The Innovating Together Podcast

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Derrick Tillman-Kelly, Director of UIA's Fellows Program and Network Engagement, speak with Dr. Bryan Brayboy, President’s Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. As senior advisor to the president, director of the Center for Indian Education, and co-editor of the Journal of American Indian Education, Dr. Brayboy discusses the challenges that indigenous students face in higher education, the efforts and missteps of institutions in addressing Native populations' needs, and the deep history of rights and responsibilities in U.S. democracy. Topics include:

• The burden of history and the misunderstandings that indigenous students are dealing with
• Land grant institutions and 21st-century land acknowledgment proclamations
• Good intentions and how they can miss the mark
• What it means to be in right relation
• How the Haudenosaunee (a.k.a. the Iroquois Confederacy) contributed to the basic structure of U.S. government

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Derrick Tillman-Kelly, Director of UIA's Fellows Program and Network Engagement, speak with Dr. TJ Stewart, Assistant Professor of Student Affairs & Higher Education at Iowa State University. As a researcher who explores college students with stigmatized identities, identity-based student activism, and critical qualitative methodologies, Dr. Stewart discusses unrecognized student populations in need of equitable treatment, the myths and realities of critical race theory, and faculty and staff activism in the interest of social justice. Topics include:

• How and why some groups of students are overlooked in conversations about equity
• Sizeism and fatphobia on campus
• Accepting the reality of sex work as a student labor choice
• Perceptions of pathology and stigma as roadblocks to social justice
• Critical race theory as a tool for understanding institutionalized inequity
• Individual choices as a pathway to changes in policy

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Marjorie Valbrun, Senior Editor of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Alexander Cartwright, President of the University of Central Florida. He talks to us about the surprise and logistics of receiving an enormous philanthropic gift, the importance of state universities partnering with community colleges, and some of the new leadership lessons he's learned during the pandemic. Topics include:

• What to do when someone gives your institution $40 million
• Strengthening the regional economy while helping students follow their dreams
• Being adaptive, innovative, and approachable during hard times
• The need to be compassionate, to listen, and to empower
• Recognizing who's on your team and how to value their contributions