Weekly Wisdom Episode 7: Transcript of Conversation With Ángel Cabrera, Georgia Institute of Technology President

Note: This interview, Episode 7 of the Weekly Wisdom Series, originally aired on June 1, 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.

Ángel Cabrera:
The situation we’re in right now, which we’re going through as a nation through this very, very tiring and painful process of digesting the killing of George Floyd and many other injustices before his. And you just say wow, what does that have to do with universities who are discussing earlier work? A lot. It highlights our mission, our values, our commitments to equity and access and I think setting up that and emphasizing and underlining that sense of direction is probably one of the most important things I should be looking at right now.

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 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 a 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. Thanks, Bridget. And today our guest is Ángel Cabrera who is the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in the great city of Atlanta, whereas I said I’m a visiting scholar, and previous to that, he started there at Georgia Tech last year, and previous to that, was the president of George Mason University right here in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. on Hill. It’s great to have you with us today.

Ángel Cabrera:
Thank you so much for having me. A pleasure.

Bridget Burns:
Welcome.

Jeff Selingo:
So, Ángel, we’ve been really focused since we started this series with presidents now what, about two months ago, Bridget, on obviously the impact of COVID-19 and pandemic on colleges and universities but I’d be remiss not to start where the news has been over the last couple of days since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week ago today, and obviously the protests all over the world in many cases now because of this, and obviously in Atlanta. I want to bring this down to the university level because obviously we don’t have students on campus now, and I would imagine that if we did, there would likely be some protests on our college and university campuses as well. Selective colleges and universities have come under a lot of fire in the last couple of decades but particularly over the last couple of years because we always have thought about higher education, particularly in the U.S. as an engine of social mobility. And we know from the research that Raj Chetty and others have done that most of our selective colleges and universities, that largely they are havens for the wealthiest Americans in this country and that they’re not necessarily the engine of mobility that we’ve always talked about.

I know that at Georgia Tech, as you’ve been thinking about your vision for what you want the institute to become, you’ve talked a lot about equity. Can you talk a little bit about how you see Georgia Tech and higher education in general becoming much more – and selective particularly, in your case – more of an engine of economic mobility in this country?

Ángel Cabrera:
Yeah, thank you for that question. I agree with the premise. We as universities have an absolute crucial mission to provide opportunity to be one of the biggest instruments we have of social mobility and opportunity, and we have both a lot to be proud of and a lot to point in terms of how we have delivered on that mission, but there’s a lot to be critical about and we have to admit that and to recognize that. And in this sort of very painful week and very painful weekend that we’re experiencing in cities across America, and Atlanta of course not excluded. I think we have to be very thoughtful. We have to all be thinking, again, of course we all have the right to protest and to demand change from people with the power, but we also have an opportunity really to think about what is it that each of us and each of our institutions, in our case, Georgia Tech, can do to really deliver on that promise of equal opportunity, of inclusion, or of a much more just world.

At Georgia Tech for example, this is the tension we’re dealing with. On one hand, as the Institute has established itself as one of the leading public universities in America. Some people are very, very proud of, and as we really attract more and more and more applicants with students from around the world and across the United States, when you actually look at our numbers, we don’t do as well as we should do in terms of – for example, the number of African Americans. We are in the middle of a city with a majority Black population, and our undergraduate African American numbers barely reach seven percent. So there is a lot that we need to be better at, and I think we’re right to hold our universities accountable for that and we’re part of a complex system, but I think it doesn’t help for us to say well, it’s someone else’s fault. Whether it’s the K-to-12 system or other aspects of our society. We really have a responsibility to be thinking about what is it that we can do and we must do to deliver on that mission of equal opportunity.

Bridget Burns:
Great. That’s super helpful. And I am curious because this is not only a really difficult time in this country's history, it being overlaid over the pandemic, there’s a lot going on, and I’m curious because it seems like leadership matters, like I said, more than ever, and this is not your first time at the presidency. You have experience with this. So I’m wondering kind of as a leader, how do you look at a challenging situation, whether it be COVID, whether it be what’s going on with race and equity in this country, just in general as a president, do you have a leadership framework, or a way that you kind of think about the responsibility of leadership or how you lead, especially in a difficult time? Particularly if there’s anything from your past experience as a president at George Mason that might be helpful?

Ángel Cabrera:
Yeah. Before I arrived to Georgia Tech, I have been running academic institutions for 15 years as a chief executive, and honestly, that experience informs how I approach situations like these. I have colleagues who just started sort of their first top leadership position in academia, and I spend time on the phone with them, and I feel for them because it does take time to sort of build up your own conception of leadership and kind of find yourself in a complex organizational setting like universities are. I still have a lot to learn, especially because I’m brand new at Georgia Tech. I just arrived last September but definitely I’m fortunate that I bring some years behind.

And one of the most important things I probably have learned is that, in a way the most important role that we have when we’re running any kind of organization, big or small, private, academic or not, even though sometimes – or maybe initially we think that we’re supposed to have the right answers and that’s why we have the job and that’s what we get paid for. But that’s normally not the most important contribution that we are asked to make. And in fact, institutions with an enormous level of uncertainty like now, it is far more important to set up the sense of direction and a sense of grounding on the use of values of an institution. They have the sense of confidence, create a sense of really empowerment, people making decisions and create a sense of shared mission and purpose. A shared sense of where we’re going and what it is that we’re trying to accomplish.

So in a way, we may be more sort of – we’re teachers and military commanders in a way, even though in times of urgency we do have to make decisions and hopefully we’ll make informed and wise decisions but it’s getting grounded on those values. I mean, for example in the situation we’re in right now, which we’re going through as a nation, through this very, very tiring and painful process of digesting the killing of George Floyd and the many other injustices before his, and you say, "Why, what does that have to do with universities who are discussing early work?" A lot. It highlights our mission, our values, our commitments to equity and access and I think setting up that and emphasizing and underlining that sense of direction is probably one of the most important things I should be looking at right now.

Jeff Selingo:
So Ángel, we mentioned earlier that you arrived at Georgia Tech from George Mason less than a year ago, right, so you’re in your first year. I know that you’ve been really focused on your vision and strategy for Georgia Tech. So how does kind of the pandemic that we’re living through, which has really kind of intensified a focus on higher ed – you know, are students coming back this fall, and the whole idea of remote and online education. So many things have been brought up in higher ed because of this pandemic. How does that influence your idea of a strategic plan, does it change it? For example, and more so as you think about higher education nationally and internationally, there’s all these projections now, and Scott Galloway from N.Y.U. is getting a lot of press right now for his talk about what’s going to happen to higher ed. Do you think this is going to be a big change for higher ed going forward? So let’s focus first on Georgia Tech, what is it going to do for your own strategic plan, and then more broadly, because you really are a student of higher education, what impact do you think it will have on the sector as a whole?

Ángel Cabrera:
So in that sequence, we did start after Bud Peterson, my predecessor, he had a successful run, a 10-year run under one strategic plan. So with my arrival, it was a natural point in time for us to engage in another cycle of strategic thinking and planning. And the first week, we split it in two phases. One was let’s agree on the vision. Let’s even rewrite our mission statement, a vision of the future we want to build, a set of values, a set of themes we want to work on. And then the second phase is knowledge. Let’s translate that into an actionable plan with metrics, with objectives. We are in the middle of that second phase. The first phase we just concluded. We concluded right as the COVID-19 pandemic got started. We used a very inclusive approach for that first phase. We used a series of appreciative inquiry sessions. I challenged us to have hundreds of people participating in these sessions, and instead of hundreds, we ended up having actually thousands of people participate in these sessions.

So we crafted our vision and mission of values and that sort of direction and then COVID hit. Immediately, what it did was delay our second phase because we had to get organized and deal with the emergency of adapting to the situation. But what it also did is it offered a natural – painful but natural – test of whether our vision was going in the right direction. It forced us to ask, OK, given this new global and incredibly complex challenge, does our vision make sense? I think we passed that test well. Our mission and our new vision is one of increasing innovation and has a lot of impact – of innovation that brings all voices, all profiles to the table, and impact innovation that really contributes to improving the human condition. That makes a difference in the world we live in. And as COVID was hitting us, we saw incredible examples of our faculty and graduate students using their research to make a difference in the fight against the pandemic, and showing what real impact was about in real time. Whether it was projecting and modeling the trends of the pandemic. Whether it was designing respirators or personal protective devices or participating in the development of assessments, testing vaccines and antiviral treatments and the like. We saw impact in real time, so in a way, this has helped us even sharpen the focus and highlight some of the elements of that vision. And so there’s been a good impact, even though I don’t wish this upon anybody to have to have a dramatic situation like this, to have that kind of testing of your planning process.

Overall, to the second part of your question, I have no doubt that this is a defining moment for all aspects of our society, not just higher education but very specifically higher education. For example, we’ve run this massive national experiment on telework where four or five months ago, A, most people had never experienced telework or they had sort of skeptical ideas about does it work or does it not and right now, many of us have experienced it and now have a first-hand understanding of telework and I’m sure that even as things improve on the public health front, that we may be thinking about the structure of work in different terms. And, B, learning, the same thing. Before the pandemic hit, less than half of faculty members across the country had experience with online remote type of teaching. Not all of our students really were comfortable or had that experience.

Right now, everybody has. So even if we develop the antiviral, the vaccines, and we go back to a pre-COVID sort of situation, I’m pretty sure we’re going to be thinking about teaching in a very different way. Everybody, students have the experience, the faculty have the experience, we’ve seen what technology can do to improve the learning process. So I have absolutely no doubt. That might mean also that people who before COVID may not have considered an online program and say I want to get my masters. As you know, we have this incredibly successful masters of – online master’s in computer science which has about 10,000 students right now. We’d still have people who said, no, that’s not for me. I don’t believe in remote learning or distance learning. That is going to change. I think patterns of demand of different types of programs and the application of learning technologies to the learning process, to the structure of work. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the COVID experience is going to change us in many ways as a society and it’s going to change us as institutions of higher education.

Bridget Burns:
President Carbrera, we did get a question that came in from LinkedIn that seems to perfectly dovetail with what you’re talking about which is: What strategies for course delivery, in person, synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid, are you thinking about for fall term? Obviously, I personally think this is asking for a lot of crystal ball work for university presidents, but in general, do you have any broad picture there or is it just as much taking it as it comes?

Ángel Cabrera:
Yes, no, no, I think it’s a great question. And once again, it illustrates the kinds of things that are now possible and viable that a few months ago we would say gosh, that’s, I’m – the discussion around flipping the classroom. I’m not a fan of the term but I am a fan of the concept of using lecture halls for activities that really create value through interaction, right, solving problems, working in groups, entering into dialogue and then using technology for things where technologies are superior, right. Watching a lecture that you can pause and rewind and things like that. Many things, right. That discussion now becomes very feasible. Now, in the fall, we’re modeling different scenarios and sort of building up archetypes of classes that our faculty can say O.K., that matches my needs and the needs of my class. So there’s not going to be a one for all, this is going to the model that we’re going to use but there will be different types and it could well be that a faculty member, for example, tapes her lectures and make them available before the start of the week and then uses class time, maybe even with smaller groups to maintain appropriate physical distance for learning strategies that make sense in the class. Right. So that’s an innovation that may make sense this fall to deal with COVID, but that’s an innovation I suspect will survive after COVID because it’s going to have a lot of power. So all of those – I think hybrid learning is going to be my prediction, is going to be a norm. Not just at Georgia Tech but across higher education, and I think those hybrid forms of learning are going to provide an incredible ground for further experimentation.

Jeff Selingo:
So Ángel, we mentioned earlier again that you made this transition last year. I can’t even imagine what it would’ve been like if you were making the transition this year, right, but we have a number of presidents who are new, coming in in a couple of weeks at some campuses as of July 1^st. We have a number of other campuses where they have left and now you have an interim president and, in some cases, an interim provost. What advice would you give to those navigating either as a brand new president – so say we went back a year and this was happening last summer for you or if you were an interim president just kind of trying to figure out what to do for this fall and beyond. Any advice you have for those trying to deal with those issues?

Ángel Cabrera:
First, honestly, I feel for them because I don’t think this is an ideal way to start it. It is what it is. But it is hard. Starting in a leadership position is always difficult, and this makes it even harder. And I know several of them personally. My former provost at George Mason is starting right now at Baruch College, our former vice president of innovation is starting as chancellor at U.C. Denver. Of course, my successor at George Mason, Greg Washington, who is coming in from Irvine and is going to start also in the next few days. So I know many personal cases of folks whose beginnings are coinciding with this situation.

I have no doubt that they will really deal with the challenge in a good way, but it is hard because one of the advantages that I had coming in September is that Georgia Tech was doing very well. There were lots of things that needed to be improved and questioned, but overall, the school was doing very, very well. So I had the enormous luxury of being able to create this very inclusive process to really extract the collective dreams and aspirations of the community. So I guess if I can venture any useful advice, it would be that even though you may not have as much of a luxury as I did and even though you will have to jump in the situation where you’re going to have emergency task forces and emergency decisions and you’re going to have to turn on a dime in the next few weeks, that somehow you find the space to have that sort of deeper dive into the higher goals of the institution, that connectivity, that broad set of activities so you really understand the spirit, the heart, the values to define the sense of purpose of the university, that you don’t just park all of that because of emergency. That part is going to be essential; it’s going to be defining for your presidency; it’s going to be the most important thing that you’re going to be able to do for your university.

Bridget Burns:
That’s super helpful. I have one of my institutions, U.T. Austin has both an interim president and provost. And in the midst of pandemic, in the midst of everything going on. So I do think that this topic in particular, your expertise is very much appreciated. We’ll wrap with one last question which I am curious. As a leader, it’s important to share a compelling and hopeful vision to keep folks kind of moving in a direction together. I’m curious about what right now, how are you looking at the situation with hope and optimism? What is inspiring to you in this moment that is keeping you kind of propelling towards that compelling vision?

Ángel Cabrera:
Thank you for asking that. So presidents are people. Believe it or not, and we also get hit by the uncertainty and we have our ups and downs and there’s been plenty of that in the past three months and even more recently this very week. And what really keeps me going and gives me a sense of optimism and confidence about the future is to look at really the endless examples of leadership, of ingenuity, of commitment by our students and by our faculty. In the early days of the pandemic, we'd see our faculty members go back to their labs, to remake their spaces with students, designing products, and everybody asking themselves, "How does my expertise matter in this moment? What is it that I can offer?" One of my colleagues, by the way, who was featured in the New York Times, he’s an expert in frugal technology and frugal innovation. The New York Times caught him at the hospital because his wife was in labor and they were asking him how do you manage to be doing all this innovation while you’re doing this, you’re having this situation at home? One day my son will grow up and will ask me, “What were you doing when COVID-19 hit?” And he says I want him to be proud and boy, I think that kid is going to be very proud. And the rest of us.

Every time – we have seen so many examples. When we had to go online and remote, everybody did what they had to do. The students did what they had to do. The faculty did what they had to do. These situations, I know they created a lot of angst and pain and ambiguity and uncertainty, but they also bring out the best in people, and there’s been so much of that to go around and so many constant reminders of why the mission of our institutions of higher education matters so much that I think we’ve had plenty of ammunition to keep us all going – and going strong.

Bridget Burns:
I completely agree. I feel like right now the resilience of our students is on full display. The kindness and empathy of our faculty, staff and administrators, and just their selflessness of helping each other navigate and then from these interviews, my observation is that I’ve worked with university presidents for the past 20 years, I don’t think they’ve ever been better. I think they’re more focused and passionate and clear right now because of the challenge in front of them. I’m seeing a level of clarity and vision communicated that I think people really appreciate. So thank you so much for sharing with us today and for you at home, thank you for the fantastic comments that we saw that were in either LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube or Periscope.

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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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