Since the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) launched the Innovating Together Podcast in 2020, Dr. Kim Wilcox, Chancellor at University of California, Riverside (UCR), has been a recurrent guest on the Weekly Wisdom series. This time, Chancellor Wilcox sat down with us to share the surprising appeal of higher education leadership, an inside view of budgeting, embracing empathy and collaboration, and understanding what students actually need.
Leading by Serving
Chancellor Wilcox, now a recognized higher ed leader, started out as a Ph.D. in speech and hearing science:
“I aspired to teach classes and run a nice little lab where I could have undergraduates working with me. I was newly tenured and promoted at University of Kansas when our department chair left. We needed an interim, and no one could agree on anyone but me. I didn't think I'd be good at it. After a year, I enjoyed it more than I ever thought I would, and I was better at it than I thought I would be. The biggest surprise is that I'm an administrator at all.”
Leadership enabled him to build on his original intentions:
“As a faculty member, I could help the students in my lab: personal advising, counseling, finding support, grant applications, and training. As department chair, I could have a bigger positive impact than in my little lab. I could do it for all the students, faculty, and staff in the department. And it wasn't too long after that I thought, ‘If you're a dean, that would be even better.’ That sense of instrumentality on behalf of others was very appealing."
Higher Ed Budgets
Along the way, Chancellor Wilcox acquired plenty of administrative know-how. He shared one fact that he wishes everyone in higher ed understood:
“Dick Schiefelbusch, my senior colleague at Kansas told me, ‘When somebody says, “There's no money for that,” what they're telling you is, they think something else is more important.’ We only have so much money, and everybody on campus – students, faculty, staff, administrators – has great needs and aspirations. We have X dollars, and we're funding A through Y things. If you want something else, we got to decide what goes out.”
In a previous conversation with Chancellor Wilcox, he described living through budget cuts. This time, he noted another administrative challenge of reduced funding:
“The last thing we need in a budget cut is a special committee. If the committees you have in place aren't informed and effective, creating a new one of people who've never been in the conversation before, and charging them with the most important things in the university doesn't seem very prudent. You may have to advise or make believe, so you need a sense of what’s gone before, and some principles that you can rely on.”
Managing With Empathy
Whatever the issue, Chancellor Wilcox always tries to put himself on the other side of the table:
“As a dean, I told the associate deans, ‘Think about what this will mean to the department chairs. Will they be able to answer these questions? Is the report more bother than it's worth? Is this something they can explain to the faculty? If not, all our machinations are going to make things worse. So put yourself in the receiving side and think about what that means in the day-to-day.’"
Many of our guests talk about being influenced by exemplary leaders. Chancellor Wilcox also learned from observing micromanagers:
“You end up putting everyone in a no-win situation. If you do something, the micromanagers are going to change it, or if you don't, they're going to do it themselves. It doesn't help. I used to talk about people staying in their lanes. I now talk about letting people do their job. That implies respecting their space, but also their ability, knowledge, and wisdom. We searched hard to find the best person with the best insights, and it's a shame not to let them explore and experience a new situation, and do all that we want them to do.
“I should say micromanagement is tempting for all of us. Most upper-level administrators got the job because they're good at doing stuff. We're all doers by nature, and it's hard to break that habit of just wanting to do it yourself.”
Collaboration in Higher Ed
Chancellor Wilcox believes that great leadership never happens in a vacuum, but instead through awareness of a bigger picture and collaboration with other institutions sharing similar goals. We’re honored that he credited the UIA for our approach:
“In the last decade, we've changed how America thinks about higher education. When I took this job, almost no one was talking about graduation rates, student success, social mobility. It wasn't part of the conversation then. Now it is. That's a huge transformation. And I give UCR a lot of credit, too, because we managed to be world-class in academics and research while being as connected to our students and as effective for them as anyone can.”
He noted that collaboration is a process rather than a goal:
“I've been going to conferences for 40 years, and it isn't just people getting together, talking. We’re being smarter about how we collaborate, thinking together about our goals. In the UIA, we have some common goals. We also have goals that some universities tie into and others don't. We're all large public universities, but we're also quite different. We range in size from 25,000 to 100,000 students. We have differences in our control and oversight systems. Thinking about what those mean in different situations, we can be more sophisticated. The UIA continues to test the right mix of schools and how they fit together. You can't do that in a national association like ACE or APLU. The scale's too big. And three or four schools in a state system are too small and too homogeneous. Finding the right mix, particularly as it relates to the students and their experience, that's difficult. We really are neophytes in trying to do this in the student success space."
Engaging Students With What They Need
In his 11 years leading UCR, informed by previous leadership experiences at other campuses, Chancellor Wilcox has seen changes in the world, and how students respond to them. He observed that his own role hasn’t changed much:
“The concepts and precepts of what do we do and how we do it are pretty stable. The question is how do you engage? You need to listen to students’ concerns. You need to listen to the legislation. And having been through these moments a few times, you do learn.”
One mode of student engagement that he dislikes is a process he calls puppetry:
“That's where staff or faculty prop students up to do things. ‘Fight for this, advocate for that.’ Not to take anything away from our students, who are serious in their commitments, but too often they're being taken advantage of by faculty and staff leaders. Instead of working to understand students’ concerns and needs and how they might be addressed, they oftentimes come with the most transparent requests. ‘We demand another half-time staff member in this office.’ Well, those students weren't sitting around the residence hall at night thinking, ‘You know what this university needs?’ That just frustrates me deeply.
“My wife was in student affairs for years. I used to talk about the need for the campus to be more integrated across the academic student affairs chasm. That still exists, and we'd all be better off if we had a different understanding of the other parts of the university of which most faculty members have no clue. How do you package financial aid? What are the dynamics in lobbying the legislature? If some of those internal pieces were better understood, I think we'd be better off.”
Leadership Advice and Reading Recommendations
Chancellor Wilcox is happy giving advice to up-and-coming leaders. He shared this piece of wisdom during our conversation:
“Don't compare yourself to others, because somebody else is always better off. I'm in a great university, but UC Riverside is in the same system as UC Berkeley. I can't live long enough to outplay Berkeley. High or low on the ladder, it doesn't matter. Just play your hand as best you can, and things will be fine.”
We always ask our guests for reading recommendations, and Chancellor Wilcox admitted that he doesn’t care for leadership books:
“I've scanned a few and just… give me a break! But I read a lot of biographies, whether it's Catherine the Great or Abraham Lincoln. I'm reading Hubert Humphrey right now. People who have been through a set of circumstances, what they did, and what that meant. I've learned a lot from biographies. And I would make one recommendation to people in a university. Lab Girl is a great book written by a faculty member in the plant sciences. And there's a whole analogy to trees, because that's her work area. But it's a great book. Most anyone who's run a lab in a university will resonate with it.”
Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on August 26, 2024 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Kim Wilcox
- University of California, Riverside
- A previous conversation with Chancellor Wilcox ("New Beginnings in a Pandemic Year: A Conversation With Kim Wilcox, Chancellor of the University of California, Riverside," UIA, 2/18/21)
- Dick Schiefelbusch (Chancellor Wilcox’s mentor at University of Kansas and a world leader in speech-language-pathology, language development and disorders, special education, and intellectual and developmental disability)
- ACE (American Council on Education)
- APLU (Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities)
- Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman
- Lab Girl: A Memoir by Hope Jahren
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Dr. Kim A. Wilcox was appointed U.C. Riverside’s ninth chancellor in August 2013. He's overseen historic growth across U.C.R.'s education, research, and public service missions, including record improvements in student success, research funding, and philanthropic giving, as well as new schools of medicine and public policy. Chancellor Wilcox has grown faculty by nearly 25% while increasing its racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, and has guided the university toward becoming a national model for achieving student success across socioeconomic and ethnic categories. Under his leadership, U.C.R. became a charter member of the University Innovation Alliance. He has been an active participant on several higher education advisory boards and committees, including the NCAA Presidential Forum, the board of directors for the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, and the Council on Competitiveness. Dr. Wilcox served as provost at Michigan State University from 2005 to 2013, dean of the University of Kansas' College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2002 to 2005, and president and C.E.O. of the Kansas Board of Regents from 1999 to 2002. He also spent ten years as the chair of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing at the University of Kansas. A first-generation college graduate, Kim Wilcox earned a B.A. in audiology and speech sciences from Michigan State, and master’s and doctoral degrees in speech and hearing science from Purdue University. He has directed teaching, research, and service projects on speech acoustics funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
Co-Host: Sara Custer, Editor-in-Chief, Inside Higher Ed
Sara Custer became Inside Higher Ed’s editor-in-chief in March 2024 after serving four years at Times Higher Education. At THE, she worked across departments to launch and grow the Campus platform, and then lead its editorial team. Prior to that role, she served as digital editor, helping to launch THE’s newsletter strategy and overseeing daily, weekly, and monthly publications. Ms. Custer was previously editor and senior reporter at The PIE News, a website and magazine covering the international education industry. She grew up in Cushing, OK., and earned a B.A. in English literature from Loyola University Chicago and an M.A. in international journalism from City, University of London. She has covered global higher education as a journalist for more than five years.
About Weekly Wisdom
Weekly Wisdom is an event series that happens live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of this moment. These conversations will be filled with practicable things you can do right now by unpacking how and why college leaders are making decisions within higher education. Hopefully, these episodes will also leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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