Weekly Wisdom Episode 20: Transcript of Conversation With Alexander Cartwright, University of Central Florida President

Note: This interview, Episode 20 of the Weekly Wisdom Series, originally aired on October 19, 2020 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together podcast, appearing 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,” 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. 

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 our 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’re navigating, and hopefully it will leave you with a sense of optimism, a bit inspired, and give you a bit of hope. 

Paul Fain:
Hi. I’m Paul Fain, a contributing editor of Inside Higher Ed, and this week’s conversation is with the president of the University of Central Florida, Alexander Cartwright. President Cartwright was appointed to the presidency in March of this year, a busy year, and I believe arrived in April. He’s previously served as the Chancellor of the University of Missouri.

Alexander Cartwright:
Thank you. Nice to be here. 

Bridget Burns:
Wow, there is no one who has a more interesting start date than you. We have so many questions about what it has been like to meet the campus, to develop relationships and figuring out how to lead in this moment. So thank you so much for taking a little time out of your day, because we know you’re running back-to-back on Zoom calls. 

Alexander Cartwright:
Yes, as we all are. Thanks for having me here. 

Bridget Burns:
To start, we just wanted to get a sense of how you’re holding up and anything happening for you right now as a leader at the campus. 

Alexander Cartwright:
I’ve been very lucky here. We have a terrific team, a lot of people doing just wonderful work for this institution. When I got here, people just stepped up and did everything that needed to be done to continue to prepare us for the fall and certainly also for the summer. I just can’t thank everybody enough – our faculty, staff and students – for all that they’ve been doing to make for a successful fall semester. 

Of course, there’s a lot of things going on and we’ll continue to think about how we expand our in-person, how we continue to recognize all the needs of all the people that are working so hard, our faculty and our staff, and continue to be compassionate with our leadership. 

Paul Fain:
I feel like Thursday was a very big day in higher ed news. The Clearinghouse [National Student Clearinghouse Research Center] data showed really catastrophic decline in first-year student numbers this fall – 23 percent at community colleges, 16 percent at four-years. Can you give us a sense of how UCF is doing enrollment-wise?

Alexander Cartwright:
You know, we’re one of the institutions that have been fairly fortunate during this in some ways. Of course, when you look at how much additional load it puts on our faculty and staff, it makes it difficult. But in the summer we actually hit our record enrollment for summer. And this fall, our enrollment is up roughly, a little over 3 percent for the fall. That’s a significant number for us because we were 69,500 before that. We are closer to 72,000, now. So we’re one of those institutions that has seen an increase. I think that’s built on a number of things. Right? 

It’s choices of the students who may want to stay local within a large metropolitan area, but in addition it has to be with the fact that our institution was at the forefront of online education, and really we embraced digital learning very early and had a number of students taking high-quality digital learning courses at this institution. I think that’s carried over where a lot of people continue to choose us, given all that’s going on. And so we’re thankful, and we hope we can continue manage all this and to provide the high-quality education that we want to provide. 

Paul Fain:
I think most folks by now know how big U.C.F. is, but, wow, it’s still huge. So, obviously, the pandemic has disproportionately hit Black, Latino families, students as well – lower-income student groups. You, I believe, were a first-generation college student, yourself. U.C.F., among other things – a very positive question here – does so well with transfer. It’s really the national example. But when you think about the sort of students you maybe do transfer or the ones who are feeling the pandemic’s impact the worst, you know, we know uncertainty and anxiety are giant barriers now, in some surveys. Even more so than cost. What would your advice be to a first-generation college student right now trying to figure out how to deal with these uncertain times? 

Alexander Cartwright:
You know, you’re absolutely right. This is a difficult time, especially for first-generation students, low-income students, where there’s so much uncertainty around their income levels, but also if they’re being supported by someone else, the income that those people might be losing. The best thing that I can think of telling our students is that we’re here for them. We want to work with them. We want to try to do as much as we can to help them through this rough time and we recognize that this is going to be a difficult time. 

I spent a lot of time this last six months really talking with people about self-care and recognizing that things are difficult, and also recognizing that it’s a challenge for our students, for our faculty, for our staff, and to feel free to reach out to people and to talk to people and to spend time with each other. Our students, we’re fortunate in that we have some amazing students, and they really are committed to their education, and our job is to ensure that they can have access to that high-quality education, and to do it in a way that they can make it through. And that we’re going to try to do everything we can, whether it’s trying to find philanthropic dollars that can help, or other types of programs that can help to provide additional ways that they can continue their education. Of course, some of it will come down to how many dollars can we really attract. And I hope we can get additional support to help people through this difficult time, because it is going to be difficult over the next year to two years as we continue to see economic impacts of the pandemic. 

And you pointed out, it’s well beyond just the economics. It’s mental, it’s emotional. It’s all of those things. And we need to provide all the services to help our students to recognize what they might be challenged with and how we can help them through it. I want them to not give up and recognize that they have all this potential – and they have a lot of people who are pulling for them, who want them to be successful here at U.C.F., but around the country. And we’ll continue to do everything we can to help them make it through this. 

Paul Fain:
Thanks for that. 

Bridget Burns:
I am curious about what it was like for you to move in the middle of COVID and get to know a new campus and figure out how you build relationships, how you build trust, how you get your finger on the pulse of a new institution and what kind of leadership resonates in that moment. It’s just such complexity, and I’m just curious how you – are there any things that you’ve done that have helped, advice you could give for others? Because I know there’s quite a few transitions currently under way. 

Alexander Cartwright:
You know, when I look at the transition, it’s difficult to decide to lead an institution, especially during something like that. When I look back, we’ve gotten to a point, we’ve made certain decisions that I felt that the institution was in a good place. And so I was comfortable that they would be able to manage through that. We had put in place leadership that could help that. 

When I looked here, what I saw was a remarkable institution that had so much potential. And what it was looking for was a leader to help with that. And I knew about a lot of things that were happening here. I’m an optics person, so I knew about the work they had going on here in optics. And I knew approximately some of the successes that they had had with some of the student success initiatives and graduation rates and retention rates, and how that helped underrepresented students, and really closed the gap significantly on retention and graduation rates at this institution.

For me, what I saw was a place that I could come to and have an impact, and then think about how we build out the team that’s a leadership team and really move this institution forward. I had no idea that, of course, this would go on as long as it has, and that it would still be looking that it’s going to be even a longer period. We focused, here, on our compassion and our caring. I generally am a servant leader, anyway. I believe in servant leadership. I believe in trying to figure out how you help the people around you and that your job as a leader is to empower people. And what I needed to do here, during a difficult time is, you can’t – you need to have people that feel they can make decisions and they can do things properly, and you’ll support and you’ll help them to be the best that they can be. That’s what the leader needs to be doing. 

And when I came in, what I recognized was that this is an institution that had a lot of great people in place already. And people that I could rely on. So once I got to know them, then I was able to let them – you know, they were able to just take over and do all the things that we needed to do and make a lot of decisions. It is hard when you come in, though. And the biggest one is that, as I’ve been saying, lately, is that I’m still – I’ve been here six months now, and I am literally a talking head. People have not seen me in person. At a few different events, and a few places. But it is not something that – we’re not holding a lot of events on campus. We do, but not a large number of people there. 

So how do we continue to build community, which is essential? How do you do that electronically? And so we’ve done a lot of open forums with all sorts of different groups. We have an envisioning exercise that we’re going through right now, meeting with all the different colleges and all the different administrative units. As much as we can do in terms of having more and more meetings where we’re collecting input from our constituents, and that they can also ask questions about what am I thinking and where are we going? So it was, how do you build those relationships and do it virtually? And I hope that over time we’ll get to a point that we’re able to continue to build those relationships, but do them in person. 

Paul Fain:
Among other things in your first few months, the country has been wracked with a national reckoning on race. You were one of the first presidents to make a direct statement about racial injustice and Black Lives Matter. Can you talk about why you did that and how you feel like you can hit the right tone on that issue with the campus community and beyond? 

Alexander Cartwright:
When you look at our institution and you see the type of institution that we are, and when I looked at this institution, I talk about the fact that we look like the future of America. And it’s time for us to be the future of America. It’s time for us to think about how we ensure that everybody has the opportunity to be the best that they can be. I quote The Inner Game of Tennis, and I talk about the fact that in there it talks about your performance is equal to your potential, minus the interferences. 

And we have so many people here that have incredible potential, but there are so many interferences that stop them from reaching that potential. And people don’t understand how hard it is when you have to worry about walking down the street, and you have to worry about the people and the way that look at you just because of how you look. That takes an incredible toll on people. And it’s unfair. It is something we need to address, and it’s something that as a community we want to be committed to, because I don't want anybody to ever come here and feel that they can’t be the best that they can be. That’s what this is about, is how this place, U.C.F., can be that bright spot for the world. That you know you can come here and you’re not only welcome, but you are celebrated because of what you bring to this institution. 

And that’s what we’re going to continue to do, and we’re going to continue to push forward. Because I believe that, ultimately, it’s education that transforms society. It’s education that transforms the world. And I want everybody to have access to that type of education that they can really achieve dreams that for many of our students, I think they’re very similar to the way I was. I never would have dreamed – in fact, it was never in my wildest dreams – to think that I could ever be a president of an institution like this. I want them to have that experience. I want them to have that opportunity. And the first thing about that is to make sure that we give people those opportunities to excel, and you have to first acknowledge that there are some things that we need to change to make that possible. 

Paul Fain:
Thanks.

Bridget Burns:
Florida has a unique governance structure in terms of higher education, local governing boards and statewide, and also the political environment. Everything in Florida is very unique. And I’m just curious about, as a new president coming in, you’re needing to form new relationships, you’re going to need to tap in and connect with new advocates. Are there any things that you found that help you get a grasp of this state from inside the state, while being socially distanced? Because I have no idea what that’s like right now.

Alexander Cartwright:
When I moved here, when my wife and I moved here, we knew hardly anybody. We knew maybe one or two people. I knew some people professionally from optics area. But really very limited interaction with the people that manage and contribute to this complex environment that you’re talking about. The Board of Trustees for this university has been tremendous during all of this. They’ve been incredibly supportive, they've been helpful. They have the relationships, they can leverage those relationships. They connect me to the right people. I don't have to be the one trying to make all those connections. They're like, you need to know this person, that person, and they make it possible. 

Same thing with connecting with our legislators. I have a wonderful vice president who's in charge about government affairs and really is someone who has helped me to get to know the legislature and to understand a little bit more about Florida in general. And in addition, I will say that within the State University system here in Florida, we are blessed in that we have so many really talented and approachable presidents at all of the other universities here in Florida. And they have been a wealth of knowledge for me. They have been supportive. I can call any one of them at any time about anything that's going on, and they've all helped as much as they can. And we have a great relationship with our system, the chancellor, and the Board of Governors. And so I think what's happened is that this has brought a lot of us together in ways that I wouldn't have anticipated. And I believe that I have built probably more authentic relationships, virtually, than I probably would have been able to do if this wasn’t all going on. 

And so that’s really interesting, is that it has forced us to think differently and to become much more sort of reliant on each other through all of these challenges, and to work together to think about how we could apply certain principles that may be at another institution, but you apply it at your institution, and recognition that all of our institutions are just so different, and we need to adapt. No one solution will work for everybody. But the general concepts can work. It’s how do you then adapt them for the individual institution?

Paul Fain:
To follow up on that one, I feel like no matter what institution you are right now, it's a safe bet that your plans the next few years have been accelerated. Making decisions in higher education is always a challenge. You have many constituencies at the table. Have you been able to – or have you changed the decision-making process to be able to – keep up with the pace of change right now?

Alexander Cartwright:
One of the things we have to do, Paul, is it's important that we empower the people around us. If I was to say that a fundamental principle that you now, and I've already said this, a fundamental principle is servant leadership, that means you have to communicate. That means you have to be in contact with as many people as possible, and you have to get feedback. Those processes could sometimes take a long time. So what you actually have to do is you have to figure out a way that you have enough people around you that you can empower them to have a lot of those conversations and make decisions about specific things that keep moving the institution forward. And you, as a leader, focus on that long-term vision of here's where we want to go, right? We need to think about what is digital education in the future? How do we continue to have a strategic advantage moving forward in digital education? 

Because now everybody is going to say they can be online and they can do these things. It's a different issue, but we can have a whole conversation around that. But I do think that there's a need then for us to rethink what we're doing in digital education and how we move that forward. There are people at this institution that know how to do that, and I want them to be empowered to be able to do that and to work with all of the necessary constituents. 

Same thing about even within our university, how many people do we have in our offices? Who's going to be working from home into the future? How do we socially distance in our buildings? What does that mean? Those are all decisions that I'm aware need to happen. And you want to have sufficient input from the faculty, from staff, and you want to talk to our students and everybody. One person can't do that. If I do, then it slows everything down. 

Your main question was about the pace of change. We have to be more responsive, but we also need to be completely integrated with our community and having them help us to make the right decisions for the institution moving forward. And that's a tricky balance. To be speedy, but also to be responsive to the needs and the knowledge that all of our constituents have.

Bridget Burns:
So I pay attention, as a new president comes in, I’m trying to gather as much information as possible. The things that I gathered about you were you made time for student success and talking about under-resourced students earlier on than most campus leaders, where I would often have to wait quite a while to talk to them. You were the first person to make a statement about racial justice. You're a very clear leader, make decisions, execute, but you also are very calm sounding. And I'm like, I don't understand how in the midst of everything going on, you are such a calm presence. But this is what I've heard from folks at U.C.F. is that just this very calming presence. And I'm just curious, like, can I have whatever you are drinking? What is it that possibly gives you this kind of sense of peace in the midst of what most of us are dealing with feels like total chaos?

Alexander Cartwright:
The easiest thing I can say is it's where I was born. It's the Bahamas. I'm from the Caribbean, and there's a song that goes – I don't remember the exact words to it, but it would say something like, “Why I friendly so?” And I guess you could say, "Why I relax so, Bahamas I come from." That’s what it is. I think a lot of your personality is defined by where you grow up and how things work. And that you have that underlying drive and desire and concerns. I believe very firmly as a leader that people need to understand that things are under control. It’s difficult, right? There’s a lot of challenges. but you’re not going to solve them by panicking. You actually have to refocus, right? 

It’s like when you watch the great teams, you know, in sports, when they are the most focused and most relaxed is when they really have to perform. And that’s what we need to be doing, is thinking about our future. Thinking about how we continue to move forward as an institution. I want to be able to think. One of the things I find is, if I’m stressed, that’s when I can’t really think. You need to be able to process information. And so the more you can stay calm and stay in a place where you don't have your mind made up one way or the other, the better it is to listen to all of the different viewpoints – and then make those decisions. 

Here, what I focus a lot on is decision-making. We can make decisions pretty quickly. But what we also have to do is make sure that we execute them methodically. Because within a large institution, the right communication needs to occur. The right people need to be involved. You need to make it clear to people why you’re making the decisions you’re making. And they may not always agree with your decision, but they’ll respect the fact that you’ve included them. So when you’re able to stay calm, people are more likely to open up to you also. 

And that’s the biggest thing that I believe is needed, is that you want people to feel like they can talk to you as a leader, and that you’re listening. And I mean really listening. Not just saying, "OK, talk, and I’ll be thinking about something else." That you are really trying to put yourself in their position. You can’t always do that because you never can have the lived experiences that they’ve had. But you can at least have enough empathy to understand what they’re saying. Then you just try to move forward. You can’t do that when – I don't find that I can do that if I’m really stressed. So it’s better to try to stay as calm as possible. 

Paul Fain:
I’d love to learn more about your time in the Caribbean. That helps explain some of this. It’s the last question here. You’ve talked a little bit about being able to build some authentic connections that maybe you couldn’t have in this period. Obviously, there are a lot of things we would like to go back to the way they were in higher ed and the world, broadly. But what are some of things you’d like to see stick around? What are some of the changes that have been forged that you feel like have been beneficial to U.C.F. and higher ed more broadly?

Alexander Cartwright:
As much as I would complain about all the Zoom meetings and everything, I actually think that they’re in many ways a blessing, in that we can became more efficient as an institution. At our cabinet meetings, there’s lots of opportunities for us to do all of those meetings without everybody having to try to move to another location and find a parking spot. A very inefficient process. So how can we leverage the technology to be more efficient? 

I think, also, travel, right? One of the things that we were doing a lot was we always felt like we had to travel everywhere for everything. I think we’re starting to learn that maybe we don't need to. Maybe we can cut back on some of that – not all. There are still going to be times when it’s critical for us to come together and be in person, and I still prefer being in person. But I do think that we can rethink how we operate as an institution and are more efficient because of the technology. 

I think it’s an understanding, too, that we can trust people way more than we realized, right? And what I mean by that is, think about how many employees now work from home and do remarkable jobs for their institutions? Right? We were always worried about these types of things, right? But now we’ve learned that there’s a number of people who just do fabulous work. They don't have to be right next door. I still have not met my administrative assistant in person, one of them. A little complicated as to why, but I haven't. And yet she does just a wonderful, wonderful job. That’s the types of things that I think we need to recognize more and keep those things in place. Moving into the future is going to be more about the technology. But at the same time, it is so much more about how much we value each other and those interpersonal relationships. So, for me, I’ve started to learn how much our students want to be on this campus, want to be in a residential location. The classes, at some level, benefit them because it brings them together. But they also just want other activities, too, that complement what they’re learning in the classroom. And all of that goes, of course, towards students’ success. The more we can do of those things, the better it is for all of us. 

I’d say using technology in the right way is the biggest part of this. There’s a lot of other things we could talk about as to how we might change education into the future. But really, all of that is even still about the correct usage and mix of technology and in-person. 

Bridget Burns:
That was super helpful. I feel like everyone at home is just kind of like namaste. Very calm. Again, the vibe is just, yes, I need to be in meetings where people are just like very level. This is so – I feel like I can take the day off, now. Thank you for giving us a bit of a taste, because not all leaders are like that, and not all presidents have reacted to the pandemic in the same way. So it’s been a nice perspective for folks, especially on a Monday morning, to think about how they can bring a calm presence to their team, to their classroom, to their institution, despite what’s going on, and how it perhaps might lead to a more clear-eyed decision. So thank you so much for that. And we are grateful to have you, and U.C.F. is obviously very lucky to have you. 

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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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