Weekly Wisdom Episode 1: Transcript of Conversation With Michael Crow, Arizona State University President

Note: This interview originally aired on April 13, 2020 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Weekly Wisdom Series that airs live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Click here to access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.

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.

You're about to watch another episode of Start the Week with Wisdom, which for those of you who are at home, if you have not seen this before, these are weekly episodes where we conduct an interview with a sitting college president or chancellor.  And we want to talk to them about how they're navigating the challenge of this moment.  We're in a really unique time, and we want to focus on their leadership and unpack how they are making decisions, how they are navigating.  And hopefully it will leave you with a sense of optimism, a bit inspired, and give you a bit of hope.

Jeff Selingo:
I'm Jeff Selingo joining you from Washington, D.C., where I'm an author, a journalist and a special advisor at Arizona State University.

Well, and, Bridget, our first guest is somebody we know really well, the president of Arizona State University, Michael Crow, who has led the institution since 2002.  I first met President Crow when I was a writer and editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, more than a decade ago.  And he's really one of the few presidents who I met back then in my previous work who's still a university president in some way.  And when I think about the most innovative presidents who I think are well positioned for this moment in time, it's those who are in what I would describe as their second or third phase of their presidency, right?  They've been around long enough at their own institution to understand the gravity of this moment and also to understand how to respond to this moment.

You know, most presidents who are kind of new to this vision are just starting out in their presidency, and they're just trying to figure out their way; they're trying to figure out not only where to go on their campuses, but what vision to put forward in that presidency.

And so, Mike, welcome; it's good to have you here.

Michael Crow:
Thanks, Jeff.  Thank you, Bridget. 

Jeff Selingo:
And how are you holding up right now, and any advice for other presidents in this moment?

Michael Crow:
Well, we've been in this distributed mode for a month, and you know, the interesting thing for the team and myself and our faculty and our staff is that I don't think any of us had worked harder than we're working right now.  We are full bore, full-on, doing everything we can to deliver the full suite of services that we have, to deliver the full suite of educational opportunity.  And I think in terms of holding up, it's just a function of, you know, working in this distributed fashion and driving as hard as you can, picking up the speed of innovation, which we have been doing, advancing new ideas, which we have been doing, and trying to adjust to everything that we're encountering.  So, all in all, at least for me, it's been the most invigorating time I think I've had in a long time.

Bridget Burns:
Well, and I know that when I last saw you in person, in early March, we were talking about what was going on, and I could sense that this was a very serious time.  Even before folks were talking about it, you were definitely planning ahead.  And you shared with me an analogy that I think would be very useful for our viewers about comparing leading with sailing.  And can you share with us that perspective so folks can use it to inform their thinking?

Michael Crow:
Yeah, Bridget, last time I saw you was at JFK, on March 5th, flying to Las Vegas, where my last outside meeting was March 6th, before returning to what we then began to fort up.

And so the sailing analogy is that, you know, all of us in academia are at sea.  We encounter lots of wave conditions.  In general, we encounter steady, stable seas, but now we're in the middle of very heavy seas, 30- to 40-foot waves on a regular basis.  We have the pandemic issues; we have financial issues; we have organizational issues, culture issues, all these things going on at the same time.  And so the key from my perspective is how to stabilize the ship as one's moving through the heavy seas that we're in now, you know, basically maintaining seaworthiness, while then also preparing for the less-than-certain but nonetheless possible large, potentially damaging waves and to sort of look at it in this way; that is to prepare yourself to move forward irregardless, to adjust and to adapt, to trim, to change, to alter your course a little bit, to make certain kinds of adjustments, and then to prepare.  So adjustment, adaptation and preparation now are essential.

If you hold the line and you try to maintain your ship conditions, your ship operations, in the same way that you've always done it, then you won't be prepared for the present conditions or the oncoming wave that hasn't gotten here yet.

Jeff Selingo:
Mike, we've talked a lot over the years about kind of leadership frameworks that leaders use at different moments in their careers and in whatever crisis is facing them at the moment.  What kind of leader do we need right now of a college or university?  What kind of framework is helping you get through this moment or think about this moment?

Michael Crow:
Well, you know, for me the framework is what I call offense; that is, you know, what do we need to do to be better prepared for what lies ahead?  So, it's likely that we need to introduce some more changes, cooperate with others, partner with others, lead with others, engage in helping higher education overall to be successful.  We need to broaden our thinking of education itself and not leave K-12 behind or out or disconnected.

I think the approach that we've taken here at a major public research university, is what do we have that can be good for the general order, all assets, all things, all tools?  Our library has gone through manifest changes to be able to be more available to the public.  And so the key from my perspective is not to maintain some notion that you're going to just batten down the hatches of your ship and weather the storm, but you've got to find ways to connect, link, and modify what you're doing along the way.  So it's this attitude of transformation.

Bridget Burns:
All right, that's helpful.  So, for a lot of college leaders right now, they are facing the challenge of being a human being in this moment, which is, you know, trying to sift through everything that's going on, and we're being barraged with news constantly.  Many folks are dealing with personal tragedy, and so there's just this whole human element of it.  But leaders right now are having to do the hard thing, which is to not let the chaos of this moment be a distraction, to be able to be as clear-eyed as possible, and that's really hard when you can't control any of the wave.  You can't control any of the conditions.  So what are you doing that's helping you stay focused on leading in this moment and not getting distracted by just how much is going on and changing every second?

Michael Crow:
So the key is to stay focused on the outcome.  And the outcome is, you know, where our duty lies – to maintain the environment by which learners can learn and they can advance successfully, adjusting to the realities of the COVID pandemic on an operational basis, advancing all of our assets to meet conditions that we're operating in, changing them if we have to.  And so, you can't worry about where the waves are coming from.  You can't worry about trying to control all these factors or control all these variables.  We have a responsibility.  We are a critical industry, as they are defined.  The education is essential to the success short-term, mid-term and long-term of the country.  We have to then take the mindset we can't falter.

I've been a little bit concerned about people saying, well, we can't do this or we can't do that, so that can't work, let's just let it go; like educational enterprises that haven't been able to reassemble, that haven't figured out that this could go on for some period of time.

You know, we're prepared to operate in whatever mode we have to operate in for as long as necessary, or to modify in whatever way that's necessary.  We have contingency plans across the entire spectrum of operational environments.  Could we operate in this distributed fashion for a year?  Could we do that for longer?  Could we operate in different ways of thinking about what's the nature of education?  Could we work more significantly with employers and companies and corporations to change the way that adults and ongoing education continues?  And so the notion is stimulating the way in which you do not become concerned with the things you can't control.

I can't control the spread of the virus, you know, we just listen to the CDC and to the Arizona Department of Health, and then we implement what they say and then we move forward, while also, you know, dealing with 75,000 students who are typically on campus.  We have a couple of thousand students still living in our residence halls.  We're taking care of them and nurturing them and deploying our telehealth and telemedicine assets, moving into academic advising in whatever mode, like this mode that we're talking on here, making all of this happen.  And so the key is, I think from a mindset perspective, is to just focus on your responsibility and the delivery of our core service.

Jeff Selingo:
So, Mike, you talked about adjusting to realities.  If you were in the midst, either there at ASU or for any institution out there or any organization, if you were in the midst of a strategic plan of a vision two months ago, do you pivot from that vision?  Do you put it on hold?  Like, what do you do in this moment now that clearly all your energy is directed to dealing with this crisis?  What happens to the vision that you had two months ago?

Michael Crow:
Well, I mean, you know, all plans – I think it was Eisenhower that said that planning is necessary and unbelievably important and completely worthless once the battle begins.  And so what we're involved in is constant planning that's adjusting on an ongoing basis, so we're planning and adjusting, planning and adjusting, planning and adjusting, moving back and forth.  And so, if anything, we've intensified certain elements of our vision.  You know, we're still acquiring technology.  We're still doing technology deals.  We're still negotiating ways to acquire new technologies to operate in virtual reality, in augmented reality teaching.  We're working to secure new technology manifestations so that we can operate in this distributed fashion.  In fact, I would say that one thing that we've learned is that we're a different and better institution than we were four weeks ago.  We have more capabilities than we had before.

We didn't realize that some of our Zoom-based teaching platform, something we call ASU Sync, we didn't realize that ASU Sync might be better for certain teaching modalities, not all, but for some.  And so what we've learned is that we've added dimensionality to the implementation of our vision.

I think that it's an error to sit back and say that we're just going to weather the storm and then re-launch the vision.  These pandemics, this is latest, not the last.  The globalization of the planet to eight billion people in highly urbanized settings is creating all kinds of complexities.  And historic institutions that are non-adaptive, they're going to have difficulty adjusting to these kinds of high-speed changes.  And so what we're looking at is how to instill the ability to adjust and keep performing our mission as a core part of what we do.

Jeff Selingo:
And just one quick follow-up on that: How do you avoid – So, for example, these Zoom-based platforms really helped in ASU Sync, if we're back on campus and somewhat normal by the fall – or whenever we are – how do you avoid kind of slipping back to kind of the old ways of doing things then?

Michael Crow:
For us, it's having an understanding of the breadth of people that need to learn, so it's gonna be a fantastic privilege, you know, when everybody can reassemble back on campus.  And the few people who have the privilege of being in face-to-face full immersion, well, that's not most people.  That's only a few people.  And so it turns out, however, what many colleges and universities have to offer is of great value to many more people.  We've just developed a whole new way to find a way to project that, just like we're doing right here, a two-dimensional face-to-face digital immersion, what we're calling ASU Sync.  You know, this is a whole new way of working.  Well, we didn't really realize how well it could work.  And we're offering 14,000 Zoom sessions, I think today and tomorrow.  I mean, that's the way we're gonna work, and so we won't fall back to the way things were, because how could we?  I mean, we now know that the world is much more complicated than perhaps we thought.

Bridget Burns:
And we just received a question from Matt, one of our viewers: How is ASU working to ensure students, especially for first-gen low income, are not dissuaded from enrolling full-term?  I know that it's not an ASU-specific question.  I think every college and university is struggling with this, about the intimidation factor and folks trying to figure out what to do.  So do you have any thoughts about that?

Michael Crow:
Well, Matt, that's a good question from Matt.  And so it is – you know, there are millions of Pell-eligible students and millions of students going to college from lower income families.  And so the key is projecting that, you know, we've got your back; we're with you or working with you; we're gonna adjust to your circumstances, help you to overcome whatever stress or impact has occurred within your family.  You know, we've got huge numbers, millions of families deeply affected economically here, and so we have to be adjusting and interacting with them in new ways.  And so the key is massive communication, massive outreaching, helping people to understand that life goes on and that there's ways to help life to go on, even in the middle of a pandemic.

Bridget Burns:
OK.  We also got another question about whether if there are any resources that you need from the community to make online learning dimensionality even better.  Obviously, folks, we don't know the answers about next flu season or how long this continues, but other things that would be useful coming from the broader community that would help to support what you're already building in the ASU ecosystem.

Michael Crow:
We need for people to realize that this can actually work.  You know, what we have is we have some perhaps older generation, my generation, Baby Boomer faculty members, who are resistant to the notion that there's other ways to teach or ways to enhance teaching.  And so people that are out there that are thinking, well, how can this work, how can this possibly be a tool?  Well, it is a tool; it does work.

And I was listening to my youngest daughter watching a Netflix movie while chatting with her friends, who were all scattered from the college that they go to all around the country, all interacting with each other at the same time.  And I'm just like, you know, who could have thought that such things would be possible?  And now imagine then that as these really advanced interactive teaching modalities bringing in different perspectives.  So what I'm looking for from the community is just open-mindedness, and second from the community is not to give up.  So we've got people that think this is like a hurricane.  The hurricane is coming through, and it's doing a bunch of damage, and then we'll just rebuild.  No, this is an adjustment to the reality of complex biological systems that we're gonna have to now figure out how to work with over time.  And so, we've got to not just stop.  We have to just keep moving.

Jeff Selingo:
Mike, what's inspiring you right now?  I mean, it's kind of overwhelming I think for a lot of people, particularly college and university presidents or anybody leading organizations now.  Where are you getting your inspiration now?  What's inspiring you?

Michael Crow:
Well, so the amazing thing to me is to watch the people that are in the front line treating the people that actually have the virus and, you know, their courage and their adaptability and their ingenuity.  And then turning that back to our faculty and our students and our staff, we have a group of students that have built a distributed COVID PPE manufacturing system using distributed 3D printers, with people working in a distributed fashion making all these component parts.  I mean, they just thought this thing up on their own.  It's fantastic.  The speed and the level of caring by our staff has been very inspiring to me, and I think also the power of the community in general – it's amazing to me the amount of order we still have.  Everything is still moving orderly, mostly everything.  And so it's very inspiring to me to see people adjust.

You know, we're doing all of this so that everyone can be safe when everyone is not affected by this virus in the same way.  So there's a deep inspiration, I mean almost moral inspiration.  That we care enough about other people that we've decided to take on this particular route to take on this virus so that we can get through this the best we can, that's deeply inspiring to me and indicates where we have got as a society, both within the U.S. and globally.  It didn't used to be that things were dealt with this way.  They were dealt with in much harsher ways in the past, and that's not the way we're dealing with things now.  So that means that we've really evolved immensely, and that's very inspiring to me.

Bridget Burns:
That's great.  We did receive one last question that I actually think is helpful.  So, because Jeff and I have both worked with you, we know that you take in information from movies, from books, from all kinds of places, and you weave it together and to see what will serve the moment.  So the question was what books you're reading.  Not that I think anyone's able to do like, joyful reading right now, but I am guessing that you are drawing upon some book that you've read in the past or something that you've seen in the past that is helping you think about this.  And if so, can you share that so folks can  –

Michael Crow:
Well, you know, I read a lot of books at the same time.  I just finished "The British Are Coming," which tells you what the actual cost of the American Revolution was, not the idealized, ideological outcome, but the cost in human blood and sacrifice and financial disruption and everything.  And so you look at that and you say, hmm, I live in a country that's a product of their efforts.  I mean, it's deeply inspiring to me.  And then, you know, my family and I are spending a lot of time watching funny movies by Jack Black and people like that so we can sit around and laugh.

But, in terms of inspirational things, I mean, if one looks back in history and see what people have done in the past to rise up to challenges, there's deep inspiration from what people have been able to do.  And you know, one group of people that are out there on the front line are scientists, you know, who are working 24/7, you know, just an unbelievable – So I went back and read Jonas Salk and his entire biography and everything that he did and how he worked and how determined he was.  And you know, you look at people like Louis Pasteur and other scientists that were able to step up through time.  We're gonna have that again, and those things are gonna happen, and so all that stuff is very inspiring to me.

Bridget Burns:
Well, we hope that this has been inspiring to you at home.  Thanks for the comments and the questions.  We know we had a lot of folks watching live.  So this is Jeff's and my first stab at Weekly Wisdom, but we'll be back next week.  And our next guest is gonna be President Michael Sorrell of Paul Quinn College.  So, our hope is that this will give you just some different perspective to go forth in the week ahead, a little bit of inspiration, and perhaps just a little bit of boost, rather than I know some folks have been having the Sunday scaries.  So I hope is that we can address that as much as possible.

So, Mike, thank you so much for making the time.

Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts

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 this unique and challenging time within higher education. Hopefully, these episodes will also leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.

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