Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on December 4, 2023 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.
Lisa Vollendorf:
The biggest task facing us in higher education is to break out of our elitist framework. We exist in a framework in which we do not provide access to the majority of people in this country, and we exist in that same framework, and still, I would argue, and I hope most people would, the most powerfully impactful higher education system in the world. So we are failing ourselves by clinging to our elitism, and our elitism is expressed precisely through what you're alluding to there, Doug. We express it by keeping people out. We do not have full transferability at most institutions, so students leave behind 40% on average of their credits when they go from a community college to a four-year institution.
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, Doug and I team up to have a conversation with a leader in the field, a sitting college president or chancellor, that we hope that brings you some insight and perspective and optimism for the week ahead, and that's why we call it Start the Week with Wisdom.
Doug Lederman:
Today, we're joined by Lisa Vollendorf, who is president of Empire State University, which is part of the State University of New York, and she's had a bunch of experience before coming to Empire State, I'm sure we'll talk about that, at some of the biggest systems and public university systems in the country. Welcome to the program, Lisa.
Lisa Vollendorf:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Bridget Burns:
So, I just want to kick off by – you have a 25-year career, you've worked with an array of leaders in a lot of different environments, and I'm just curious about how you learned to be a leader. The thing I like to ask people is, did you learn more from a good example or a bad one? And can you share with us just what your leadership framework is and how you picked it up?
Lisa Vollendorf:
Thank you for starting with that. This question really helps me reflect on the amazing people that I've had the privilege of working with over the years, and also, let's be honest, we all also have had the opportunity to work with folks who are, shall we say, suboptimal in their leadership capabilities.
So, I would say my framework really is one of continual learning. I believe that we can learn from people regardless of their title or their position in our institutions, and I really take a lot of pride in being intentional about observing people's behaviors around me, and reflecting on, when something seems to be going well, what is actually going on, and thinking about how to integrate that skill or that trait or that capability as I move forward. And simultaneously, when I learn by negative example, I try to focus on not just associating the behavior with the person necessarily, but also what is it about that negative example that I can learn from to avoid it? So, I would say it's a mix, and my framework is very much about learn from those around you, and also be focused on integrating new skills and talents and ways of being that are authentic so I can have an authentic expression of who I am.
Bridget Burns:
Makes sense. I feel like we're all walking through life and assembling examples in our pocket that are for – It's not one person at a time, perhaps. If I run into a situation with an employee or otherwise, where I can remember back this one example from this one person, but it's never just the whole person, I'm going to just copy them as a leader. So, it's almost like we assemble a deck of cards of examples of leadership behavior that we either want to emulate or not.
Lisa Vollendorf:
Yeah, I like that. I like that as a metaphor, a collage metaphor is what I think of sometimes. I met Bridget at a conference recently, and I knew immediately that your superpower, Bridget, was the ability to wrangle people with big egos and a lot to say. And immediately, I honed in on that as something that is a very difficult skill to acquire and to act on. And also, I thought, this woman must have other superpowers, because that's a high level, high bar to reach.
Bridget Burns:
That's very nice. Cat herding has been long – That's what I remember early on, someone said that because I was on the board at Higher Ed, and they were like, you know what it feels like? You have these seven cats and you're trying to grab their tails, trying to get them to go in the same – And that always, for me, I was like, it's like cat herding, and now I don't feel like I have to necessarily cat herd now. But that's what I heard when you were saying that, I was like, “Yes, it's working.”
Lisa Vollendorf:
It's working. Keep on feeling positive about that.
Bridget Burns:
Thanks. Doug?
Doug Lederman:
I'm curious, when you were talking about how you figure out what to take from different people, do you feel like the things you've learned from the good examples are in a different category or different realms than the things you've learned from negative examples? In other words, are they concentrated in different areas, or is it all a mishmash?
Lisa Vollendorf:
Well, I think for me, and I think in general, when you think about pedagogy and what we know about teaching and learning, it is much easier to learn from positive examples, because it's harder to do the opposite of what the negative is, because you have to imagine it and create it for yourself, which means probably you're going to have to make 1,700 mistakes before you nail it; whereas if you see somebody really embodying a way of being, or a way of speaking, or a way of relating to others, that really speaks to you, and you see as speaking to others and having positive impact, I feel that that makes it much more readily available to integrate into your own way of being, or in my case, my way of being.
So positive example, we all wish for more of those. But the fact is, I think we often are faced with people doing pretty well, but not maybe incredibly well, in communicating their message, or leading their group, or building their teams, or running their institutions. But certainly, what we see, I think, in higher education is a lot of really well-intentioned people showing up every day in service to something we all believe in. So, I do think there's something to learn from almost everybody. And then, the question is, as you're pointing out, if we're moving around the space of negative example or suboptimal example, it takes longer to really figure out what we want to incorporate into our leadership style. But that said, I also really think we have to learn both from our own mistakes, as well as from our own successes. So that's part of the leadership journey, I would say.
Ray Magliozzi:
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Bridget Burns:
That was really helpful. I don't think I'd ever thought about it that way before, but yeah, there are plenty of people I've been like, ooh. It's not necessarily that, I guess, do the opposite of that, it's more people are capable of doing that –
Lisa Vollendorf:
Yes.
Bridget Burns:
– and I should now understand, in my decision-making calculus about engaging with people, that there is this possibility, and observing how to protect yourself. And sometimes, you have to lower expectations so that you're not caught off guard because of seeing prior bad examples. But yeah, that was really interesting.
I wanted to shift to your career and just your trajectory of what has been the most surprising thing about it? Did you see yourself in this position as you were growing up?
Lisa Vollendorf:
No.
Bridget Burns:
Did you have aspirations to leadership? I'm just curious.
Lisa Vollendorf:
So, when I was young, I had a dream that one day I would have benefits, because I met somebody who had benefits and I didn't know what benefits were until I met her, so this was really revolutionary for me when I was 12 years old. And from that moment on, I decided that I would learn what these elusive benefits are, because nobody in my family had them, and I would seek to get an education and build a career, have a job, that gave me benefits. And I look back on that now, and that was a very high aspiration for me as a 12-year-old.
So the answer is, that's a short way of saying – or maybe a longer way of saying – no, I didn't imagine I would be a college president. But what I did find, as I moved into my career, and I have been very, very lucky in my career to always have been employed at public universities, now for 26 years and counting, that I have had the opportunity to always – maybe not reinvent myself, but to always find ways to find meaning and make impact in the work that I do. So, I was very proud to be a Spanish professor for many, many years, I was incredibly proud to be a department chair and a senate chair, and I really appreciated the learning that came with that.
And fundamentally, the way I think about my career trajectory is I have always looked to the core of what we deliver in public higher education, and really been mission-driven and values-aligned around access and equity and impact, because we know – and it's horrifyingly scary, I think, for us to now have solid data on this – we know that educational status in this country is the single most important marker for longevity, or for mortality, in medical terms. And this puts a lot of pressure on us that I think we know exists, but it really also puts pressure on us to up our game. So, I have loved having opportunities to do the good work, to have more impact over time, and to now lead an institution that is, fundamentally at its core, about access, equity, inclusion, for people who are left behind in higher education. So, I can't have imagined writing this story in a way that would've gotten me to this place that would've been a happier story than the one that I've lived.
Bridget Burns:
I love the benefit of simplicity. As someone who grew up without health insurance or dental, I totally get that, that's quite alluring, actually. I remember from childhood. That would've been a high bar.
Lisa Vollendorf:
Absolutely.
Bridget Burns:
But yeah, it is also a good reminder that we're looking for more, it's more simple things that resonate for us at a young age that actually are quite impressionable, or leave an impression.
Doug Lederman:
You may have just partially answered this next question in what you just said, but now that you have moved into a position of leading an institution, what is your take on what higher education most needs to do right now to achieve what I think you just laid out as its most significant goal, which is access and inclusion for all regardless of background? I don't know if that's what you think the big job in front of higher education continues to be, but what do you think higher education most needs to do? Institutions obviously like yours that are focused on that, but thinking collectively as well, is that the big job right now, is actually delivering on the equitable access and success that the industry has long purported to do?
Lisa Vollendorf:
I think the biggest job facing us, the biggest task facing us in higher education is to break out of our elitist framework. We exist in a framework in which we do not provide access to the majority of people in this country, and we exist in that same framework, and still, I would argue, and I hope most people would, the most powerfully impactful higher education system in the world. So, we are failing ourselves by clinging to our elitism, and our elitism is expressed, precisely through what you're alluding to there, Doug. We express it by keeping people out.
We do not have full transferability at most institutions, so students leave behind 40% on average of their credits when they go from a community college to a four-year institution. That is unacceptable, and it is a problem that every single system has been trying to tackle for decades, and no system, or no conglomerate of schools, has been able to solve. That, in and of itself, I think, is a stand-in, is a synecdoche for what is wrong with higher education in the country. We focus on ourselves as competitors at our institutions, and we focus on student success as being about how we deliver on our promise to our students, and we do not look at student success as being a holistic marker that should cross institutions and be about how we collaborate to help each student succeed.
So, I have many more thoughts on this topic, but fundamentally, I think we are born out of a very elitist system, and we've carried that elitism with us in ways that are detrimental to our own ability to deliver on the promise, especially public higher education.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. I think it's a pretty solid assessment. I want to shift to just – I think that that perspective and that answer comes out of being at as many places, and having, again, a 25-year career throughout higher ed, and so I'm just curious about – We'll go to what you're proudest of, but I'm curious about the hardest thing that you've had to deal with in your career, and what you learned from it.
Lisa Vollendorf:
So, my answer to what the hardest thing has been in my career has changed in the last five years. So, in 2017, my answer would have been the Sonoma-Napa firestorm that hit wine country and burned 6,000 homes, 42 people died. Our university, Sonoma State University, ran an emergency operations center that I was a part of, of course, for ten days straight. And during that time, the institution was threatened. We actually called in brush fires that we saw coming over the hills, over the mountains from Napa into Sonoma, that we could see from the emergency ops center that we had on the campus, and still, we had 3,300 students living in the residence halls at that time. So that was a very difficult time, and it was very stressful, and it was very traumatic for the community, and what I learned from that was trauma, it's not one instance. It goes on. You carry that with you in your community for a long time. And so, we carried that with our university, and it changed how we operated, for the good, I would say.
And then, I would say, subsequent to that experience, I experienced the very uncomfortable and untenable situation of having people report their mistreatment, their harassment experiences to me, and then having to report that, appropriately so, to people above me within my system that I worked in at the time. And the two years from the time that initially I was given the information and required to, again, appropriately so, report this information, until all of this came to an end, those two years were the hardest two years so far in my life. And what I learned from them, I shared earlier with Bridget in a conversation. I learned that you can actually go two years without getting a full night's sleep and live to tell the tale. So, I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I can say, if anybody's in a bad spot, two years out, you'll be okay, and you will survive.
But fundamentally, what I learned is, when you choose to do the right thing for the right reason, you have to be very, very solid in your decision making, you have to know that your decision aligns with your feeling of what your integrity is and what your integrity rests on, and you also have to wake up every single day for as long as it takes to make that decision again, to stand by your original thought that this was the right thing and you're not going to deviate from it, because these things take a real toll, and they do help you build resilience. And I would say without a support network of people encouraging me to continue to stick by what I knew was right, I don't know that I would've been able to have the courage, or the resilience, or the tenacity, to stay with that through the very end.
So I am a sum total, as we all are, of all of our experiences, and it is my hope that, in making that kind of choice and sticking to it, that other people will not have the same negative experience that I did. And I also know that, personally, it was an extremely difficult time.
Bridget Burns:
I can only imagine. Yeah, I see, not this example, but there are some I can think of, leaders making difficult decisions that really play out, and I can only imagine the personal toll that those – because the public engages in speculation about the headlines or otherwise. But yeah, living without sleep, I'm sure, plus a million other things. So that's really great. You shared that it's not making a decision, once you make that decision, every single day and every single minute, over and over, you have to keep making that same decision, because it's not just one time. I think it's really profound.
Well, I would shift to a positive, because I'm curious about – you've gone through some valleys, but I bet you've had some pretty great peaks. And in fact, gosh, with both those examples, because they were so extreme, I bet that just a normal day is a freaking peak. People always talk about how graduation is the greatest thing, but I think just a day that you don't have to fight a fire might be a great day.
Lisa Vollendorf:
It's a great day. This is what I tell people now, and I told folks when I came to Empire State University last summer, I said to our chief, I said, “Do not worry, you will never hear me say the word crisis or emergency unless people or property are genuinely threatened.” And he said, “Thank goodness, you may be the first university president to speak like that, I'm so grateful.”
So, I would say for positives, I've had so many opportunities to work with incredible people, with faculty colleagues, with staff colleagues, really around student success. I was at Cal State Long Beach, Long Beach State, in the years when the architecture for what would become the Cal State Student Success Framework was being built. So, I had the great privilege to be in the room and to be sitting there with brilliant people who knew that there was more we could be doing in service to the very diverse student population that we had at Long Beach State and in California. So I carry with me this knowledge now and this experience from 2005 when I went to Long Beach, all the way through to today, of student success has to be the north star for us, in public higher education in particular, but in higher education overall, and I just have found great joy in working with people to always find ways to do better, to recognize our failures, and to figure out ways to try to do better by our students.
Bridget Burns:
Those are pretty good. I think the student stuff and feeling like a real milestone like that, and they're still doing the – Is it the Graduation Initiative, is that what they call it?
Lisa Vollendorf:
Yeah, they called it – Unfortunately, they ended up on GI 2025. My husband's a physician, so we were not allowed to call it that in our house. But yes, the Graduation Initiative 2025, perhaps slightly ill-named in its acronym, but –
Bridget Burns:
You know what? Not the worst acronym in higher ed. We're so good at bad ones. It's like we never think about playing it out in our heads, like, “Hey, that actually might be a weird t-shirt.”
Lisa Vollendorf:
Yeah. I think the best advice that I've been given is to lean into where I feel I can make an impact. So put simply, you do you, and so for me, that has meant really focusing on daily work and career opportunities where I can express the values that are dearest to me and public higher education around access, and equity, and inclusion, and high-quality education for all, not just for some. And when people ask me what I think they should focus on, or advice to carry with them and have in their back pocket and to live with every day, I think it's very important for people to show up as their authentic selves. I have a colleague here at Empire State University who told me early on, you do you, and I think it's important advice, and I think it's advice to enact, if you take it with a grain of salt. You should do you, but you should always be trying to be better in service to your north star.
So that's the other piece of advice I give people, know what your north star is. For me, mine is the impact that we have in public higher ed on students, their families, their communities, and the fact that if we can help one person in one family complete a college degree, statistically speaking, not only will their life be better, but their kids' lives will be better, they will have access to better healthcare, they will be more engaged citizens, they will have a pathway to intergenerational wealth, things that many people in this country take for granted, and I certainly do not.
Bridget Burns:
Those are great. The one that our – I just met someone at APLU, let me know that their professional development leadership book catalog is coming from this show, which is wonderful. Maybe we should start, that could be our – Doug, we could create an Amazon wish list or something, because it's true for me, too.
Are there any particular books that have been most useful for you as a leader? I always find that sometimes people are like, “Should it be a higher ed book?” I'm like, “No, stuff that's hard is management, stuff that's like get through your day, getting stuff done, all that kind of stuff.” So yeah, is there a book that has been most valuable for you?
Lisa Vollendorf:
Yeah, I love Jeffrey Buller's Positive Academic Leadership. I genuinely love that book for its aspiration and its specificity about how you can show up, and how we need to show up in our leadership positions, regardless of title, as people always in service to those around us. So that's one of my favorites, and my other is Bob Kegan's Immunity to Change, which every single day is relevant, not just in higher education, but probably for us as individuals, as well as professionals.
Bridget Burns:
Those are both new ones for us, it's exciting.
Lisa Vollendorf:
Wonderful.
Bridget Burns:
Because sometimes, we get a lot of the same ones, because the good stuff's good, but this is great to have some more to contribute to the bookshelves, so thank you for sharing those.
Well, it's been really lovely getting to benefit from your experience and your wisdom, and learn a little bit more about how you see the world, so thank you for spending that time with us. And Doug, as always, best co-host for Weekly Wisdom in a long time, you're doing a great job. For those of you at home, we hope this has been an inspiring and short conversation that gets you going on the week ahead and helps you think about your career. So, we'll see you next week, but thanks so much for being here.
Lisa Vollendorf:
Thank you.
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Guest: Lisa Vollendorf, President, Empire State University
Dr. Lisa Vollendorf is SUNY Empire State University's sixth president. She is deeply committed to access, equity, and inclusion in public education, serving SUNY Empire’s diverse student population, and supporting the faculty and staff. Dr. Vollendorf previously served as interim provost and chief academic officer at the University of Northern Colorado. Prior to that, she worked for 16 years in the California State University system as a faculty member at three CSU campuses, department chair, academic senate chair, dean of humanities and the arts (San José State University), and provost and executive vice president (Sonoma State University) before becoming special advisor for academic continuity and operational planning at the California State University Office of the Chancellor in July 2020. She also directed the Hispanic Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to her work in California, she held faculty appointments at Miami University of Ohio and Wayne State University. Dr. Vollendorf’s research focuses on the cultural history of women in Iberia and Latin America during the early modern period (1500-1700). An established scholar with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, she has published two monographs, six edited books, and 35 chapters and articles. She earned her B.A. in English and Spanish at Colorado State University. After studying abroad in Costa Rica, she pursued a Ph.D. in Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Vollendorf grew up in Summit County, Colorado, where she developed a deep love and respect for the planet. She is an avid hiker, backpacker, and traveler.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
Co-Host: Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder, Inside Higher Ed
Doug Lederman is editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. With Scott Jaschik, he leads the site's editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Doug speaks widely about higher education, including on C-Span and National Public Radio and at meetings and on campuses around the country. His work has appeared in The New York Times and USA Today, among other publications. Doug was managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2003, after working at The Chronicle since 1986 in a variety of roles. He has won three National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association, including one for a 2009 series of Inside Higher Ed articles on college rankings. He began his career as a news clerk at The New York Times. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and graduated in 1984 from Princeton University. Doug and his wife, Kate Scharff, live in Bethesda, MD.
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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