Weekly Wisdom Episode 4: Transcript of Conversation With Michael Drake, Former President, Ohio State University

Note: This interview, Episode 4 of the Weekly Wisdom Series, originally aired on May 4, 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.

Michael Drake:
There’s a quote that our friend and colleague, John Glenn, used often. He said this, and I quote him, which was that, “The happiest and most fulfilled people he knew were people who were devoted to something greater and more profound than their own self-interest.”

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 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 adviser at Arizona State University. Well, and, Bridget, today we’re really thrilled to bring an interview with Michael Drake, the President of the Ohio State University. Prior to taking the helm at Ohio State, he was chancellor at the University of California, at Irvine. He also served as the vice-president for Health Affairs for the UC system. And while he’s announced his retirement after an extremely successful tenure at Ohio State, the timing of his departure is kind of flexible due to the coronavirus pandemic. President Drake, it’s great to have you here today.

Michael Drake:
Sure.

Jeff Selingo:
Great. And we have a lot of people, it seems, on the Internet today. It seems the system is a little bit slow today, but we’ll try to roll with the punches. President Drake, Ohio State had its virtual commencement yesterday, which I imagine presented a range of emotions for you and the students graduating. How did it go? Any lessons to be learned for your counterparts who are going to be doing these virtual commencements in the next couple of weeks?

Michael Drake:
Well, I’d say yes, lessons. And how did it go? You know, it’s a little bit like if you have a party and you’d ask the guests if they had a good time or not. We heard very positive feedback from our community broadly. Let me just say a few things about it. I don't want to say this in the wrong way, but I was counting up the number of commencements that I presided over. And I can't count, but it’s something over 100. So 110-115, something like that, that I’ve either been the speaker or presided. So this was different from the others just from the beginning of our stadium, which probably would have about 60,000 people in it, but we had about two dozen. I was there with our provost and our vice-president for student life and our student body president graduating senior, who was going to give the student address.

And then we had Tim Cook from Apple give an address virtually. He sent us a very thoughtful video which we used. And we put together a program that took about an hour, which had clips from our graduating students, some videos of campus, a few meaningful moments, a playing of the Alma Mater by our wonderful marching band. A really nice program, and then a couple of the comments – I made comments, Tim made comments, our student made comments. So it was an interesting feeling to be in that setting first, but interesting in a way that I hadn’t really expected until after doing it. And that was that – for those of my colleagues who have done this before, when you speak to a big audience there’s kind of an energy from the audience. And you speak into that energy and it sort of holds you up a bit. You’re part of that system of speaking into that energy. 

So I found it to be interesting that I was giving a speech like I would give to a big audience, but just to a camera in front of me. And then the other side of that coin though was that when you speak into a big audience, some of the people are paying attention, some are not, somebody’s going off to get a hotdog or whatever, someone’s having a conversation, someone’s changing their seat. And so there’s something less than 100 percent focus, it seems, on you and what you’re saying. Interestingly, since all of us would have been speaking really to a tiny group of people in a very large number of groups in their living rooms or wherever they were watching, it felt much more connected, like I was speaking to people as individuals. 

And I heard from a couple of my colleagues who watched that they have the same feeling, that it was much more connected, that they could hear what I was saying. So the words made more of a difference than might’ve been the case before. So maybe we were not together in one way, but we were much more connected another way.

Bridget Burns:
That's great. I know that a lot of folks are feeling like they are more connected to their colleagues in unusual ways as a result of what’s going on in terms of seeing people’s animals walk through their Zoom videos and seeing their children and such. So there is – strangely, there have been little gifts in terms of the sense of intimacy and connection in this, but that’s good to hear because I know a lot of folks who are about to do their virtual graduations there, trying to figure out. They’re trying to swap tips about how to do it well. This is just an unusual moment for us. I'm curious - 

Michael Drake:
I would say two things, if I may, just about that, just to help. So I will say that when I heard back from people to get – I mean I heard back from someone today who was emotional in talking about the connection, which wasn’t able to continue speaking so a very – so that was kind of a profoundly different thing. That was interesting to hear. I don't know about this generally. We gave our students a chance to go on buy or rent caps and gowns. And we normally have about 12,000 students or something like that in the graduation. It’s a big number. But as of late last week about 9,100 had gone and purchase or rented caps and gowns. So we were quite touched by that. And then tens of thousands were logged in, watching. So it really did seem to work to pull the community together for at least that time. I’ll get more feedback later today, but the initial feedback was that people felt connected and that they were pleased that we did it.

Bridget Burns:
Great. Well, that’s good to know. I also actually started watching some of it and I saw some of Tim Cook’s speech, so I look forward to watching the rest of it. So what I’d like to talk to you about is – you’re in a very unusual space. You’ve had an extremely successful career as a president, as a chancellor, as a leader in higher education community. And we’re now at a space where you had announced your retirement and you were, you know, wrapping up on really with a flourish because of how many things have been so successful and how many goals have been achieved in terms of whether it’s strategic plans and just really has been a list of accomplishments. And then this happened. And I'm just wondering how you are – as a leader, is there a particular framework you’re using or a way of thinking about the situation that is helping you to navigate through this moment, keep your chin up and keep some degree of optimism as you’re trying to inspire and navigate –

Michael Drake:
Yes, yes. A couple of things. And there’s something I said in the comment yesterday. I kind of finished with some greatest hits of advice out of all this, parts that I liked. And one that I finished with was that it’s not about you and that’s an important thing to remember in your life. There’s a quote that our friend and colleague, John Glenn, used often. He said this, and I quote him, which was that, “The happiest and most fulfilled people he knew were people who were devoted to something greater and more profound than their own self-interest.” And I used that yesterday as kind of my advice to the graduates. It seems that if you’re, I don't know, focused on the enterprise or the thing or the task, that’s its own reward and its own set of guiding principles. And that’s what I would say I’ve been doing as we went through this last bit.

It hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would. We’d had a very – speaking personally, we’d had a very special March and April set up with a bunch of things that were honoring our sesquicentennial. It’s our 150^th anniversary. It seemed like a great time to be transitioning for me. Everything’s all lined up with special events and whatever. So we just didn’t do any of them. You know, see where it goes. I mean those weren’t things that were promised and those weren’t the point. And the point is to try to do what we could do to support our students and support our faculty and support our staff. And we just continued focusing on that. Yesterday is, again, one example, but they seem very appreciative of that and it feels great.

Jeff Selingo:
President Drake, obviously Ohio State along with the entire University Innovation Alliance has been really known the last couple of years for really innovating on a number of different fronts. They say during a crisis that it kind of forces you to do things that you might normally not have been able to do outside of a crisis, but you also discovered new ways of doing things. And so I'm kind of curious – as you look across the university, is there anything that you’re seeing now or are there any larger changes even within higher ed that you’re seeing now that potentially can stick for the long-term? Whether it’s how we’re working, whether it’s online education, you know, whatever it might be that you’re seeing across higher education or even at your own institution, that you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, I hope – even after this is all over – I hope that will remain for the long-term, whether that’s a big or a small thing.”

Michael Drake:
Yes. Let's see. I mean I – not want to be one for predictions much, but I would say that among profound changes that we’ve seen, it’s really been our change in the use of telemedicine. And we are doing order of magnitude, more telemedicine visits now than we would’ve been doing three months ago. We always did some, we always liked them, we always celebrated them, but they tended to be telemedicine when we couldn’t do – you couldn’t come to see us in the office. And now I think we’re going to – as we come out of this, we’ll use telemedicine to enhance our ability to be in touch with people in a more convenient and effective way. I believe that we’ll still need to see people – people still need to come to come and see us. But much like the ATM, when you didn’t really need to see your teller as much and we really got used to that, I think the telemedicine will allow us to do a whole series of things more conveniently for patients more quickly and then bring patients in when we need to actually do something with them in our presence. 

So I think that telemedicine will make a big difference. I think that we will have more Zoom or Zoom-like meetings. You know, UIA for instance, not easy to get together all the time. We pick special times to get together. I believe that many of these coalitions will be able to form and work because we can connect with each other. It’s not thousands of dollars and days out of your life to spend an hour together, and we can exchange the same content I think effectively that way. I will say also – and I’ll see how this works and you can let me know how it is for you. Students, when I do a freshman seminar, the group of us – speaking for me – really miss being there with them. And so when I see them pop up I said, “Uh, my goodness. I love the experience of being in our seminar together.”

And I believe that our students are really eager to be at college. The experience of being at college was something that they valued dramatically. If I’ve heard any complaints from them, they appreciate their professors working so hard, they say it’s not quite the same. We’re kind of filling a gap, but we appreciate them working so hard. What we really miss is being there with our classmates and friends. We love our families, but we wanted to be out of the house. We want to be there with everybody doing that stuff. For what it’s worth – I'm going to say this in the wrong way. May 1^st is our statement of intent to register, when you pay your deposit. So we’re up 20 percent in Ohio students and 25 percent in non-Ohio residents compared to last year which was our record year of people who paid their deposits.

Jeff Selingo:
Is that incoming students?

Michael Drake:
That’s far and away the most – incoming freshmen. 

Jeff Selingo:
Wow.

Michael Drake:
Far and away more than we’ve ever had, which is we’re really excited – so people seem really excited about being here more than ever. We’ve had almost 700 international students pay their non-refundable deposits for next year. They may have other barriers, there may be other challenges, but we normally look for a class of about 600. And we have actually 700 today. We’ll see what happens over the summer. There’s always – and this is a different year than other years, but just year over year we have a significant increase in the numbers of people who are interested in coming. I think this is an experience that people really do value, and it means a lot to us to hear that.

Bridget Burns:
I'm curious about how you – so one of the things that’s always struck me about you is you always have just a very steady kind of calm hand. In every conversation I’ve ever been in with you, you’re just very kind of smooth. And I don't know where that comes from, but I would like to harness – I would like to have more of that in my life. And I'm just wondering if you could give advice for folks at home who are facing a barrage of news every day and struggling to keep their eye on the prize, on how to make – what should we be focusing on? Navigating through all of this, how is it that you manage to keep your head and, in the midst of all of this, still decide what you need to be focusing on and how to lead towards that vision? Is there any advice you would give to others that you’ve learned?

Michael Drake:
When I was leaving UC Irvine, six years ago, we were having a big commencement there. We normally had a commencement in the whole series of small ones on campus. We were having just one that last year. It was our 50^th anniversary and President Barack Obama was our commencement speaker, so we did it all in the local California Angels baseball stadium. So he and I were the two speakers, maybe two short student speeches, and then he and I gave longer talks. And he used a teleprompter, which I hadn’t used before and I was told, “Well, there’ll be the teleprompter and a podium with your speech,” and I said, "Fine." And I got there and the world media were there. There were 30 or 40 TV, you know, just cameras and a big thing, like is usually the case when the President’s speaking, only gave one collegiate commencement a year. So this was it for him.

And I got up and there was no podium, actually, just the teleprompter. I said, “Well, I’ve not really used a teleprompter much before. Always had a backup. Okay, that’s the way it is. There’s just this teleprompter.” And I'm giving my speech – it’s not a long speech. It’s eight-nine minutes. I'm about seven minutes into it or so, and it blinks and goes to blank, the teleprompter. Boom. And everybody’s, you know, looks, I'm talking. And then I go, “Okay,” but just to myself. And then we go a few seconds more though, and it blinks and it comes up and it’s his speech. It’s not my speech. It’s his speech. And I noticed that, you know. I said, “Oh, my goodness,” but I kept on talking. And then it blinked and went off and came back. And it was my speech again, you know, kind of speeding up to catch up to wherever I was, but for about 30 seconds I had no speech in front of me. It went to black and then it was the wrong speech, but no one – I didn’t say anything, no one knew. I just kept talking through whatever sentence I was supposed to finish. And I thought, “This will make an interesting story someday, so it’s kind of fun.” And I think that you just – as we stay kind of in the moment, kind of focused on what we’re doing – hopefully we’re prepared for what we’re doing – we can just take ourselves forward and things tend to work out.

One last tiny bit – I forget, I'm over-talking. There’s a line in the prayer about walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And I remember being in Jerusalem and looking, and there was an old cemetery as you’re looking toward the temple on the mountain. And there was a road on the bottom of the hill that that cemetery’s on. When the sun sets, you’re kind of in the shadow of death. You know, you’re in the shadow of this cemetery. There’s a long road that you’re kind of walking on. And a lot of times when you’re walking down the road you really don't see the end. And you just have to have the faith that you keep on walking and pretty soon you’ll get there.

Jeff Selingo:
President Drake, we’re live on LinkedIn today. You know, because it’s Ohio State we’re getting a lot of questions about Buckeyes and athletics from a lot of your fans around the world. Just wondering, you know, some of the fans are wondering, you know, what’s the outlook for athletics on college campuses this fall, given the cancellation of March Madness?

Michael Drake:
Let me tell you what our plan is going forward and how we’re looking at things. So let me say those – maybe I’ll answer that question. We are pleased and gratified at the interest in what we’re doing and the number of people who have expressed their faith that we’re going to be here for them next fall. We are planning a variety, doing scenario planning for a variety of different possibilities of how it’ll be in the fall. We don't know yet. Every week we are a little closer to knowing, but we don't know yet, and so we’re trying to be flexible for that. We believe that the world will recover, as it has from these in the past. We look forward to effective treatments and vaccines, but we know those things will take months. And so we’re trying to do the best to protect ourselves as we move forward step by step.

But we expect that we, that the university system, that higher education, which is so important to our world and our way of life, will emerge. We are gratified that, again, when I talk with my students, it’s what they’re really looking forward to. When we look at the students who have not been here yet and are looking to next year, they’re really looking forward to this. So we think that with energy and time and coming together, we’ll reimagine ourselves in the post-COVID world. 

Bridget Burns:
Yeah. And I also am empathetic that, you know, people are pressuring college presidents to answer questions like this when they know absolutely no more information than the rest of us, right? We’re all going through this, and so it’s – I find it very unusual because I'm seeing so much pressure in the press to, you know, “Are you starting the fall? Is this happening?” And it’s like they don't have any crystal balls either, right? Like they have to try and plan for multiple scenarios, which they’re trying to do while running an institution, while keeping their employees safe. I just have so much empathy. And I think, if anything, that’s what I would hope folks at home understand the complexity of these jobs and that they are really – right now they are leading through a very difficult time and I think we have tremendous examples of strong leadership to draw upon.

If you’re looking for great leadership, I am seeing it in higher education. And so thank you, President Drake, for being such a tremendous example of that through your career at Ohio State in particular, but also you’ve had one of the more impressive legacies, I think, in higher education leadership that we’ve seen, that’s transcended multiple institutions and different roles. We’re just really grateful for that leadership now and especially your willingness to stay on in the midst of this when you were – I don't know if you had a beach house or anything, but most people who are at this stage of the game would definitely –

Michael Drake:
Ready to get out. 

Bridget Burns:
And the fact that you are willing to sacrifice further is just a testament to your character. So we’re really grateful for that.

Michael Drake:
Very kind, Bridget. Always liked working with you and I know we’ll be doing many great things in the future. Jeff, good to see you.

Jeff Selingo:
Good to see you. Thank you, President Drake. 

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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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