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Weekly Wisdom

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.

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.

Kim Wilcox

Chancellor, University of California, Riverside

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

President, Arizona State University

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

President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

President, Georgia State University

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

Chancellor, Purdue University Global

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.

Chancellor, North Carolina A&T University

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Jeff Selingo, higher education author and journalist, speak with Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University. President Crow was our first Weekly Wisdom guest last year, and he returns to share his wisdom about reimagining higher ed institutions, giving our institutional leaders new incentives, and recommending some books to focus and inspire us. Topics include:

  • Creating a more flexible, scalable model of higher ed to meet current needs
  • Freeing ed leaders from the limitations of administrative and academic bureaucracy
  • A few words of professional advice for presidents and chancellors
  • Further reading about leadership, educational mission, and future readiness
  • Driving transformation

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Dr. Gabrielle Starr, President of Pomona College in Claremont, California. As a national voice on college access for students of all backgrounds, the future of higher education, women in leadership, and the importance of the arts, she shares her wisdom about setting practical expectations, collaboration between institutions, the realities of leadership, and the power of human  connection. Topics include:

  • COVID-19's positive changes to higher ed
  • How colleges can transcend their traditional adversarial relationships
  • Building the best possible leadership team
  • Improving institutional culture through an embrace of creativity and art

Bridget Burns, Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance, and Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder of Inside Higher Ed, speak with Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough, President of Dillard University in New Orleans. He shares his wisdom about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (H.B.C.U.s), African American student experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, and social media platforms as essential tools for higher education leaders in the 21st century. Topics include:

  • Students balancing public health risks with a desire for the college experience
  • The necessities and hazards of social media for higher ed leadership
  • One of the biggest obstacles to college enrollment among Black students
  • How incoming higher ed leaders need to study history and interrogate reality

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