats on the board of the CDC so that we can ensure that there's close collaboration. And our director, who we just hired in June, has spent a lot of the summer going out and talking to businesses and residents and all the folks around the area near the college so that we can make sure that what we're doing is truly a partnership. It's not just something that we're saying, Hey, this is what we want.
We have learned very fast that what everybody wants, this is students, faculty, staff, residents, business people, you name it. Everyone wants a coffee shop. So I guess that will be number one. But it's been an exciting project and it's one, you know, it could be phenomenal. It could be a disaster, right? Anita already said they've started withdrawing from some of what they're doing in the community. So, but it certainly so far has been a really great experience and I think has energized campus, our board, the municipal officials of the city of Rock Island, and even I would say the whole Quad Cities community, folks on the Iowa side, on the Illinois side, everybody knows about this and they're excited and really eager to support.
Moderator: Very good. Thank you
Moderator:
As we go into this last question, this is a little bit more personal. I think this is a little bit more about the individual than the institution, and it's about leadership and future vision. Leadership principles, what guides you in terms of those leadership principles during particularly uncertain times like these, and what message would you give our audience? What would you like to share with them? Also with policymakers, trustees, other foundation leaders, what would you like to be able to tell them, particularly what's going on right now and how you're addressing that? Anita, I'm going to start with you.
Dr. Gustafson:
Okay, thank you. So I'm in my, I've completed two years and my first two years as president have been very different from each other, just for everything that's been going on nationally. So my first year, and I like to have different themes that I work with or, you know, slogans because I think it helps hit. It helped shape how we talk about some of our challenges. So the first year, and this was the title of my inaugural address, it's symbiosis, stronger together. And I really believe that we are all as an academic community in a symbiotic relationship, even the community that town gown and Andrea was talking about, very symbiotic.
And so making sure that we're not operating in silos, that we're working together, part of that on my part depends on my transparency as much as I can be transparent with the team and with the community. And so I think that that has, to me, that's kind of a, that has shaped my leadership going into this. And much of my first year was building trust on that internal level. Now I had an advantage because I came from the faculty of Presbyterian, left for another institution and came back. So that maybe gave me some street cred in that regard. But that, so that really shaped my first year.
And then even before some of the federal changes came, I knew that I needed to pivot in my second year to get out of my comfort zone. And that really was in terms of advocating for our college externally more, right? And then of course that just, you know, as events unfolded, that manifested itself even more. So my second year, and I borrowed this slogan from NAICU, from the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities at their meeting in February in D.C. But our slogan as a leadership team was don't panic, navigate. And that really has helped us because there's so much coming at us, whether it is about the loans, about health, about DEI, there's so many things that we just had to figure out. Okay.
Okay, we aren't doing anything illegal. You know, maybe we have to change the way we talk about things. And well, we did manage to save Pell, but we are like others being impacted by the departure of the elimination of grad plus loans, right? So I think that that has helped me kind of pull everybody together about around an idea and you can use that in many different ways.
But I think in terms of what you tell audiences, and let me just say also, I've really made a point to connect with our senators' offices and our legislator, because that's so important in advocating for Presbyterian College. And I also try to focus my advocacy on what's going to impact us. We did have, for example, an international student that had a visa problem and our Senate, a senator's office went to bat for us, right? And so there's ways that we can work with them in very specific things. But I think the message overall that I would say is that PC and all, I would say the liberal arts colleges on this call, all of us on this call, really they're important contributors to workforce development, right? And that's kind of the buzzword right now. And I think that if we kind of shape our message around that workforce development, about economic development, and providing leaders for a democratic society. I think if we can come together around certain messages, that's very helpful and I think that's helped my overall leadership.
Moderator: Very good. Tarek?
Tarek:
I love the don't panic, navigate or innovate, and I will use it. I'm just letting you know, Anita.
Dr. Gustafson: That's fine. Use it.
Tarek:
But, I mean, answering the first part of the question, I always found that making absolutely sure that the faculty and the staff at all the levels are very transparently informed of the situation, whatever that situation is, good or bad circumstances, actual numbers that challenges. I always felt that that's incredibly important for all of them to really feel as partners in the institution and what it faces.
But more importantly, which I think is really the job of every leader at every level, whether it's the executive management team, the cabinet or the deans or middle management, what is most important, I think, is having all of our leaders ensure that every employee on campus understands her or his role in how the campus runs and how important what they do is to the well-being of the whole campus and its students and its budget and its reputation, and so on and so forth. The whole concept of somebody coming in at any level to an educational institution to get a paycheck is not what is going to make eminent institutions of higher education thrive or survive, you know, or both in these days.
So I think it's kind of important for leaders, again, to articulate to their colleagues and the people who report to them their importance within the global scheme of how things work. The more important and the more understanding every employee, faculty and staff member is, thinks of her or himself, the more they will produce and the more of a team player and impactful contributor they will be, and it starts at the top.
Regarding the second piece of the question, I actually, I was going to say more or less what Anita mentioned, the value proposition. Proving the value proposition of the institution that you're working in, in a very concise, precise, comprehensive, and articulate manner to your constituencies makes every difference, whether these constituencies are your alums, your donors, your two senators, your representatives in the House, your local representatives at the capital of the state you're in, your foundation leaders for supporting you, program directors for giving you the grants and social grants on sponsored research, and also in your marketing and branding campaign, clearly articulating eloquently and of course, truthfully, what the impact of your student outcomes is on the community that you reside within and the true economic impact makes a difference. Being able to say 97% of my students continue on and are employed at this level and they are guaranteed a job and 85% live locally. That's an incredibly powerful statement that can be quantified and so on and so forth. So articulating your student outcomes, articulating your impact on the community from an economic impact point and social impact point of view, keeping all of your channels open and continuing to clearly articulate your value proposition is the balancing argument or statement that is desperately needed for institutions in this time and day to prove their worth.
Kent Barnds
Since we've got three great panelists, we're going to do a really rapid fire round. We're going to ask each of you a question. We ask you to try to limit your response to about 60 seconds, and then we'll close things down unless there are some additional questions from the audience that need to be answered on air. But with that, Dean, you want to ask our first rapid fire question?
Dean: Yes. 60 seconds. Remember, Dr. Gustafson. You were a professor at Presbyterian for nearly, Dick, two decades, if I remember right. And then you went to Mercer as a dean. What was your perspective? How's that changed from going from Presbyterian to Mercer and then back to Presbyterian? How did that change, particularly going into the top leadership spot?
Dr. Gustafson:
Right. I think, first of all, having the academic background and actually being tenured at this school has really, you know, given me a very, I said before, street cred, but it's given me sort of a deep understanding of the academic program. Of course, it evolved while I was gone, but then having been at Mercer and then coming back. I can take ideas from Mercer, of course, and apply them here, but also just being in this seat, while I think academic background is a really important preparation, it gives me such a broader lens, right? And so of course, the exciting thing I would say is that I get to meet alumni, some of whom have been my students, and then really see the impact of the college. And that has really given me a great sense of joy in working with these folks as well as the alumni. And I really, in that regard, feel like I'm very blessed to be in this position.
Dean: Okay, all right here next you have an interesting pathway. So, after 18 months, you moved from provost to president at the same institution. What has been your biggest leadership adjustment and making the transition to the top role at the same institution?
Tarek:
I think the fact that I hadn't been that long as a provost was incredibly helpful. I'm just kidding. Well, I mean... I mean, I actually wasn't expecting this. I came in as a provost with the expectations that I would be in the position for a few years knowing full well that my ex-colleague, the president of Lawrence Tech, was intending to retire within quote unquote a few years, that few years never in my mind was equal to knowing that that was the intention three months after I have arrived. So that was actually a very tough proposition. Things worked out perfectly. But I think...
It is immensely helpful in some cases to be the internal candidate. And it could be also immensely unhelpful. It really is a mixed bag. And I'm sure all of you have heard stories, you know, one way or the other. In my case, I am blessed. I have an amazing team, a great team. It was a little bit tough because I came in in the midst of COVID. I started in September of 2020 as a provost before taking on this job. So it was kind of tough, but at the same time, I think one of the greatest things that I feel I did was literally meeting with every single colleague on campus during my first semester here as a provost. And we're literally talking hundreds. And...
Learning the culture of the institution was immensely important and crucial. The tendency of leaders, in any kind of position, to effect changes immediately is, in my opinion, the wrong decision. Waiting and listening to the culture of the institution, understanding the aspiration, the history, and how my own interests as an administrator, can really be integrated into that vision and history is something that's absolutely worthwhile doing for any leader coming into higher education at any level, dean, provost, or president. That does not mean that you sit in your office doing absolutely nothing for three years, but at least taking the time initially to learn and to do this will pay dividends at the end.
I hope that answered your question.
Dean: Andrea, I have one for you, and this will be the last question. You've served as a provost and you've served as a faculty member at several institutions throughout your career before becoming a president. What was the one assumption you had about college leadership that you had turned out, in your opinion, came out completely wrong?
Dr. Talentino:
And before I answer that, I'll just answer quickly. There is one more question. Barry asked about whether we have designated staff for grant generation. And I will say very fast, Augustana, we have two people who do that part time, but then we also outsource with M&Q. So it's a mix. Yes.
Easy answer for that one. This probably marks me as unfit for my job, but I think I really overestimated the extent to which people have awareness and appreciation for institutional needs. You know, and this goes along, I think, with what Tarek was saying in his next to last answer, just I'd always been members of pretty open departments that were quite supportive. And focus on self and focus on own department rather than institutional wide awareness was a little bit of a surprise to me, but I guess that's what makes it challenging and never boring.
Kent Barnds
Well, thank you, Andrea. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to thank on behalf of my co-host Dean Hoke, each of the three of you for sharing your wisdom and perspective, and most importantly, for being a champion for small colleges in America, which is what Dean and I focus our time and attention on as we make the case for places that maybe aren't always in the headlines, but should be because of the role that we have as small colleges across America. So I'd like to thank our three panelists. And on behalf of Dean Hope, my co-host, I'd like to thank our participants for joining us today. Small College America Season 3 will begin on September 3rd with a podcast replay of this great conversation today. So if you'd like to listen again and pick up some hints and maybe take notes of Tarek's new programs, we welcome you to listen to that podcast on September 3rd. If you'd like to learn more about the series, please visit our website at www.smallcollegeamerica.net. And be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Thanks for joining us today. And we hope to have you join us throughout the next season. Thanks so much. Thank you.