You have to have a culture that embraces, supports, and is committed to these students and their success. The second key element is having the people who are committed to the culture. Once you have that platform, then you can start to think about programs. That’s the mindset we’ve brought to this.
Weekly Wisdom is an event series that streams live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on Mondays. Each event also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, the UIA joins forces with Inside Higher Ed and talks with a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of this moment. These conversations are filled with practicable things you can do right now by unpacking how and why college leaders are making decisions within higher education. These episodes will also leave you with a sense of optimism and inspiration.
We know now the world is much more complicated than we thought. Historic institutions that are non-adaptive are going to have difficulty adjusting to these kinds of high-speed changes. We need to instill the ability to adjust and keep performing our mission as a core part of what we do.
Michael Crow
This is the time when American higher education understands that our strength as a country will be inextricably tied to our success in bringing people from all backgrounds into the problem solving as we face the future.
Freeman Hrabowski, III
We’ve got a lot of important work to make sure that our institutions come through this pandemic and get stronger, at the same time that we address the issues that are right in front of us around systemic racism.
Mark Becker
If you start to address what’s important to people, I think people are going to take you seriously, regardless of if you’re in a room with them, or if you’re doing it virtually.
Frank Dooley
You’ve got to be willing to have courage to have these open and frank discussions, you’ve got to put yourself in a position to foster these kinds of discussions, and sometimes, more often than not, you will listen to your constituency and they will have the better solutions.
Harold L. Martin, Sr.
Bridget Burns, CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, and Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Marie Lynn Miranda, Chancellor of University of Illinois Chicago, on the Innovating Together Podcast. Chancellor Miranda talks about attentive leadership, the central role of values, building community, strategies for handling a crisis, and tracking overall objectives and key goals. Topics include:
- Leading others by learning from them
- An institution’s budget illustrates the institution’s values
- Post-COVID rebuilding takes longer than many people realize
- Crisis management during Hurricane Harvey
Self-care and self-examination as ongoing elements of leadership - Recommended reading about accomplishments and objectives
Bridget Burns, CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, and Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Satish Tripathi, President of University at Buffalo, on the Innovating Together Podcast. President Tripathi talks about his unlikely path to leading one of the nation’s top research universities, the core elements of what makes a successful institution, how to develop your personal leadership style, and the importance of learning from context and history. Topics include:
- Acquiring a taste for leadership
- An inflection point for creativity
- Hiring faculty, ensuring student success, and fueling the local economy
- Learning tips for higher education leaders
- How reading informs leadership
Bridget Burns, CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, and Sara Custer, Editor-in-Chief of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Kim Wilcox, Chancellor of University of California, Riverside, in his third visit to the Innovating Together Podcast. Dr. Wilcox talks about the surprising appeal of higher education leadership, an inside view of budgeting, embracing empathy and collaboration, and understanding what students actually need. Topics include:
- Serving more people with every step up the leadership ladder
- Budget priorities and the downside of special committees
- Understanding other people’s concerns and letting them do their jobs
- How collaboration is a process rather than an endpoint
- A balanced view of student affairs
- Leadership advice and reading recommendation