Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom Series originally aired on April 18, 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.
Cindy Larive:
Well, one thing that works for me is I have an amazing leadership team. So having people and hiring people who have a collaborative mindset, who are solutions oriented and want to work together to make positive impact, now, that's helpful. We have a good team. One of the things that we did as we were in the midst of the pandemic, we had a budget cut here, $20 million to our campus, plus huge losses in auxiliaries and other things. We brought the whole leadership team together to do scenario planning about how would we make budget cuts? And we thought through that, and it became really obvious to everybody that a budget cut to one division, whether it's an academic division or IT or student affairs, has downstream effects on every other part of the university. And so that collaborative process of sharing, "Well, this is what we'd cut at 5%, this is how we'd make a 10% or a 15% cut," that was really informative to do that as a team.
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 cohost is Inside Higher Ed co-founder and CEO Doug Lederman.
Doug Lederman:
Today's guest is the Chancellor of the University of California Santa Cruz, Cindy Larive. Before she became chancellor there, she was provost at the University of California Riverside. And I understand from Bridget that she's got a very interesting backstory. So welcome to the program. Thanks for being here.
Cindy Larive:
Thanks, Doug, Bridget. Great to be here.
Bridget Burns:
Well, for those of you who don't know, so Chancellor Larive, when I first met her, she was the liaison for the UIA at UC Riverside. That was my first engagement with her, and then later, she went on to be the provost. But I think I want to just start there in terms of, Cindy, you're the only person who has had this specific journey to the chancellorship, and I think it's a really powerful example so other people out there don't think that you need to camp out for 20, 30 years in administration. You've only had really three administrative roles including chancellor. Is that true?
Cindy Larive:
Oh no, I had a few. I became department chair in 2012, and then went from there to being associate dean for physical sciences and mathematics, and I was interim dean, and then I was vice provost for undergraduate education. That was the most fun job I had. And then provost and EVC, and then chancellor, so that happened over about seven years.
Bridget Burns:
So seven years of administrative trajectory. But otherwise, you were a faculty member, you were a very involved and engaged faculty member. I'm curious about that decision, because I know a lot of people do see it as like the dark side, as a negative reference, but did something happen that made you all of a sudden willing to do that, or is it you just slowly started getting tapped?
Cindy Larive:
Well, it's interesting. I started my academic career at the University of Kansas, and I'm a chemist, and when I was about 40 I got asked if I wanted to go to some leadership academy. And I thought about it, I talked to my husband, and I thought, "No, I don't think that's for me. I really like doing science." And I was running a big lab, and so I turned it down. And then a couple times along my journey, I wondered, "Well, maybe I should have done that. Maybe I missed that opportunity." But then I just focused in on trying to make a difference, trying to make an impact, and doing that through a variety of roles as faculty member. I was pretty engaged in my department and my university in a variety of different ways.
And then when I became department chair, I actually discovered I could make things happen that were good for my department and for my colleagues and our students. And so that changed my perspective a little bit. I still continued my lab, actually up until right before I came to UC Santa Cruz. It sort of attrited over time. Now I'm not a practicing chemist any more. I really enjoy trying to make the university a place where other people can succeed and focus on research and teaching.
Doug Lederman:
It's a really interesting way of framing it, and I think like so many things in our society these days, there tends to be this increasing bifurcation and a lot of suspicion. And since you were not exactly a reluctant administrator, but what messages would you share with faculty members who are fully committed to their research and their teaching, what administrative work can do and why it's something that, again, you may not think it's best necessarily for all of them, but what are the positives about it? Since we hear a lot about the negatives.
Cindy Larive:
The way I frame it, Doug, is that it may not be the thing for you right now, to really not close those doors. I think that faculty are leaders, and they exercise leadership in so many ways. Every time I step in front of a classroom, I'm the leader of that classroom, of that experience. Through our research we're leaders. Through our engagement with our professional communities we are leaders. Faculty is a leadership role. And I prefer to talk about leadership rather than administration, because administration connotes bureaucracy. There is some bureaucracy to running a university, it's true, we can't escape that. It's one of the things that make things go at the university. But by leading, you actually empower others to help join you in transformation. That's exciting. I think often about this transformational power that universities have, and that's a reason to get engaged and to think about leadership and to partner with your leaders. We can do more together when we come together to work on behalf of our mission.
Bridget Burns:
I was thinking about, in conversation with you previously I mentioned that you're in a unique position because being a UC Chancellor, your former boss is now your peer on this council. I assume you guys operate as a council. What's that like? And then in general, it brought up for you how to drive collaboration on campus as well. So I'd love to get your take, though, on that first piece.
Cindy Larive:
Oh, well, thanks, Bridget. So Kim Wilcox, the chancellor at UC Riverside, is my former boss. He's a great friend and mentor, but all the way along, probably it stems from my feelings as a faculty member, all the way along I haven't thought about having a boss. When you're a faculty member, you're your own boss. And I think about that, even now I have a boss, it's President Drake, president of the UC system. But I think the way I engage is in partnership. So if you think about your boss as your partner and that your job is to work with your partner to have impact, to make change, to do good things, that's a very different way of thinking than, "I have to make my boss happy or like me." Really you're partners in transformation.
Doug Lederman:
How do you reflect that as now the boss of other people? How do you try and get them to think about you that way?
Cindy Larive:
Yeah, thank you. It's probably hard, I suppose, for some people, but I'm a pretty approachable person, I think. And when I started, when I became provost, I thought to myself, "I don't know how to be a provost. All I really know how to do is to run a research group." So I acted as provost like I was running my research group. And when you have a big research group, you have a whole group of people who come together, you think together. Sometimes it's the sophomore who's doing undergraduate research in your lab who comes up with a question that everybody else knows too much to ask, and that question can spark a conversation that really gives you a whole new paradigm to think about. So I think it is listening deeply, it's engaging with others, it's valuing collaboration and partnership and trying to encourage everybody else on the leadership team to work together in a solutions oriented way.
Bridget Burns:
I love that, and I love the idea that you expressed, you've done before and today, that you never really saw yourself as having a boss, that you were always your own boss, the people you work for are your partners. And I just think that's a really refreshing way to look at your career, because at the end of the day, you are the only one who's really responsible for it. I'm just thinking about how people talk about struggling to connect with different generations. That might be a perspective that would be more valuable for younger generations that are not as inclined towards the kind of hierarchical approach of higher ed traditionally.
Cindy Larive:
Yeah, another way to think about it is that you're controlling your own destiny. And we do hear that narrative by people who want to be in control of their future, of their destiny. It's another way to think about it, but when I think about saying I'm in control of my own destiny, it sounds lonely. How do you accomplish things all by yourself? The way you do it is by partnering with other people and then really being able to move an agenda forward.
Ray Magliozzi:
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Bridget Burns:
So I did want to ask you about what you've learned. So you were someone who, when I first engaged with, your humility, and you are incredibly approachable. You seem like the most normal person, and none of the pomp and circumstance of higher ed has changed you, which is really refreshing. And it makes you a great collaborator. I would say as a peer, I've seen that with your allies on other campuses, but I'm curious about now that you're the boss who tries to get people to collaborate inside your own institution, I'm just curious what you've learned about that experience and what things really work for you.
Cindy Larive:
Well, one thing that works for me is I have an amazing leadership team. So having people and hiring people who have a collaborative mindset, who are solutions oriented and want to work together to make positive impact, now, that's helpful. We have a good team. One of the things that we did as we were in the midst of the pandemic, we had a budget cut here, $20 million to our campus plus huge losses in auxiliaries and other things. We brought the whole leadership team together to do scenario planning about, how would we make budget cuts? And we thought through that, and it became really obvious to everybody that a budget cut to one division, whether it's an academic division or IT or student affairs, has downstream effects on every other part of the university.
And so that collaborative process of sharing, "Well, this is what we'd cut at 5%, this is how we'd make a 10% or a 15% cut," that was really informative to do that as a team. Luckily we didn't have to do all that. We instead managed to take the cuts as one-time cuts, not as permanent cuts, and that was a bet that played out for us. But that process of thinking that through together under duress really, I think, brought the leadership team closer together and gave people an appreciation for the contributions that others make.
Doug Lederman:
We've talked a lot on these programs about what leaders have learned from the pandemic, and I think you just offered one sense. How else has the pandemic changed your view of your own work and also your view of how to lead?
Cindy Larive:
It's been an interesting experience. We realized that some of those hierarchical modes of operation, Bridget, that you alluded to don't work very well in a pandemic. We had to bring together teams with different expertise and be able to make decisions in real time, and then translate those decisions into actions, and then be able to communicate broadly about what we were doing. That's a different paradigm than universities typically operate under, which is more, a group of select people get together, make a decision, and it trickles down. That's actually not a very effective way to get buy-in or to operate with speed and scale.
So we learned those lessons because we had to. It was important and we had to do it timely. Now we can take those lessons and the way of operation, which is bring people together by expertise, not just by position, and involving them in decision making, and then translating that decision into action and communicating about it, that we can do for student retention and success or for organizing new research clusters. We can take that advantage and do it in a more efficient way and in a more satisfying way that leads to action.
Bridget Burns:
So one thing I'm always curious about when I think about leadership, I think the touchstones of best things about it and hardest things give you a perspective of how the person thinks. So we've just been talking about hard things, so we can go there. As a leader, what for you has been the hardest thing you've had to do? And if you can, share what you learned from it.
Cindy Larive:
In the middle of the pandemic, we had a complex of forest fires, wildfires that bore down on the campus, came within a mile and a half of our campus. We had evacuated, and I was communicating every day to the campus, and I was prepared to send a message that the fire had breached the campus. Luckily, by some miracle the wind shifted overnight and the campus was spared. But that whole process of evacuating, the trauma to people in our community, which still remains. We had 1,000 people lose their homes. We had staff members who were working to support evacuated students or their own families were being evacuated. And then the process of bringing everybody back to campus, that was hard. That was the hardest thing that we've done. That experience helped me really get in touch with my own feelings, how I felt about our campus and how valuable it is, and then really think about what is it that makes a university.
I don't know if either of you have been to UC Santa Cruz. It's the most beautiful campus in the world. But it helped me realize that it's not the buildings that make the university, really. It's the people that make the university, and that you put the people first. And I remember, Bridget, being at a UIA convening as part of, I think, a leadership experience I had, where we had the president from Tulane came and talked about his experience of meeting in Houston and reimagining Tulane. And I thought about that a lot while we were evacuated for the wildfire. What would we do? Luckily, we didn't have to go there.
Doug Lederman:
I just recorded a podcast last week about turnover and morale, the emotional and psychological and workplace experiences that a lot of people are struggling with right now. And I guess I'm interested in how you are thinking about keeping people engaged, focused on what they have to do today, hopeful about what's ahead, how you're juggling all that. The complicated nature of how we think about our work these days.
Cindy Larive:
For me, it's the transformational power of higher education. Higher education changed my life from a low-income first generation college student. We do that every day at universities. And it is that mission of access, of opportunity, of forward-looking change that I think helps us stay focused on our work. Because our work really matters. The issues that you alluded to, though, Doug, really are something I've been thinking a lot about. I think we're all thinking about it. It's the changing nature of work. So if you're at a largely residential campus where students expect a high-touch experience, how do we continue to deliver those experiential opportunities, that in-person education mixed with some remote and hybrid and online educational opportunities, but at the same time value in-person, hybrid, and fully remote work as it suits the job and keep our culture and stay centered on our values?
I think we have to value remote, hybrid, and in-person work because it is going to be what's necessary for us to be an employer of choice. Our employees are going to demand that, want that as it suits the work. So then how do you retain your culture? How do you keep collaboration going when not everybody is in person, not everybody's remote? I think it was easier for us when we were all remote, and so now we're grappling with that. I think we can manage it, but I know we're not alone. I think that most of the tech companies I'm aware of in the Bay Area are all trying to struggle with this, and I think what it means is, I'm going to come back to those ideas about collaboration and about impact.
If we're really focused on impact, on delivering experience, delivering opportunity, delivering change that the country needs, then that can guide our work and our partnerships can happen, whether we're in partnership together across the table or together across the Zoom screen. I'm energized by that. We're trying to think about how to navigate it as we've emerged from the pandemic and to help everybody feel valued and part of a team.
Bridget Burns:
It's interesting, as you were talking about that, it made me realize that your example of the fire in particular, when you get back to that space that we all were, that's a way extreme example, but thinking about March of 2020, how we turned the light switch of everyone going home. And I think that we went through a process of winnowing what was necessary, what was most essential, and in the process what we did is, I don't think we recognized as we winnowed, "I guess we don't need the community, I guess we don't need to be in the office. I guess I don't need all these things." There wasn't as much of a distilling or a sifting for the stuff that we needed to not remove. The burnout epidemic is really about lack of purpose, inspiration, and community in our work.
Those are the three essential elements, and technology is a modality that can help you get those, in-person is a modality to get those. But in general, I don't think we spent enough time prioritizing those three things. They felt soft and squishy when we were talking about life and death. Those are the things that we have to figure out how to weave into our work, whether it's hybrid, whether it's remote, whether it's in person, because that consistently is actually what it is. And I think about that rushed moment and missing the signal of the stuff that we should have focused on, which are those three things. But I don't think that we've lost too much in terms of ground. I think we can recapture it. It's just focusing on those three things.
Cindy Larive:
Yeah, that's right. And understanding that they won't be the same for every person. It is going to be a matrix of possibility and feelings and communities and inspirations across the university.
Bridget Burns:
I did want to ask you, and I think perhaps maybe it's obvious, but what has been the most surprising thing for you about your career?
Cindy Larive:
I think the most surprising thing about my career is that I am in this position and that I enjoy it. I would not have predicted that even 15 years ago. It's a great opportunity to lead a campus and to be part of change, and I really enjoy it.
Bridget Burns:
We always ask people about the best advice that has served them in their careers, and I'm curious if you have any one piece of advice someone else gave you that you've used as a touchstone, and who it came from.
Cindy Larive:
Well, yeah, the best advice I got came from a mentor of mine at the University of Kansas. His name was Ted Kuwana. He was a senior faculty member who took me under his wing, and he told me you have to remember that it's not about science. It's all about the people, that the people are the most important thing. So I try to keep that to heart, and I think it is true. It is true. If you put the people first in making difficult decisions and planning for the university, then pretty much everything else will fall into place. So it was good advice.
Bridget Burns:
That is great advice. Curious as folks reach out to you and seek your counsel, because again, especially after today, people are going to know, people who thought that they missed the boat on administration because they're just as passionate as you voiced about being a faculty member, not being interested in this, now they have this new model of seven years of administrative work and chancellor. What advice would you give them?
Cindy Larive:
To be open and to let other people know you're interested. We have a number of programs in the UC system. We have a program called Coro, which is a bringing people together around collaborative leadership. ACE has a fellows program, a faculty fellows program. So there are a lot of opportunities, I think, to be able to show that you're interested and to get those opportunities, but also focus on making a difference. When somebody needs a chair for a task force or a committee, volunteer, step forward. Don't just be the person left standing, everybody else stepped back. I think if you can do those things and show that you're a solutions-oriented good partner, opportunities can come your way.
Bridget Burns:
I think that's the perfect advice for us to end today. I hope that has been inspiring to you all at home. Chancellor Larive, it is a delight to have you on. Thanks for being willing to share your story and impart your wisdom. Doug, as always, thanks for being a great cohost, and we hope you have a wonderful week.
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Guest: Cindy Larive, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Cruz
Since 2019, Dr. Cynthia K. Larive has served as the 11th chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Throughout her career, she has been committed to student success, inclusion, and equity, leading programs for undergraduate research and curricular innovation, writing extensively on active and experiential learning and mentoring, and encouraging women and other underrepresented groups to enter the STEM fields. She elevated the role of UCSC's chief diversity officer and restructured the Office of Student Affairs and Success to align with her goals. An accomplished bioanalytical chemist, Chancellor Larive is also focused on research, innovation, and developing the next generation of entrepreneurs through the campus Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development, as well as regional partnerships in the Monterey Bay and Silicon Valley areas. Dr. Larive came to UC Santa Cruz from UC Riverside, where she was most recently Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, previously serving as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Divisional Dean of Physical Sciences and Mathematics, and Interim Dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. She has authored more than 155 research publications, and has received research grants from federal agencies, foundations, and corporations. Dr. Larive is a first-generation college graduate, earning her BS from South Dakota State University and her MS from Purdue University, both in chemistry. She earned her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from UC Riverside while raising daughters Erin and Megan with husband Jim.
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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