Note: This interview in the Scholarship to Practice Series originally aired on September 16, 2021 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The transcript of this podcast episode is intended to serve as a guide to the entire conversation, and we encourage you to listen to this podcast episode. You can also access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.
Don Pope-Davis:
We wanted to make sure that the postdocs who we brought into this place had very good mentors and collaborators who would help them navigate the space of the academy, so we spent a lot of time doing that. While the focus is on our Diversity Postdoc, please know that our numbers of faculty of color are now close to 35 percent of our entire faculty.
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together, podcast produced by the University Innovation Alliance. This is the podcast for busy people in higher education who are looking for the best ideas, inspiration, and leaders to help you improve student success. I’m your host, Bridget Burns.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
In each episode of Scholarship to Practice, we bring you a short conversation with scholars and researchers whose insights and learning can enhance the work of student-success practitioners day to day. Today we’re joined by Dr. Don Pope-Davis of Ohio State University, where he serves as dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology. His research has focused on religious attitudes, multicultural competence, and unintentional racism. Dean Pope-Davis, welcome to Scholarship to Practice.
Don Pope-Davis:
Thank you for having me.
Bridget Burns:
We’re so delighted to have you, especially after I read an article in Inside Higher Ed – shout out to IHE, our partners in streaming – that was about the work that you were leading at Ohio State. It was so serendipitous, because it’s a topic that is not only coming up frequently for us, but is something where I was just so heartened to discover someone had actually figured out a solution. We are really honored to be able to benefit from the experience that you have, not just in the field, but also really practically applying your learning in a real-time example with your Dean’s Diversity Postdoctoral Fellows program. I wanted to start today and see if we could have you share a bit about that program and where the idea really came from.
Don Pope-Davis:
Sure. Again, thanks for having me. The idea came from a series of conversations over a period of time with colleagues who had talked about recruiting faculty of color to their various institutions or programs, and not having the degree of success that they wanted, or having individuals that they’ve recruited, and some years later, the individuals decided to leave. The complexity of those issues allowed me, or encouraged me, to think about, "How do we solve this issue?" I began to have conversations with people who were actually in those roles several years ago, who had been at those institutions, who had tried to make those environments work. I listened and heard their conversations about it.
Part of it for me was, one of the things that emerged at the top of the list was, many of these institutions that were attempting to diversify, continued to use the same methods over and over and over without taking into account some of the barriers that are inherent in their systems. Part of it was, I wanted to do a number of things differently. That was before we even got to the discussion of postdoc program, I began to take a look at the environmental circumstances and culture of these institutions that prevented people from staying or wanting to come into these places. There was early conversations, talking with students, talking with postdocs, talking with people who were in faculty roles, and say, “Why did you leave those institutions? What was it about them that didn’t encourage you to stay?”
So I gathered a list of those kinds of things and used that as a basis to talk about, how do we solve these issues, because my approach generally is one of, I want to be solution-based rather than problem-based in these conversations, because there are too many people simply bemoaning the fact that they’re having challenges. That gets tiresome after a while, so I wanted to do something much more creative and engaging.
Bridget Burns:
That’s fantastic. I already can see part of what is different about this program, in that this is coming up quite frequently right now. I feel like people knee-jerk respond with, "Well, we’ll just do a cluster hire." Who’s done that, just cut and paste, and go with the old way of doing things? We’ve always noticed that the first step of design is empathy. I love how you put that into practice, not just assuming that the solution on the shelf was the right one, but rather trying to actually understand all the pieces and what people were really experiencing. I love this.
Don Pope-Davis:
Yes. It may have helped that I’m a psychologist, so my worldview is a little different. I’d like to think that I look at things a little differently, and so twist them or disrupt the way of thinking about these problems, because if you don’t, you should expect the same outcomes. That was my approach in terms of how do we apply this, but being informed by practice and real-life experiences of other colleagues, in order to build on a model that is working for us.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
I think that makes complete sense, and I’m sure folks are wondering. Did you just hire a lot of postdocs and bring them to campus and say, "Look, we did a thing," or are there specific aspects of the program that you think matter most?
Don Pope-Davis:
Yes. What you’re seeing today, that you’re seeing in this article, is the result of a lot of work behind the scene. When you peel back the onion – or the banana, whichever analogy you want to use – you get to see the other sides of this. Part of it was, when you begin to say you are committed to, are committed to diversity and inclusion, institutions need to recognize that what they are overtly saying is, “We are prepared to change the climate and the environment in which we work.” I don’t think many institutions really understand the nature of that commitment, because it makes PR sense to say, “We’re going to diversify,” and then you leave it to someone else.
That’s not the approach we took. We took the approach of saying, “OK, so we’ve made this commitment that diversity, inclusion, social justice, all of these things, are important to us. What do we need to do to make that a reality? What do we need to do differently? What do we need to disrupt in terms of engaging in those conversations, and who do we need to go after to create a community where you can do things differently and engage in better ways?” Before we even got to the Diversity Postdoc, we made a commitment to begin to diversify our faculty. We intentionally set up a model that we went out and recruited some of the best minds in the country to come to our college here at the Ohio State University.
We did that because we wanted to have a representation that’s consistent with our values so that, when we decided to start a Diversity Postdoc program, the postdoc scholars would walk into a space and go, “Wow, I’m not alone. I’m not the only ones in this place.” More importantly, they were able to see full professors, tenured professors, administrators, who look like them; that they could say, “This is a place where I am represented.” We are continuing to do that, even to this day, to recruit senior distinguished faculty.
We wanted to make sure that the postdocs who we brought into this place had very good mentors and collaborators, who would help them navigate the space of the academy, so we spent a lot of time doing that. While the focus is on our Diversity Postdoc, please know that our numbers of faculty of color are now close to 35 percent of our entire faculty, in a period of three to four years, because we have made this a priority in terms of our resources and engagement. Those are the pieces that happened. When the postdocs arrived, we had developed a program. My colleague Noelle Arnold helped facilitate this, on behalf of our college and our requirements, to develop a variety of professional-development opportunities for our postdocs.
We didn’t leave them alone. We engaged. We told them, “If you’re going to come here, we are going to engage you daily and continuously, and we will provide you with the resources to be successful.” We attempted to do that. We gave them a stipend. We gave them a decent salary, gave them a number of other things to make that happen. This is the piece that, I think, we pivoted from experiences on. Many postdocs around the country become postdocs, and they work with a senior faculty member on a particular research topic, on something that faculty member, appropriately so, has a grant, and brings them in to have that experience.
We flipped that model, and we said to our diversity postdoc, “What is your research, and what do you want to work on?” so that they can take personal responsibility for their scholarship and their research. We assisted them with resources in grant writing and how you go about doing these things, how do you get funding, and all of those kinds of things. We surrounded them with a variety of assets, if you will, in order to do that. Now you have an environment where, in our college, it is impossible for any of our postdocs and, more importantly, it’s impossible for most of our students, to not walk through our college and see people who look like them across the spectrum, because of that influx that we did early on in the process.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
That makes really good sense. Hearing you talk about pivots necessary, it makes me think of a second, or related, question. I imagine not everything that was planned for the postdoc program went exactly as identified. What didn’t work, or what should people be cautious of if they wanted to mirror this approach?
Don Pope-Davis:
Derrick, everything worked as we had planned it. I don’t know what you want me to – no, I’m kidding. You’re right. Through this process, there were some hiccups. Part of it is, first of all, in order to do some of the things I’ve articulated, we had to pay some attention to the culture in the college. As you know, culture is one of the most difficult things to change. People get set in a way of doing things and so forth. We provided some aspects of incentive to some of our faculty, who decided to be mentors with our cohort. We also included various seminars and conversations with people as to what this means. We also encouraged people to think about, in terms of their respective fields, what does inclusion and diversity look like. We continue to have a series of seminars, in our departments and in our college, that continue to do that.
Most people thought the challenge was the financial resources to make this happen. I take the view that, if you begin the conversation – which is where a number of people did – talking about, “Well, where’s the money going to come from?” and so forth, it kills the energy. I think many people who are committed to these values make the mistake of starting the conversation with the resources rather than being ambitious and saying, “What do we want to do? What do we want to be known for?” As you articulate that and bring different perspectives to it, if it is a great idea, people will want to help you with it. That’s been the nature of education, particularly if you can demonstrate some outcomes that we believe are successful. We had to make our way through this maze of systems, programs, policies, practices, and individuals, who thought early on that the resources for this could be better spent somewhere else.
I think that happens in any institution, so we’re not unique in those regards. I generally believe that, in every institution, when you talk about this kind of systemic change, you have individuals who typically fit into a number of categories. I’ll be brief with this [unintelligible 00:13:39] in the interest of time. I find that people generally fall into four categories. One is traditionalists, people who say, “We are fine the way we are. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. Why do you want to disrupt? This is the way we conduct these interventions, and so forth.” You have these traditionalists. Then you have people who are complacent, saying, “Yes, it’s OK, but I’m OK. Don’t bother me. Leave me alone,” or what have you. Then you get people with a concept of hubris. “We’re already a great college and institution. Why would you want to disrupt this and move it in a different way?” Then you get people that say, “I’m in, but what’s in it for me?”
Along the way, as you’re negotiating this space, you’ll run into people who do those, but the other group of people who you run into, too, is people who say, “This is fantastic. I’m not sure how to do it. I’m in. I’m going to need some help.” Then you begin to have conversations with those people, so that famous phrase, the way you change the conversation is, you change the people you’re talking to. I began to do that with my leadership team and people in the college who saw this as an asset and an added value in terms of elevating our college in that regard. I just share those pieces of conversation because it’s important to understand the community in which you work, and how do you engage people.
I’m very clear about, I do not need everybody to be onboard with a great idea. Every new idea, you have early adopters, and then you have people who wait and see. Is this going to be successful? Now that we’ve been successful, I’ve heard people say, “I was supportive of this from the beginning.” I just stand back and go, “OK, if you want to say that, that’s good. I’m not going to challenge that perspective.” This has really made a difference in our community, and I think the majority of the college, and our leadership in particular, whether it’s in the provost’s office or the president’s office, is 100 percent onboard with what we’re doing in our college.
Bridget Burns:
That’s so great. I love how you apply psychology to change management and leadership at the same time, which really is much more art than science at times. It sounds like you’ve figure out how to surf the wave of change and account for the different types of needs and personalities on the campus. I just want to really quickly shift to, how do you define success for this program? I think that other people, other institutions, try to implement change like this, or they want to achieve change. They want to diversify their faculty. They really want to expand the amount of sense of inclusion, especially so that folks reflect the students we’re trying to serve. I think part of the challenge is, they’re not very clear about exactly what the outcome is. They just want better. They don’t get clear about what exactly better is.
Don Pope-Davis:
Yes. I think they’re not clear about it, or as clear as they can be, because I’ve found in some anecdotal conversations that people begin with simply saying, “We want to diversify our faculty, or we want to diversify our staff or our students.” It gets assigned to people who manage those units or have those names in their title, as the case may be. I think the minute you say you are committed to diversifying and including individuals in your campus, the knee-jerk response is to say – and I’m going to be a little sarcastic when I say this. It’s like the M&M thing. Let’s get one yellow, one brown, one chocolate. It’s this notion of, M&Ms come in a variety of colors. It’s this notion of, we need to increase that.
I think that traditional way of thinking is problematic. I think the minute you say you are committed to this, you don’t immediately do the knee-jerk, say, “Let’s get somebody in charge of this and do it.” You then need to say, “We need to spend some time having a conversation defining and understanding, what does that mean to us in our community? How have we represented it up to this point?” Because if you haven’t addressed that, you will continue to do the same thing over and over. I would caution anybody who’s thinking about doing this: spend some time looking at the cultural environment of the space in which you want people to come into. What artifacts? Look at the photos on my wall. They articulate an inclusion in a variety of ways. What artifacts do you have, what policies? How have you treated the people that you have there already?
I can tell you, when I have had occasional conversations in the past around this with other institutions that were looking at me, and I was looking at them, the first thing I would do is ask, “Tell me about your diversity principles. Tell me how your faculty, your staff of color, feel about this environment.” I was often surprised that they said, “That’s a good question. We haven’t thought about that.” I’m thinking, that ought to be the very first thing you do, because if you don’t fix that, you can have the best program in the world, and people will leave. History has shown that. I’m not making it up. Just look at that data. People will leave, because they want a different kind of environment.
Again, let me be clear. It’s not just about recruiting more faculty of color. It’s about having collaborators with you of all backgrounds, religions, cultures, lifestyles, that says, “This is important,” and elevating that experience so that the environment reflects those commitments.
Bridget Burns:
That’s so helpful. Sorry, I didn’t meant to interrupt you, Derrick, but I especially am thinking of a couple examples recently where presidents have talked about wanting to increase recruitment and retention, and literally they think about it so simplistically, of, "It’s just about more in the door, just get them in here," and then not acknowledging how many are leaving because they don’t feel supported, because they don’t feel safe, because they don’t feel like they are part of something that really appreciates the value that they bring. I love that, and I love the visual of just how clear it needs to be for everyone who walks into the dean’s office.
Don Pope-Davis:
Yes. Bridget, the activities of last summer, the BLM movement and so forth, I would sit back and say, “Here we go again,” because I’m thinking we’ve been here before, institutions’ knee-jerk reactions. Let’s get more people of color. Let’s get more women. Let’s do this and that. I’m going, “No. Stop. Stop. This is a moment to reflect on the culture of your institution, your college, your program, and ask some very fundamental questions. How do we define these concepts, relative our experiences? What has been our behavior and practice?" I want to emphasize, start with, the behavior. How have we behaved in this space? Not just the practice, practice is a safe place to go. Behavior requires a sense of accountability. How have I behaved? Have I been an ally? Have I been an advocate? Have I been a traditionalist? Have I just said, “The status quo is fine; we just need to add” – all of those systemic and systematic things need to look at an individual behavior if you want to change that environment. If you don’t, what’s that famous phrase? Those who forget history, they will repeat the same thing and this conversation with all.
From where I sit as a dean here is that I didn’t want that to happen. My commitment has continued to make people accountable and create some element of what I would call dialectical tension that requires a constant discussion and engagement in this topic. Doesn’t mean we have to agree, but as long as we agree with the framework, and we say, “These are important,” I can work with you in that. That’s what I think is important here.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
That’s great. You touched on the culture piece, part of that being that you were explicit about senior faculty members bringing in folks at the rank of full and distinguished professor. We note there are two questions that will probably pop up, and they pop up constantly. You addressed one. I wonder if we can do a sort of rapid fire.
There are two things that I think people will always say get in the way of this sort of work. One is money, because money’s a thing. The other is the location. You’re at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, different than lots of places around the country. How would you respond, quickly, to a colleague who said, “It’s too expensive,” or one who said, “I’m in a rural space that is not Columbus, Ohio, or any other urban center?”
Don Pope-Davis:
Sure. Let me reiterate. To individuals who say the first thing about resources or budget, that’s the wrong question to begin with. Start the question with your faculty, your chairs, your provost, your president. What do we want to do? What is the framework of what we’re trying to do? Start with that. After you’ve been able to articulate that, then institutionalize it and get partners with it, because if, at the end of the day, the institutions says, “This is important,” then they have to make another decision, which is the one you asked, Derrick. "Where can we find resources to make this happen?" If you start it the other way, "Well, the money, we’re not Ohio State, blah, blah, blah, blah," you’re dead on arrival, because there’s always a reason to not do it.
Yet, these same institutions are constantly hiring faculty and staff, because people are retiring an engagement. You have models out there where people can borrow from the future or invest for the moment and transform that in a variety of ways. The irony is that, if you can get the support in terms of the principles and ask people if this is important to you, there’s this famous saying: "If it’s not in the budget, it’s not important." If this is an important concept, the next important piece that leadership needs to say is, “So, tell me, Derrick, what percentage of your budget do you believe you can invest in this?”
Then you see something wonderful emerge. At least it’s been my experience. I can go to the provost and say, “We’re trying to do this initiative. I need some help from you.” You can go to a colleague and say, “Why don’t we help each other collaboratively recruit? We can share a faculty member, or we can share a couple of them.” You don’t have to do this alone, and you can also reach out to colleagues like myself and others and say, “What are some of the nuances of what you did in order to make this happen?” I think those are some things that we can do that are not being fully executed.
Again, I keep hearing conversations of, "Yes, we’re committed. We’re going after one or two people." Let me be very clear about this. The data, anecdotal and evidentiary, is clear. The cohort effect works. Do not bring in one person of color or one diverse person at a time. You are setting them up, no matter how productive they may be. They’re likely to question whether they want to stay, and I think that’s what makes it easy for people like me to come and say, “I’m going to recruit you to our space,” because when they walk in, they see something like 40, 45 faculty of color in our college. They say, “Wow, I want to be part of this committee.”
Part of it is to be very intentional, very systematic, and engage people in that process. Regarding people who are in remote places, I’ve been at one, so the question is, how do you negotiate that? I think one of the innovative ways you can do that is, you can develop a partnership or an MOU with a major university of sharing faculty. You needn’t take the traditional approach where the person is exclusively at one institution [unintelligible 00:26:53] if you’re in a place like Ohio, and there’s a place north of us or south of us that wants to partner with us, that’s one way of engaging in that. Again, don’t depend on one person to do that. That’s one way in which I would address – and have addressed – this with some of my colleagues, who have asked a very similar question.
The other thing is, if you’re having a hard time, simply because you’re small should not be used as an excuse. Again, I say to those people, “When’s the last time you’ve done a cultural assessment of your environment?” Take a look at that, because again, even if you were to recruit someone and have them be part of your community, if your environment hasn’t changed, they’re not going to stay, no matter what the practices are. Again, that’s why I started out by saying, “The piece here that’s missing is the ability to do a cultural assessment of the environment, the attitudes of the community, in a variety of ways, and have that inform you.” There are consultants who can do these things for you, if you’ve got the resources to do; but I always say, “If you’ve got money for a consultant, you can do this and recruit some of the best faculty in the world.”
What we know today is, there’s a lot of data on it. There’s this phenomenal article that O’Meara and her colleagues came out, wrote this past summer, June of 2020. It’s called “Applying Behavioral Design to Faculty Hiring,” fantastic article, data-driven best practices. I would encourage any administrator that is trying to diversify and be inclusive to read that article. These are colleagues from the University of Maryland who wrote this article in the Review of Educational Research. I commend that to all of the individuals listening, and I’m happy to pass that link on to you at some later point.
Bridget Burns:
Great. We will make sure to link to that after this show. Thank you so much, Dean. We know that you are very busy, and making time to be able to share what you know with a broader audience is super valuable. I will just ask. How can people connect with you? We are going to link to you on Twitter. I don’t know if you check your Twitter a lot, but is there any other way, place, you would like folks to reach out to you?
Don Pope-Davis:
Yes. I’m going to give you Noelle Arnold’s email address. [laughs] No, people are free to reach out to me directly, and I will make sure we figure out a way to engage them, or I can also have them reach out to Nicole Luthy, who is my chief of staff, to assist with that. Those are points of contact. Noelle Arnold is the senior associate dean here in our College of Education and Human Ecology and has been the person managing these pieces, and has been my partner in crime in this environment. At the risk of having too many emails, let me give you Nicole Luthy’s email address, which is luthy.22@osu.edu. They’re free to reach out. We are happy to help colleagues get this right and head down in this direction, do workshops, give talks, work with people to move them along in a variety of ways.
Bridget Burns:
Great. This is perfect. Thank you, and Nicole, I’m sorry for the additional emails, but we appreciate the chance to spread the insights that you’ve shared thus far and will continue to do throughout the field.
Don Pope-Davis:
Great. I hope this was helpful.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
It was. Thank you so much, Dean Pope-Davis, for joining us, and thanks to those of you who are watching. We desire to bring you more of these conversations to bridge the gap between scholarship and practice so that we can do all that we can to support our students in our sector. If you want to nominate a scholar or a topic, feel free to reach out to Bridget or myself, and we’ll make sure to get those folks in front of you, as well.
Bridget Burns:
Everyone have a great week.
Don Pope-Davis:
Thank you.
Bios of Guest Luminary and Co-Hosts
Guest Luminary: Don Pope-Davis, Dean, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University
Don Pope-Davis (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. He is passionate about using higher education to address issues of equity, economic growth and the psychological well-being of educators and students. An educator for more than 25 years, he was previously dean of the College of Education at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic-serving institution. He also served in senior-level positions at the University of Notre Dame. Pope-Davis’ work on religious attitudes, multicultural competence, and unintentional racism in counseling is widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He is an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association's Society for Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues and a Fellow of the Society of Counseling Psychology. His most recent book, Perseverance in the Parish?, published by Cambridge University Press, examines the attitudes of Black Catholics in America. He is president-elect of the Council of Academic Deans from Research Education Institutions (CADREI), a member of the steering committee of Deans for Social Justice and Equity in Education, and past chair of the American Psychological Association’s Committee of Ethnic Minority Affairs.
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: Derrick Tillman-Kelly, Director, University Innovation Alliance Fellows Program and Network Engagement
Dr. Derrick L. Tillman-Kelly serves as the Director of the UIA Fellows Program and Network Engagement for the University Innovation Alliance. He previously served in multiple roles at The Ohio State University, including as the inaugural UIA Fellow and special assistant to the director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise. Dr. Tillman-Kelly earned his Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership with a specialization in higher education and student affairs from Ohio State; a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs from Indiana University; and a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University.
About Scholarship to Practice
Scholarship to Practice is an event series that happens live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. We interview higher education scholars, researchers, and academics as we surface relevant research on topics that administrators often wonder about, and examine how a practitioner or administrator could apply this learning in real-time to improve student success. At the UIA, we know that we need to bridge that gap between scholarship and practice if we’re going to stand a chance of improving student success. We all need to work together leveraging research in the field and identifying where we need more research to support greater innovation in higher ed. With its short and conversational format, this show is designed to help bridge that gap by elevating the relevant research we all could be using in our daily lives.
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