Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on February 26, 2024 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on 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.
Doug Lederman:
We're joined this week by president of BridgeValley Community and Technical College in West Virginia, Casey Sacks. Welcome. Before playing that role, President Sacks was head of deputy assistant secretary for community colleges at the U.S .Department of Education where she led the work around workforce development, career and technical education, adult education, and prison education. Welcome, Dr. Sacks. Great to have you here.
Casey Sacks:
Hi. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you both today.
Bridget Burns:
Well, we're excited to get to know more about you. I mean, I think it's such an interesting perspective you probably bring to the work in terms of having served at the federal level and then coming back grounded to the institution to actually work directly with students, with faculty, with staff. I would just kick off by first – Is there anything about that experience serving in the federal government that, for you, has influenced how you think about the presidency or how you operate as a president? I'm just super curious about that.
Casey Sacks:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think serving at ED really did give me some different perspectives than some of my colleagues have when they have negotiated rulemaking. I understand what I'm watching for, what I'm looking for. I understand federal grants a lot better than a lot of my colleagues seem to. I think working at ED really gave me some insight about how policy's actually made, and one of the things that I keep seeing over and over again is that higher ed doesn't advocate for itself the same way lots of other sectors do.
I'm on a board for the Homebuilders, and the Homebuilders and construction industry lobby and advocate and have PACs and do things really differently than we do in higher education. So, coming from a state and then going to work at the federal government and then coming back to a state, I do have some, I think, unique perspectives now.
Doug Lederman:
Oh, go ahead.
Bridget Burns:
No, it's just like that is a really good observation. Somebody should make a big deal about that, or should do, and it's always someone else.
Doug Lederman:
I'm curious how you think about. – I mean, again, you serve statewide also, and I'm just curious how you think about the role of an individual institution in that is – I mean, I think one of the challenges in this industry is the struggle to get systemic movement because of how individually most institutions operate. Sometimes they are parts of a state system of some kind, but most leaders of institutions are advocates for that institution. And I guess I'm just curious how you think about both the strengths and the weaknesses of that, or the problems that that creates for the whole and also the advantages, and just how that shapes your leadership of a specific institution.
Casey Sacks:
It's a terrific question. So, it depends on what the issue is or what's going on. I can think of a couple of grants that West Virginia has been successful doing because we took a statewide consortium approach. One of the things that I learned at the federal level is that when states compete within themselves, everyone loses the award. But if you're able to come together and say, "This is a community college project," and half of the community colleges in the state are all going to do one application, you're a lot more likely to find success.
And so when I came back, I wrote a Strengthening Community Colleges project in collaboration with some colleagues up in Parkersburg, and we submitted it under Parkersburg, not under BridgeValley, because you can see the points, you can see how the Feds are going to evaluate it, and we knew we'd earned three extra points if we submitted as Parkersburg instead of BridgeValley. And that got us the grant. It made all the difference. And so, sometimes it's that collaborative approach and figuring out that's going to be more successful and so we've got to go that direction.
And sometimes, it's having the flexibility to be a single institution and getting to do something innovative, because maybe your colleagues are afraid or they don't feel like it's the right idea or the right time for their institutions. And that can be okay, too. We started a charter school in the last year, and that happened because that was the reality for our environment in West Virginia, and that gave more students opportunities to do dual enrollment and college enrollment and early college. That's what we needed to be able to structure it in West Virginia. And my colleagues are really interested in what I'm doing, but watching me like, “Great, you go out there on a limb and try this new thing, and we'll see if we decide we're going to replicate it in the future.”
Bridget Burns:
I think that's super interesting that, one, it's the right perspective, but that skill of being able to filter out like, hey, listen, I'm going to sidebar the needs of just all of these constituents in my ear as the only audience, and I'm going to think about the bigger picture. I do think that you might uniquely come because of the vantage point you've had of seeing the effect. You've seen what ineffective advocacy of institutions falling all over each other, only thinking about their institution, you've seen how bad that is. So, I wish that more campuses had that ability. It's just so challenging, especially for newer presidents coming in because they're like, "I got to keep my board happy. I got to keep my students happy, my faculty, my staff, the constituents, the policymakers," da, da, da, da. I think it brings this insular vision of being obsessed with the boundaries of your own institution and this inability to shift altitude, to zoom up for the purpose of the outcome.
Casey Sacks:
And I think in that space, everyone's never going to be happy. It's doing the right thing and figuring out what's going to be best for your institution. And when that aligns with what's also probably best for your state or best for other institutions, that's when you should do it together and when what's best for your institution.
So, when I came back to West Virginia, I recognized that we needed some serious facilities upgrades in nursing. And so, I went to our governor and said, "We need $9 million for a nursing project." And what I got told was, "How about I give you three?" We got $3 million that none of the other colleges got. And so that was a huge advantage for my institution. Would I have loved to be able to have said, "There's nine of us and we all need $9 million?" For sure. But what I had the opportunity to do was to advocate for my own institution that day, and I think we ended up with a really good result.
Ray Magliozzi:
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Bridget Burns:
So, I'm going to shift to you as a leader just broadly. I am always so curious about the models for leadership that people see before they become a leader. What for you has informed your leadership style? Because some of us, it's because we have seen a great leader, and some of us because we have not, and it's the absence of it that we're trying to step into. So, I'm just curious about your approach to leadership and what has most informed that.
Casey Sacks:
So I think a really early formative experience for me was around horses. My family did not have horses. They don't even like horses. But when I was eight, I was in the car with my mom, and we were listening to public radio and there was a story about a group for kids that was a drill team on horseback. And I heard this story and I heard about these other kids that got to do it, and I dug in my mom's purse and wrote the phone number down on my arm and called when I got home and signed myself up for it. And then told my parents, "On next Wednesday, you're going to take me to this thing so I can sign up for this horseback riding group."
And it was something that I did from the time that I was eight until the time I was 18, and I still to this day ride horses. They're incredible because, while horses can't talk, it is absolutely a partnership. And so that's something you learn really early on in figuring out, how do I lead with this person, horse who I'm now partnered with? But the drill team part meant that I was with a lot of other kids, and we were riding at speed, running around arenas, trying not to run into each other, and it meant that safety was an immediate issue, that listening to each other was an immediate issue. And that was formative for me.
Certainly, you asked about good examples and bad examples. I think both of those have been incredibly important, but the bad examples are often the ones that you hold in your mind and you think, "I don't want to be that person, and so how do I make sure I avoid it?" And then some of the good ones are people who I've hooked into as mentors for my whole life. They're people I can think of who – they have particular skill sets or strengths, and it's great to be able to call them or text them or say, "I need this particular thing, and can we talk about this because I'm struggling as a leader right now?"
Doug Lederman:
There's probably a joke in there about the advantages of having a partner who doesn't talk, but I won't make it. Early on, youngish, you had a lot of diversity in your career. Is there anything that has surprised you the most about the path you've taken and how you've gotten where you are?
Casey Sacks:
I mean, the fact that I work at a community college is probably on that list for me, Doug. I thought I was going to work at a four-year institution for my career. And when I got out of school, it was 2008. I finished my PhD and it was 2008. And so, no one was really hiring, and my mom was sick, and I needed to be in Colorado. And so, there was really no one hiring in Colorado. I emailed the local community college president and said, "I'll work for free. Give me something meaningful to do." And that turned into my career. That is certainly up on my list of surprising things. Getting called to work at the Department of Education was a complete surprise. A former mentor called and said, "I need someone who is a community college person. Can you come be my expert?" So that also maybe ranks high on my list of surprising things.
Bridget Burns:
You've had a chance to do so much, and there's a breadth and depth to it, but I'm just curious about if there's one particular experience or moment that for you is like the – if you had to pick one thing you're proudest of that as a leader is your touchstone, I'm curious what that is.
Casey Sacks:
Gosh, I'm really proud of my work at the Department of Education. The Perkins reauthorization was a big deal. It touched every state in the nation. I'm really proud of the way we leveraged CARES funds when I was there. So, when the coronavirus hit and we got CARES funds, Secretary DeVos was likely to spend all of the discretionary funding on charter schools because that's so much of the focus of her work. And I was able to go in and advocate for workforce development and workforce programming, and we ended up spending half of the discretionary dollars on workforce programming. And it's because I was able to be in the room and say how important this was. I'm really proud of that work.
And then certainly as a president, I'm just incredibly proud of my campus and this community. Being brave enough to open a charter school and to figure out how to get more high school students early college experiences has been tremendous, and it's been so much fun to see students and parents get access to programming that you see in all kind – I mean, North Carolina has completely scaled early college. We're not creating something that's novel here, but it's novel in West Virginia. And so, it's really tremendous that this has been a community that's trusted me enough to come along and say, "Yes, this is the right thing to do for our students."
Doug Lederman:
There's sometimes the flip side of what you just talked about, but is there an experience that's been very difficult or challenging or frustrating that you've had to navigate as a leader, but that still helped you?
Casey Sacks:
I think being a college president is one of those jobs that you can go through leadership development and training, and there's certain core aspects, enrollment, faculty development, working with your community are things that people prepare you for and talk about. No one prepared me for the fact that I was going to inherit 300,000 square feet that were vacant, and I was going to have to become a quick expert about construction and trying to get rid of vacant buildings.
We toured one of my buildings early on when I got here and thought that there might be a meth lab in one of the vacant spaces, and so had to bring in the drug dogs and the bomb squad to make sure that it wasn't true. And that day I felt like I was probably the only president in the country who could definitively say that I did not have a meth lab on campus. Certainly no one told me to prepare for that. And when I talked to my colleagues who have been at this a while, they say similar things that it's those no one could have told me that this was going to happen kinds of things that you're like, “Whoa, I sure learned a lot.”
Bridget Burns:
It is so interesting that even if you get a PhD in higher ed or otherwise, you don't learn about building space allocation or really navigating athletics or any of the things that are the things, the real hurdles that are bringing you to your knees as a president. We focus on the stuff that's like the history and learning all the facts and the figures, but it's that meth lab in your basement that really we are not doing enough to prepare people for. It's just the curveballs.
I hope there's a space in which you have been able to share what you learned from that experience with others, because it seems that the sector really needs more practice sharing about that stuff, right? We've had enough professional development about how to have a conversation with your union, but it's the weird things that we don't pass that wisdom on that would be valuable. Are there any spaces that you have had...
Casey Sacks:
One of my favorite groups, the Aspen Institute does a community college president professional development, and I was in their inaugural cohort. And that group of other professionals have been hugely important for me. That it's such an incredible network that they're people who I respect so very much, and they're people who we do that with each other. It's like, "Can you believe this is going on in my state, or has anyone ever seen some version of whatever this is?" It's pretty practical and pretty important to have that group that you can tell those things to.
Bridget Burns:
I ran into Josh Weiner this week at Achieving the Dream, and he was about to go to the gathering of those fellows. And he was like, "It's the most electric, loudest room you've ever been in. These people, they are so excited, and they love to talk to each other. And it's so invigorating." So, everything I've heard has been just rave reviews about that program, and shout out to Aspen for running something that's so valuable. We've had quite a few folks who've gone through that on the show.
Casey Sacks:
Yeah, I can't say enough nice things about it. It was a terrific experience.
Bridget Burns:
This show is sponsored by the Aspen Institute.
Doug Lederman:
You talked about some formative experiences. Are there pieces of advice? Can you share the best advice you've gotten in your career and who it was from, if that's relevant, and how it affected you?
Casey Sacks:
Well, certainly related directly to this work, Bob Templin said, "Being a leader, being a college president is just making decisions over and over again. That's the whole job." I think his quote for all of us is make a decision and make it right. That there's no perfect decision. There's no perfect way of doing it. And once you've decided, then make that be the right decision and move forward, because you can't keep worrying about it for forever.
Bridget Burns:
I received that same advice from Michael Crow. I was like, "What is being a leader?" And he's like, "It's just you make decisions. You have to be willing. Most people don't. Most people won't. Over and over and over." I am curious about -- I was just listening to the book Decision Time, which is about the process by which people make decisions, how to do it effectively. When you get a really complicated decision, do you have any strategy about supporting yourself to be as effective and frankly efficient about making decisions as you can?
Casey Sacks:
I mean, again, it depends on what I'm dealing with, but it's bringing other experts into the room. If it's a college-level decision, it's bringing my leadership council. It's about 30 people together and saying, "Here's the problem that we're dealing with as an institution. How do we fix it?" If it's a legislative problem, it might be other college presidents in the state and probably our state chancellor. It has depended. My board is phenomenally great, so often it's calling on them for whatever their expertise are. You have a board, hopefully so that they can support the institution and really be a great sounding board. And I am really lucky that I have some incredibly supportive board members who care so deeply about this community. And they say, "You know how to president, but we know how to do all..." They're lawyers and businesspeople and professional advocates. And so that's been so lucky.
Bridget Burns:
I love it. I want to just jump in with, you shared good advice that you've used, but you're now in a position where I bet a lot of younger folks ask you for advice about their careers or what to do. What do you find yourself most frequently recommending beyond the advice that you just referenced?
Casey Sacks:
Read. I'm always sending my leadership team things to read. And it's not just higher ed, although certainly it is the higher ed things that I come into this space with an expectation that you read Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle this morning. And then after that, we can talk about whatever else is in the news because those are the things that affect us.
Even getting people to think about the stock market, and the fact that we have a company in town that's building buses that are electric vehicles, and how a decision that's made from the EPA about electric buses is going to affect legislation that's going to happen here in town, and the 600 people who we're trying to train for that particular facility. And so, it's just connecting those dots and helping other people connect some of those dots. That's incredibly important.
And I constantly am signing my team up for all kinds of things. They're going to networking events. They're going to conferences. They get asked a lot about, “What do you want to do next?” And in West Virginia, one of the things that you hear that is different from other places where I've been is that people want to stay here. And so, they're looking for opportunities to be able to move up here. And I'm not threatened by that. I'm not insulted by that. I do mock interviews for people.
I had a dean of students who was ready to be a vice president of student affairs, and a college down the street was hiring one. And so, I called that president and said, "I've got a person, and he's ready for this next opportunity. How do we get him there?" And so, I think those kinds of things are really important. And that gets around, it turns out. It was novel in this college to have the president set up mock interviews for you. And so, now I find myself doing that kind of a lot, but I think it's really important because then you can coach people into how can you be more successful in this role and find yourself in the position that you really want to be in.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. So, last question: Is there a leadership book that you have read at some point that has most helped? Or is there some book that you can recommend to our audience that has for you been most useful that you find yourself most recommending?
Casey Sacks:
Gosh. There is a book called The College Administrator that's actually quite good. It's quite good. The books that I find myself recommending most to people around me right now are often classic literature. I think classic literature is classic for a reason. Depending on what you tell me is going on with you, I will come back with, have you read Tolstoy? Do you know about this Dickens novel? And I love those things. And so often, especially in my space, we're really practical in community colleges. I'm teaching people welding and diesel mechanics and electrical engineering, and those things are wonderful, and my students in those areas aren't reading a lot of classic literature. And so, my advice often is around something that would expand what you're thinking about to give you a different or more perspective.
Bridget Burns:
Love it. That's great, and you're not alone. We've had quite a few presidents suggest – We're still remembering that Freeman Hrabowski likes to read French literature in French. It's quite a flex. He would like to show you that he knows French, and it is impressive. He definitely stands out as one of our interviews that left an impression.
Well, it's been really lovely getting to know you, President Sacks. Thanks so much for sharing your insight and perspective, and for your service to West Virginia and also and your students, but also to the country. For those of you at home, I hope this has been an insightful and informative conversation. We look forward to seeing you next time. And Doug, as always, you're one of my top five co-hosts. You get rave reviews.
Doug Lederman:
Back at you.
Bridget Burns:
All right, I will see you all later.
Casey Sacks:
Thank you both very much.
Bridget Burns:
Thanks.