Note:
This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on July 19, 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.
Kim Wilcox:
Part, I think – part of the question, I think, going forward is, what's the scale of management control? Is it institution? Is it conference? Is it system? Is it state? What's – how do we want to do – and more importantly, what do you want to accomplish? I –
[Music]
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together, a 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.
Doug Lederman:
Today's guest is University of California Riverside Chancellor Kim Wilcox, who's been in that position since 2013, having come from Michigan State. He's also one of the founding leaders of the University Innovation Alliance that Bridget leads. Welcome, Kim.
Kim Wilcox:
Thanks, Doug, Bridget. Great to be here.
Bridget Burns:
Well, it's delightful to have you, boss. So, well, we're honored to have you and wanted to just be able to have a brief conversation, since last month we unveiled to the world that the UIA campuses have exceeded a very big goal that was set, and we released that information. But I wanted to, you know, my sense amongst that board is that the things that have mattered to you have been a little bit different over time in that you really value some of the other work. And I'm wondering, beyond, you know, I think, I suspect that you're more excited about other things than just achieving that goal. But I will defer to you.
Kim Wilcox:
You think and suspect that since I've told you've that?
Bridget Burns:
Yeah.
Kim Wilcox:
Yes. And I don’t mean to diminish the success, because helping more students achieve a university experience and graduate than had before is huge, and particularly those who wouldn't have had the chance. I mean, that's huge. But at the same time, there's lots of other dynamics that I've always thought were equally or perhaps more importantly, important to the alliance.
Number one, is the simple visibility of the task. I'm very proud of the fact that we came together now eight years ago with a purpose of changing how universities and people in universities think about their role. It isn't just about how many students you turn away. So you have a very selective admission process. This isn't just about how many research dollars you have. But there's something fundamental about that student experience. And now this, many years later, almost everyone is talking about student success, graduation rates. I think changing that conversation has been perhaps the most important legacy of the alliance.
The second piece is, at the time people noted that to the best anyone could remember, we were the first time a group of universities had come together for any purpose other than athletics. We all are familiar with athletics conferences and all that means in terms of competition and [unintelligible 00:02:57]. But this was a group of universities that had no other connection. All of them from different states, who said what's important for us is coming together to make a difference in students, particularly those students who are from families that don't have the same resources as others and help them succeed. That was a fundamental commitment.
And third on my list of important things is I've wanted from the beginning to create a cohort of people who are committed to this. So it's not just presidents and chancellors who meet and talk about student success. It's registrars. The 11 registrars know each other, talk to each other. Undergraduate deans know each other, talk to each other. Your leadership, Bridget, brought them together on real issues and real topics so that there are colleague and support mechanisms to learn from, but also to measure against. That change in local culture, I think, is a huge, huge benefit.
Doug Lederman:
Bridget, do you want to go ahead? Do you have a follow up on that?
Bridget Burns:
I'd say I agree.
Doug Lederman:
I was going to – yes, especially about your great leadership. I was just going to focus on the middle of those three because I have frequently cited UIA as something, representing something that I think is a gap in higher education collectively, which is this sort of – you work in a system now. You didn't when you were at Michigan State. Michigan State has a famously disaggregated group of public institutions despite, you know, they work together on certain things.
But in general, we don't have a lot of structures in higher education aimed at sort of collective action. There are some associations, but they've got all sorts of limitations. And so I think we're – I think you're right that UIA was an early signal, or an early example of a group of institutions coming together. And we've seen a little bit more of it, things like the – of course now I'm blanking on the name, the group that's come together around the – getting more selective institutions to have more –
Kim Wilcox:
ATI.
Doug Lederman:
ATI, right. And obviously there was – we had Achieving the Dream and some others in some other parts of the ecosystem. But I do think this idea of institutions coming together to attack a problem is – because I think we need that. I think we need that. I think very few institutions are going to be able to be islands unto themselves going forward. So I guess I'm interested in sort of how you'd compare like what the UC system does together vs. something like UIA and where you see opportunity for more of that kind of structure.
Kim Wilcox:
A great question, Doug. Because you had touched on several different comparators. If we start with the UC, people – you know, I was in Michigan, notoriously disconnected; Kansas, one of the last – I mean – so I've had my time in states where there was a lot less control. People ask me about the UC. The first thing I always say is it's by far the most homogenous system in the county. There isn't a clear flagship. I mean we let Berkeley and UCLA and –
Doug Lederman:
I think so –
Kim Wilcox:
But they're all major research universities with huge research enterprises and graduate programs. So that changes the nature of the conversation right away. But of course in a system, student success is important. But so is managing the medical centers and managing the research enterprise and government, state budget every year. In the UIA, those are by definition not an issue because they're in different states. We can't talk about them really. You know, over cocktails we can talk about them. But we can't be instrumental. So it brings a focus on a single topic. And I think that's a key piece. The other piece, when you think about ATI, of which we're also a member, great organization, and – but when you talk about selective universities that's a big group.
And when we have a meeting of ATI, it's several round top tables in a room. In UIA when we have a meeting, it's us around a table in a room. And so – and I'm not saying is better than one, the other. I think that's part of what this last decade has been, because we can include the APLU. Now I'm going to forget the name. Anyway, they're –
Bridget Burns:
Powered by Publics.
Kim Wilcox:
Thank you. Powered by Publics. One of the questions is, what is the right scale? Because of course if you're successful at a big scale, then that's a bigger impact. But how much harder is it, what's the value, and how focused can you be? So I think that's part of – and we're actually, the UIA is one of the Powered by Public's participants. So I think there's a lot of us that are in all these groups and trying to move ahead and thinking about the frame is important.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. I want follow up around the concept of a strong system presence and COVID in particular. So the UC has made a very clear statement on at least opening and uniformity across the campuses around fall and vaccinations, I believe. And so some other states don't have that kind of system leadership or don't have that kind of clarity. And I think they probably are looking at California enviously because it's – just because of how politicized everything has gotten, it's nice to have someone else step forward on that. But I'm guessing it's not solving all of your problems about fall term. And I'm wondering if you can speak a bit about that, about what's – you know, beyond that topic what is showing up for you that you're needing to wrestle with still despite having strong clear leadership from the system.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. I don't know of anybody in the country who is feeling satisfied, comfortable, and at ease about what's going to happen in the fall. If you just think back over the last few months how much things have changed, we had a big surge in California, then we – it went away, then a big surge in Michigan. We've been to-ing and fro-ing all over the place, and then overlaid on that are two dynamics. One is the health dynamic, and actually the nuanced advice from the CDC and other groups has varied a bit over time, as we've learned more.
And the political overlay, which had kind of a divisive beginning base and has only become more so over time, even in California where it seems like things look pretty good. And I agree where I applaud where we are in terms of the mandate. Cal/OSHA has had different standards. They actually released some about three weeks ago or four weeks ago, changed them the next week. The governor's office has changed. The Department of Health has changed. Right now we're in Riverside County. We adjoin Los Angeles County, which implemented a masking mandate for the entire county Saturday night at midnight.
So even in a place that has some stability and some political leaning toward being conservative on health issues rather than lax, there's still a lot of variation. And then back to Doug's point about the 10 UC campuses are in different counties, with different oversights. We – Los Angeles, Riverside County were two of the unfortunate leaders in cases of COVID throughout, and unlike Los Angeles, we simply don't have the health facilities here in our county, which is another dynamic. You can handle 50 cases if you've got the facilities, you can't if you don’t. And so trying to find a way to impose the right expectations and then implement them all is a continuing challenge, I think, for every university president and chancellor in the country.
Doug Lederman:
Everybody's desiring of normalcy. And we all want that. You know, I think it's going to be really hard for things to feel normal, even if we, even if most places bring most, more students or most students back. And I'm curious how much – do you think institutions are better prepared to – for pivots when they're necessary? Do you think they're better prepared? I guess I'm – how much have we internalized some of the lessons of the last year in terms of – I mean there's a lot that still has to be figured out about remote work and all sorts of things that it's going to take us a long time to get there. But I'm curious how comfortable you're feeling about your ability, your institution's ability to adapt particularly.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. Of course everyone was shocked at all of us who when we were all able to simply stop meeting in person and start doing it online last – March of 2020.
Doug Lederman:
Fifteen months, yeah.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. So we know we can do it. I don't think, to your point, everybody's so craving for normalcy, I don't think anyone wants to do it, even more or less so than we did back then. I take heart in the fact that while everyone craves normalcy, we're all ready to accept quasi-normalcy. It doesn't have to be all the same stuff with all the same events and all the same things going on on campus. Just having students in residence halls and for us we figure about 80 percent of our classes or so will be face to face, that's not normal by any stretch. It would have hurt our brains two years ago to think about a world like that. But that's a big step toward normalcy. I think everyone – students, faculty, staff alike, even on the question of masks, having to a wear a mask, some people don't like it, but people understand it in a different way than we did before. So I take a lot of heart there.
I worry about shifts. Shifting in March of 2020, to everything being online, was relatively easy, because it was black and white. We were and now we weren't. This fall is much different, much more nuanced in terms of who's working from home, who has to work from home, who doesn't want to anymore, who wants to continue to, which classes can. We could trip through it for a year, but some of these classes we've got to get back in a [virtual 00:13:28] way. That – and to get into that kind of nuanced world, and then try to pivot from there, in which direction, for which parts? It's the decision-making process, and the communication with all these participants that really is the challenge, I think.
Doug Lederman:
Yeah. We do best with black and white. Most of us. Gets harder in the gray.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. And gray looks different to every single person on campus. Depending on their job and their class schedule, whatever it might be.
Bridget Burns:
And there's not really a playbook. I'm seeing such different – yeah, like almost like a student of leadership sitting through this moment. Doug, I'm sure you and I can probably get quite a bit that we've learned and seen over the past year and there really isn't like one clear example of the right way. So I want to shift to athletics.
I know that it's been a really – with everything going on with the NCAA and a lot of those conversations, you know, folks are thinking about, you know, what it's like now and what the changes are going to be, and I think there's – I've heard some people say things like it's, you know, it's the end of college sports and all these wild claims. And you actually, while you have some college athletics, you do not have Division 1 football, and you are able to still run a vibrant, thriving institution that raises a lot of resources from its supporters, and you don’t have Skybox. And I'm wondering if you can talk to folks, because you're on a different, you're on – to some degree a different side of this or a different space. And especially coming from Michigan State and also from the University – or from Kansas, I'm just curious if you can comment as someone who really has a different experience as a top-tier institution on the topic of athletics, about what surprised you about the coming to Riverside.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah, you just asked about a two-hour question there, Bridget. I'll try not to go two hours. Yeah, you are correct, we're a Division 1 athletics program. We don't have football. It turns out there's an awful lot of schools like us. There are I think five Power Five conferences, the ones that you hear most about. But there are over 300 Division 1 athletics programs. And many more look like us than look like the names that come to mind, Notre Dame or Nebraska or whatever.
And it was my first real experience at mid-major Division 1 athletics when I came to Riverside. I found it refreshing. I found it to be more like what people want athletics to be. Students are students, and we play for the love of the game, although we have scholarships and all the rest. And we try to be competitive. I should note when our budgets tanked last year, like everyone in the country, we had a budget advisory committee in place that was making recommendations. One of their tentative recommendations was to consider moving down a division, or maybe even eliminating athletics on the campus, something that wouldn't have happened to Michigan State or Kansas, where I had been before.
So there is kind of a difference in that we weathered that, we have a plan going forward, because I think there's an awful lot that athletics brings to a campus in terms of identity and spirit and kind of connections for students and community. For – I was – I noted that Mark Emmert from the NCAA commented the other day that maybe this is a time when the name, image, and likeness decision from the Supreme Court, that we should look at a different model for managing athletics in America. The NCAA was an outgrowth over 100 years ago, 120 years ago, as an attempt to try to manage particular football, and how out of control football had become among some schools in the Eastern part of the country, and we've tried to use that one instrument to manage all of athletics. And I think we've learned over the years that that's not – hasn't been very effective, and I could go down a long list of reasons I think that's the case.
So kind of back to our discussion about the UIA and the ATI and the Powered by Publics, part I think, part of the question, I think going forward is what's the scale of management control. Is it institution, is it conference, is it system, is it state? What's – how do we want to do – and more importantly, what do you want to accomplish? I was on the president's forum for the NCAA for several years, and when we get into conversations about managing the competitiveness and so forth, I was the crank in the room who would repeatedly remind them that nothing in the NCAA bylaws or goals or values says anything about competition. If you read the NCAA mission statement, it's about developing students into future leaders. And that has nothing to do with winning a single game.
Now, that's one of the aspirational pieces. But I would suggest very little of what you see the NCAA doing the last several years didn't have something to do with competitiveness and generating revenue through the basketball tournament and so forth. And so I think, I think it's a good time to have a calling of the question. And actually I've been informally calling the question for a while.
Bridget Burns:
All right. Well, that's super helpful I think for folks who are at home, thinking, you know, there is an opportunity to continue to come up with a new model for things moving forward. I want to share –
Kim Wilcox:
Let me give you – I've got so many things [unintelligible 00:19:06] people at home are thinking. Think about this. We talk about coaches' rules and coaches' discipline in athletics all the time. And we accept it, that if you don't come to practice, the coach has rules, you know? There are team rules. Team rules. Just think if we had a single professor who had class rules that they implemented on their own. We wouldn't tolerate it. Right? Why is it we allow an entire culture to develop within our institution that is so different from the rest of the institution? And I can go down a whole long list of things like that that I would love to have the nation have a calling of the question. Sorry.
Bridget Burns:
No. I think that was like a – that was a [makes explosion noise]. Yeah, we could go for a while on that one. I think that a lot of people likely agree with you, and they just feel like –
Kim Wilcox:
But a lot of them don't, I can tell you too.
Bridget Burns:
Yes. When you talk with presidents privately, do you find that that is something they also think about? Are alone in that space at the senior leadership level?
Kim Wilcox:
No, I'm not. There's a fair number of Division 1 majors who have my sense of this. I think there's a number of Division 1 major school leaders as well, but they're much more restrained in what they can say.
Doug Lederman:
I have, over my – I used to cover college athletics –
Kim Wilcox:
You're the expert in the room.
Doug Lederman:
Well, that's why I've kept quiet. But I used to describe the deathbed conversion, which really was the post-retirement conversion that we saw a lot of presidents engage in when they moved out of the senior role at their institutions and became private citizens. You often heard them talking much more critically about athletics. There's a long list of presidents that I would put in that category. They're pretty impaired in what they can say in that role most of the time.
Kim Wilcox:
Exactly.
Bridget Burns:
I have one recent memory, actually, as you say that. So I know you are not wrong. Well, I want to shift to a bit more of a rapid-fire questions that our audience seems to –
Kim Wilcox:
I better sit up.
Bridget Burns:
Get ready. Stretch, get ready. First, I'm curious. You've been a mentor. We first met when I was an ACE fellow. You were an ACE fellow. So you're someone who is, who helps to mentor folks. And I'm wondering about you personally. What advice served you best in your career? Who gave it to you and what was the advice?
Kim Wilcox:
There's all kinds of great advice, of course. I've been so fortunate to have people who are willing to guide me. Here's one I use a lot. It came from my wife. Many years ago I was – we were supposed to be taking a vacation. I said, "I don’t know if we can take a vacation." Diane said, "Kim, you need to take a vacation because everyone watches you. If you don't take a vacation, they think they shouldn't either. They don't feel that they take the time away." And it was just great advice, most because I needed a vacation, but also because it kind of reminds you of your role that's bigger than just doing your job and it's hard for many – myself, for sure – to think of people looking at me to know how to do things. I mean I'm trying to figure it out myself. But that message really – and I have shared that with many other people as well.
Bridget Burns:
Well, as someone who just came back from two weeks off, you make me feel like a great leader. But I'm also like – Doug, I know that you can't take one right now but [unintelligible 00:22:44] take a vacation.
Doug Lederman:
Exactly. Do it for the others, not for yourself. And all of a sudden, once I thought I've got to do it for other people? Then I really was motivated to go do it.
Bridget Burns:
And this is vacation month for higher ed. Most folks, this is the only time a year people can really take their foot off the gas.
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. I had to come home, put on a tie, just to see you guys.
Bridget Burns:
All right, well, thank you for doing that. Although flip-flops would have been a great look for the show. And I'd note, you probably do have flip-flops on actually right now. We don’t know. [unintelligible 00:23:12] California. We're jealous. OK, so what's the advice that you give to people who you mentor or who are, you know, aspiring leaders? What advice do you frequently find yourself giving?
Kim Wilcox:
Yeah. I do this often times when people ask me, "Who do you want to recruit?" And I always say, "I'm looking for somebody who is a good listener." If you're talking all the time, you're not – all you're doing is talking. I will never know everything about this university. I don’t even know what all the majors are, there's so many, right? I need to learn. And the best way you can do that is to listen. So I'm always recommending we seek listeners as employees, and I'm always telling people to be a good listener. Not just openly listen, but be a thoughtful listener, a respondent in a helpful way.
And then the other advice I remind people, it's not about you. In my experience there are two categories of presidents and chancellors – the ones for whom it is about them; many of them wanted to be a president when they were in graduate school. Never trust somebody who wanted to be a president in graduate school. Because too often they're doing it for the wrong reason. They're doing it because they want to be in charge. You want to find a president and chancellor who never wanted to be a president or chancellor, and now they are and they're generally doing it for the right reason. And again, my wife, best advisor, reminds me every day, "You know, Kim, when you stop being chancellor, you stop being chancellor." And people will say, "Yeah, he used to be the chancellor." It's over. The job goes on. Other people will be in it. They'll be talking about the dumb things that I did. "I don't why you did it this way. We've got to change it." It's not about you.
Doug Lederman:
We usually like to ask about what – what you, what has guided you from a – what books? What pieces of writing have shaped you professionally, personally, and things, particularly things that you sort of maybe go back to and recommend to others?
Kim Wilcox:
I read – I read very little fiction, I'll just fess up. Sorry for creative writing faculty members out there listening. I read a lot of non-fiction. I read a lot of biographies. I just re-read Up from Slavery, which was a great read in this time, to kind of remind us of all kinds of – it reminded me of all kinds of things. I have – a book that I would recommend for those in the academy is Lab Girl. It's kind of a memoir of a biologist faculty member and her life experience as a faculty member. So much of it resonates, I think, with people who have been on the faculty, her graduate students and all the rest. The other book I love – well, there's two other books I guess I'd say. One is Boys in the Boat, the story of the University of Washington rowing crew team from 1940s, '30s, something like that.
And With the Old Breed – With the Old Breed was written by a faculty member at a – I can't remember now, a university in Georgia. He was in graduate school when World War II – college, rather – World War II broke out, and he and his buddies enlisted in the Marines. First the Marines said, "Finish your degree, we need officers." He was eager to go. He signed up. Quit college and went. And so he was a grunt, literally a grunt through the South Pacific. And it's one of the few military books that is written from the front lines, not about which generals are moving their brigades into which dimension and the flanking – this is just a guy trying to survive and do the right thing. But clearly a guy with talent who wrote his [version 00:27:19] afterward. And it's a great way to think about leadership from a place that isn't about leadership.
So one anecdote. They're getting ready to do whatever they're getting ready – and there are a whole bunch of 50-gallon drums that had been full of oil, and his job was – he and his buddies, was to scrub out this oil. Well, they thought it was a stupid job. So they're out in the hot sun in the South Pacific scrubbing out oil, out of these drums, and they got them clean enough, that's good enough. So two weeks later they deploy to Saipan or one of these, and they're charging the beach, and it's 100 degrees and it's humid and it's hot and it's sweaty, and here comes the water in the drums that they were washing up two weeks ago. And they wished they had washed them out a little better. But that's, you know, the supply sergeant of course knew what to do with the water and all the rest. So With the Old Breed is for me a great look up at leadership rather than down.
Bridget Burns:
Well, Kim, we so appreciate you spending this time with us and giving us your perspective and providing a sense of what it's like to work with you, and also your thoughts on the national landscape and the different driving forces, I would say, in higher education. So we appreciate you starting the day with us, giving us a little bit of hopeful perspective for the week. And Doug, as always, it's a delight to have you as a co-host. So we'll see you all next week.
[Music]
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Guest: Kim Wilcox, Chancellor, The University of California, Riverside
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 (A.C.E.) 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: Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder, Inside Higher Ed
Doug Lederman is editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. With Scott Jaschik, he leads the site's editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Doug speaks widely about higher education, including on C-Span and National Public Radio and at meetings and on campuses around the country. His work has appeared in The New York Times and USA Today, among other publications. Doug was managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2003, after working at The Chronicle since 1986 in a variety of roles. He has won three National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association, including one for a 2009 series of Inside Higher Ed articles on college rankings. He began his career as a news clerk at The New York Times. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and graduated in 1984 from Princeton University. Doug and his wife, Kate Scharff, live in Bethesda, MD.
About Weekly Wisdom
Weekly Wisdom is an event series that happens live on 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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