Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on October 21, 2024 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The transcript of this podcast episode is intended to serve as a guide to the entire conversation, and we encourage you to listen to this podcast episode. You can also access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together, a podcast produced by the University Innovation Alliance. This is a podcast for busy people in higher education who are looking for the best ideas, inspiration, and leaders that will help you improve student success. I'm your host, Bridget Burns. Each week I partner with a journalist to have a conversation with a sitting college president, chancellor, system leader, or someone in the broader ecosystem who's really an inspiring leader. And the goal is to have a conversation to distill their perspective and their insights gathered from their leadership journey. Our hope is that this is inspiring and gives you something to look forward to each week.
This episode, my co-host is Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and CEO, Doug Lederman. Each week we team up to have a conversation with a sitting college president or chancellor who we think you should be learning from in the field who has wisdom to share, and so it's always shared on a Monday and it's always uplifting and positive. That's why we call it Start the Week With Wisdom.
Doug Lederman:
And the show this week as always is brought to you by Mainstay, the student engagement and retention platform. Mainstay is distinctive from a lot of other companies because it proves the efficacy of its work through peer-reviewed research, it's got some great case studies involving Georgia State, where it helped reduce summer melt by more than 20%. And another example at Georgia State involving retaining 1,200 more students than otherwise expected. Check out that research and find out more at mainstay.com.
Bridget Burns:
And this show is also later broadcast on the Innovating Together Podcast for UIA, and that is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. We are excited to bring out our guest from the main stage.
Doug Lederman:
Today's guest is the President of the University at Buffalo, Satish Tripathi. He's been at UB, he was the provost at UB before that. Before that, he was dean of engineering at University of California Riverside. Dr. Tripathi, great to have you here. Thanks for being here.
Satish Tripathi:
Thank you, Doug. And thank you, Bridget. Good to be here.
Bridget Burns:
We wanted to first kick off by asking you just about you as a leader and what has most inspired you, whether it was an experience or if there's a person. But in general, people are always curious about how you developed your approach to leadership and your leadership style or what has most informed that, and so we wanted to ask you that question.
Satish Tripathi:
Really, not one thing but a lot of things. It's really the teachers I had, the experiences I had. Just to back up a little bit, I grew up in a small village in India and I always wanted to be a high school math teacher. That was my goal because the fourth-generation teacher in the family, there's no other business I wanted to do except being a teacher. Growing up, I wanted to be a high school teacher, went to college, and realized that I could really teach in a college somewhere and came to Canada and did my Ph.D. there. And I think the most influential person early on in my career was really my advisor, Ken Savchuk, who was not a university president, he was not a dean, but really he taught me how to give responsibilities to others and how to trust them and how to encourage them. And that was really one of the things that I learned early on.
And I thought this is good for me as I become a university professor to work with my postdocs and the graduate students, and that's all I was looking at. Really, there was no training. I never wanted to be a university president or a dean or a department chair. But really, this evolved as I went through my academic career. Learning really was everyday learning, listening to people, looking at people, but no formal education, actually, to be a leader. And that's how I have evolved. Became chair at a very early age, I was 37, I became a chair of a department with 50 faculty, 250 graduate students, a large number of undergraduates, and I had a great time. I actually not only had a great time as a chair, but at the same time I had the best research portfolio during the time I was chair. I enjoyed it, and that encouraged me to think about being responsible for organizations.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. That is unusual to have super productive and also have the responsibility of leading folks, because many people think the chair is the hardest job at the institution, or at least it's just one of the more difficult ones. It's a hard one to cut your teeth on.
Satish Tripathi:
Definitely, chair is a hard job, but really it's the best job one can have because you are really dealing with your peers, you know them, you work with them every day, and you are really impacting the students right at the ground. In my opinion, that's one of the best jobs. And when I really talk to the faculty members, I tell them, "If you get a chance, be a chair of the department. But don't think about that as something that implies that you don't need to do research or teaching at that time, continue to do that."
Bridget Burns:
That's great.
Doug Lederman:
I'm curious... That's really interesting, your approach is a little different from some others that we've heard. And so, I'm curious how you thought about that drive down the administrative road, did you just get sort of drawn along?
Satish Tripathi:
That – I think it happened. I was probably the youngest professor, and they asked me to be the chair, and I had a great time, and then I stepped down actually as a chair after seven years and went back to the faculty. And this is really where I think my career actually was back to being a faculty. I had good programs, research grants, and so on, and opportunity came, and that's something that changed actually at that time. I went to UC Riverside to give a talk in the computer science department. They had started a new school of engineering; it wasn't going anywhere. And they arranged a dinner with the chancellor there, Chancellor Ray Orbach, who later became Undersecretary for Department of Energy and Director of Science in DOE. And went back, went to University of Texas Austin, Director and so on. And I had dinner with him, and he asked me, "What will it take to really establish a new school of engineering?"
And I said, “I really have no clue. Really,” I told him. And we started talking, and I told him that you need 15 new faculty lines, you need a building, you need this and that. I thought I'll get rid of him asking these things, and I had not thought about being in administration at that time. But he was so genuine and so good as a chancellor, he still had an NSF grant, and he was teaching freshman physics. And I saw him, and then he came back in a week. He said, "I've got the resources." And that actually gave me an inflection point whether I want to create something. I could still do my research because Chancellor Orbach said, "I do my research. You can do your research with a team." To some extent. But I can also really create something which probably I will never get a chance to create something.
That's the risk I took. It's really not something that I wanted to, but it – My older son was already on the West Coast in college, the second was finishing. It was a risk but not a risk, it was a calculated risk. I could always be a professor anyway. This gave me a chance to create something really, really new, and a school of engineering, develop the department, still have the programs, and I thought, “This is great.” If I had thought a lot more, maybe I would not have gone, but this was really a chance to get somewhere to take that deep dive into creating something. And that was the best decision for me, because I had a great time working there. And something I learned during that time also before that: you don't look for your next job. You have to do the job you're doing the best you can, and opportunities come. That has been my principle, actually.
Ray Magliozzi:
Hi, I'm Ray Magliozzi, co-host of NPR's Car Talk. If you're working to solve the biggest challenges in higher education, you've come to the right podcast. And if you're looking for a student retention platform proven to get results, check out mainstay.com. I may be biased because the CEO of Mainstay just happens to be my son. Instead of taking my word for it, you can trust the research they've done with Georgia State, Brown, and Yale as proof that Mainstay improves enrollment, retention, and well-being. Visit mainstay.com/research to learn more.
Bridget Burns:
That is really great advice. And I also feel like there's a couple pieces in there, one is be careful what you wish for. If someone gives you a chance to throw some ideas at the wall that are about what you might need or how someone might do something, they're going to be rare moments, but you better have actually thought through what you really need. And this idea of not looking for your next job, that is great because people do. I think they are going to see –
Satish Tripathi:
Some people might take this in a different way. I think you've got to really think about – be ambitious about what you might want to do but not be bothered by everyday “this is what I want to be.” You're doing an administrative job, you want to get to the next level, but if you only think about what your next job is going to be, I think it's going to impact how you're doing your current job.
Bridget Burns:
Yeah, that's great. It's a huge distraction. And you're not going to do as well, and then you also won't be drawing the opportunities your way because you're not really leaving it out on the field. I feel like you've shared that this is a little surprising that you're where you are, that this was not where you expected.
Satish Tripathi:
I should have been a high school principal by now or retired, actually.
Bridget Burns:
[inaudible 00:10:27]
Satish Tripathi:
And that's family business. But I still told my father that I'm teaching, so he was fine. But life has been a lot of surprises. Came to do Ph.D. and never thought that I'll stay here. I told my mother that I'll be back in three years, and then I justified to her that I can come and visit her in the same time it'll take from Bangalore to my village to come. That's the –
Bridget Burns:
That probably makes for some of the best presidents, though, if you think about it, is the ones who are not aspiring or not trying to covet the title. And I find it interesting because you specifically, Satish, are one of the leaders. You're the only one that I hear other college presidents who used to work for you speak with such enthusiasm and a sense of beloved. You have a very big fan club that are successful elsewhere that have left Buffalo because they worked with you at some point in time, and that is not always the case. Oftentimes, folks butt heads at some point with their boss. And when they leave, they don't have nearly as much affinity. Maybe it's because you weren't aspiring to this role, and you have this humble leadership style that folks who have worked for you are still big fans. I will say you have enthusiastic fans elsewhere.
Satish Tripathi:
Bridget, I won't really connect those things together that you connected, the not having ambition. I did have ambition. But the style and so on, I think I'm really lucky. I had some great people to work with, and they're doing very well. I haven't paid them anything to say what they're saying but I really appreciate and celebrate their success.
Doug Lederman:
There's a couple of questions we tend to ask about what you're most proud of as a leader first, and then what has been maybe an aspect of your leadership career that has been the hardest or what you learned from it. Those are two different things, probably, although maybe they could be the same, I suppose. But what are you proudest of, and then what was the hardest experience, and what did you learn from it?
Satish Tripathi:
A few things. The main thing for me, actually, is to be able to hire the best people that I can, that's really I'm proud of, whether they stay here or go somewhere, but people that I get here. Both in terms of the leadership and the faculty, how can I – Because presidents and provosts come and go, as you know. It's the faculty who remain, really, as the invariant for a long time. And to build an institution, make it better, is the faculty that you hire that's going to matter, actually. And I'm really proud of the things that we have been able to do. I've been here 20 years now, believe it. I came 2004, just celebrated my 20th year finishing. And so really, it's the faculty that we have been able to attract. And the second part really is the success of our students which really, if you look at the two-year graduation, four-year graduation, six-year graduation, how much improvement we have made on the campus, that has been really a major part of it, because those are the two elements that university is really what is about.
And so, I'm really proud of the improvements and the progress that we have made in both of those directions, both the student and faculty. And as a state university, one-third of our students are Pell-eligible students. And we have been trying to, and in some cases we were actually almost closed the gap. It’s gone bad a little bit after pandemic, but we were right there closing the gap. Those are some of the things we've been proud of.
In addition, actually, which is being in Buffalo, you have to think about the economic renaissance. It's a city that actually was one of the richest cities 100 years ago. It's one of the poorest. And we are the economic engine in the city. If I was in Washington DC, there are a lot of things that can do the economic engine part. Here, actually, we are the one. And we are proud, actually, we are proud of the improvement in the economic situation and the renaissance that is going on in Buffalo, how much we are part of it. Really, those are the things that I'm proud of.
It's not me who has done it, it's the institution, and how we are proud of what we have done as an institution. In Western New York, in terms of economic development, but also our faculty that we have attracted and the students’ performance and their academic success that has gone on, those have been really, I would say, the success that we have been able to. A lot of other smaller things we can talk about, our research productivity has gone up, our research funding has gone up. We are getting the Empire AI $400 million investment by the state consortium. All those things are good, but the core points are those three points that has gone on.
One of the things I would say is the typical time have been during the COVID, how do you really keep the momentum going? How do you really provide the educational experience for the students in this kind of environment when there was so much uncertainty? Not only uncertainty, but a lot of guidelines from different sources. We are a state university, those things coming from all over the place, how do we make sure that our students, faculty, and staff are safe or continue to do research and they're successful? That has been really tough. And that was tough, but I think we did very well in terms of –
But again, really, we had our medical school and public health, and we have our own experts who are nationally recognized experts. We have a great team with the provost taking the charge. And so, we did really well in terms of how much one could do and how we could provide that. Look at other leaders and learn from there, both positive and negative. It's easy to do the hindsight, but as somebody said, we can be prepared for everything as much we can, but when the first punch comes, we have to think on the fly. But I think we can learn from others, and we try to always do that.
Bridget Burns:
Yeah, that's great. And it is very relatable that COVID is and was one of the hardest parts of leading in the academy at all. I did want to note that part of your accomplishment of improving graduation rates and just the performance at Buffalo has been very significant, and one of the contributing factors to the fact that you have been – you're now secretly but now no longer part of the UIA, which many people don't know because it hasn't been released broadly. But it was specifically because of this combination of other leaders having such respect and reverence for you as a leader, but also what you have accomplished there. It's nice when your peers see that the effort that you've been putting out is significant, and that clearly demonstrates that we can learn something from you and wanting to be part of something together. Just wanted to make that little plug.
The next thing we wanted to do is actually just ask you about the things that have been most helpful for you. Other people have given you probably lots of advice, and there are some good advice and some bad advice, but I'm curious if there is a piece of advice that for you has been a touchstone for you to go back to throughout your leadership experience, and we're just wondering what that was and who it came from.
Satish Tripathi:
It's hard really, Bridget, to talk about one advice that changes you. It's as I said, you observe people and you develop your own style, which is really your own authentic style as opposed to somebody telling you what to do. I really feel that as a leader, you've got to be humble and you've got to be strong. People think those two are contradictory, but they're not actually. You got to be humble, you got to be strong. And you have to have a strong team around you who can challenge you. It's not that they just listen to you. And I can tell you that I have a very strong team, always had, and they always challenge me. You always have to listen, that's something that you always learn. There's no time when you can say I've learned everything that I need to know.
And you think about the integrity, the trust, the listening part, but at the same time, you have to give your team room for them to make their own decisions. For a large institution – and you can ask people who work with me. I'm not a micromanager. I'm not really onto their face all the time, they make the decisions. We talk about it either before or after, depending on when they want to talk about it, and I think that has served me really well. People have responsibility, they understand that the principles that we have and that's all we need, the rest of it's really, they're all smart, they can make their decisions. And that's how actually I work with the people that I have here.
But really, it's not one person. I already talked about Ray Orbach, a chancellor at Riverside, who probably had the most influence, but not necessarily that I run the same way that he used to run his cabinet and so on. It's totally different. I've observed him to do things. He grew up the university from when I went there, 9,000 in seven years. When I left, it was 18,000 and now it's close to 30,000. That's really – You observe people. But I think it's the institution first is important, not how it's going to impact you. And I made decisions in my time both as provost and as president that have not been good for me personally but good for the institution, and I'm proud of those.
Bridget Burns:
That's great.
Doug Lederman:
Is there advice that you most consistently give to the colleagues who come to you asking about how to emulate the success that you've had in your career?
Satish Tripathi:
Doug, a few things I talk about, not necessarily as a set of points, but in general, I tell them that always learn. Things that we have learned have been in a contextual framework, and contexts change. Always keep learning. Always be prepared. That means do your homework, know your numbers. Before you say something, you should be prepared. And pay attention to what's going on around you and the impact that will have, what's going on around the country, around the world on higher education. They're not totally disconnected. An institution exists in a context, so be careful, and we always learn from there.
It's a tough work. Leadership is not easy, so be prepared to do hard work. People are going to depend on you, and you can't really just think about you as the leader and let other people do the work. Always, the decisions you make will have much deeper implication than you think. Think about the decisions, the tough decisions that you're going to make. But one of the things always I tell them: never compromise the integrity. Once people know that you have that, they're going to respect you no matter what decision you make. And I think those are some of the things not necessarily in an organized fashion as a book, but based on the experience that I had.
Bridget Burns:
Those are great, those are solid pieces of advice. Is there any one piece that either was really formative for you or you just have frequently recommended to others?
Satish Tripathi:
Definitely. We read a lot of books not necessarily just on leadership. I would say some of the best books are really history books. One that I would recommend people to read is Team of Rivals, you probably have heard about it, this is by Doris Goodwin. It's a book that really talks about how you get your rivals to work with you, how you get consensus. That's so important, actually. And so, I think it's not necessarily a leadership book, but what we learned from others, that's critical and that's where the history comes in the picture, actually. Some of these books would be very useful.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. Well, this has been super informative, and I feel like you have some deep wisdom to provide. And it's also just really helpful to get a little context about your backstory and your relationship with the presidency and what you've learned along the way. Thank you so much for being so generous with us today. And Doug, as always, thanks for being such a great co-host. And for those of you at home, we hope this has been as informative for you as it has been for us. And then we'll see you next week.
Satish Tripathi:
Thank you so much, Bridget. And Doug, thank you and good to see you again. Thank you.
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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