A Modest Proposal

Last month Inside Higher Ed ran a story about the University of South Carolina presidential search with the headline: 11 Semifinalists, 4 Finalists: 0 Women. Was I shocked? Of course not. Despite the fact that women have earned more than half of all bachelor’s degrees since 1981-82, more than half of all master’s degrees since 1986-87, and—wait for it—more than half of all doctoral degrees since 2005-06, in 2016 70 percent of college presidents were maie. Contrary to what a random person on Twitter accused me of thinking, I do not base my judgment of a person’s qualifications for a job on their anatomy. But when college enrollment and degrees earned are majority female, the law of averages would suggest that there should have been at least one qualified female in the semifinalist and finalist pools in the University of South Carolina’s search, especially since they paid a search firm six figures to help them identify and encourage a diverse and qualified group of candidates to apply.

Some of this may be due to a lack of confidence among potential female candidates leading to fewer applications from females than males, but if institutions truly want their leadership to be more representative/reflective of their student body (instead of just claiming to), perhaps they could take some lessons on talent development from outside the ivory tower.

When Steve Jobs tendered his resignation from Apple on August 24, 2011, Apple did not launch a “nation-wide search” for their next CEO. Rather, Tim Cook, who joined Apple in 1998 and filled in for Jobs in his previous medical leaves of absence, was promoted to the position. Cook had been on the front lines of Apple as COO. He knew the company. He knew Jobs’ vision. He knew and had relationships with the rest of Apple’s leadership. It would have been lunacy to have people from outside the company apply to be the next CEO. And yet institutions of higher education do this ALL THE TIME, and not just for their presidential openings, either. They do it for administrative positions at all levels, as though no one on their campus—with their connections to the culture and community, institutional knowledge, and existing relationships throughout the institution—could ever be as qualified as an outside savior. So step one in my modest proposal for increasing gender parity in higher education administration is to develop in-house talent first. Identify smart, strong females (and other underrepresented populations) who aspire to leadership positions and nurture their abilities. Provide them with opportunities to lead committees, work groups, and task forces. Give them a platform from which to share their ideas and vision. And in doing so, you’ll actually be conducting a long-term, authentic job interview with significantly smaller chances for negative surprises when they step into the higher role.

My second suggestion for increasing female representation in administration is to ditch the traditional checklist of expected experience for candidates for these positions. If you expect your new president to have experience as a provost, your new provost to have experience as a dean, your new dean….you get the picture…then you will automatically be shifting your eligible pool toward the male majority currently sitting in those positions. So what should you look for in your applicants? How about leadership, communication skills, and the ability to build relationships? Anyone can learn policies and procedures, budgeting and software programs, but not everyone is an effective leader and communicator who can build teams and bring people together to achieve common goals. And isn’t that what institutions really need in their administrative positions? Again, look at Apple’s hiring of Angela Ahrendts as their vice president of retail. She did not have 20 years of progressive experience in tech companies. Yes, she was CEO of Burberry, a top fashion brand, when she was recruited to Apple, but it was hearing her TEDx talk on the “positive and transformational power of human energy” that Tim Cook attributed to being the moment when he knew she belonged at Apple.

As a child growing up in the late-70s and early-80s, seeing the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, the first flight of Sally Ride, and having pop culture sheroes like Princess Leia, Murphy Brown, and Cyndi Lauper, I believed that the glass ceiling would be long shattered by the time I was grown. Clearly and sadly, it is not. But I continue to have hope that with the right strategies, we can get to a point when it is shattered for good.

Education...the great equalizer?

I believe in the power of education to change people’s lives for the better. But when I read Paying for the Party by Laura T. Hamilton last year, I started to seriously question whether it really is the great equalizer we claim it to be. I’m not by any stretch suggesting people shouldn’t pursue education, but the results of Hamilton’s research suggested that more often than not, higher education simply maintains status more than it improves it. So when news broke this week about the FBI’s investigation into cheating and bribery being used to secure admission to elite institutions for already privileged students, I was in no way shocked. It also made me think once again about how higher education seems to have lost its moral compass in the midst of trying to increase enrollment and ranking status. And it’s not just the elite institutions that are placing the interests of the institution above those of the student. So when my dog woke me up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning and my brain started spinning around on this topic, I wrote the following….

Fairy Tale

I keep trying to remind myself
Of the story she told me
About the first-generation student
Coming to campus with the dreams of his entire family
Propelling him forward
He knew so little about how this all worked
He wanted to major in everything
But with the right people looking out for him
He settled on physics
This young man who grew up in the holler
Who went in the lab and worked as hard
As anyone in his family ever worked
But mined knowledge instead of coal
And Princeton
(Yes, that Princeton)
Took notice of this young man from
Mac-Dowell county in West-by-God
No, not the western part of Virginia
But it’s own state since 1863
And this young man
Was offered a full ride
(A full ride!)
To get a PhD at Princeton
I keep reminding myself
Of the tingle I felt in my neck when she told me
Hoping that memory will convince me
That the system can work
That we’re not selling a bill of goods
When we tell these kids
College is worth the investment
We’re not setting them up
For loans they will struggle to repay
I keep trying to convince myself
We’re doing the right thing when we go to those schools
On the mountains and in the hollers
And tell these students
That education can change their lives
Just like it did for that kid who went to Princeton
I keep trying to convince myself
But my lack of surprise
At the news of conspiracy
To create fake resumes
To doctor test scores
Reminds me that I’ve known for years
That the story she told me is the exception
Not the rule
Because the deck is still stacked
In favor of those who least need access
To the doors unlocked by a diploma that says Princeton
This madness — revealed in March
But ubiquitous year round
That we continue to accept
As long as we get our occasional Cinderella

How Higher Ed Lost its Soul (if it ever had one to begin with)

Part 1: Image Over Integrity

College and university administrators are an educated lot. Based on their collective degree attainment, it would be natural to presume that they are learners at their very core, able to apply lessons from a multitude of sources. So when Graham Spanier was not only fired as president of Penn State but was also sentenced to jail after being convicted of child endangerment, one would think he would serve as a cautionary tale to higher education leaders to follow the path of integrity rather than image protection. In fact, in the sentencing recommendation filed in Spanier's case, the prosecuting attorneys wrote, "Spanier needs to be punished for choosing to protect his personal reputation and that of the university instead of the welfare of children."

Fast forward less than a year, but stay in the Big Ten conference and we find another example of horrific, long-term, wide-spread abuse that had been reported time and time again to people who should have but refused to take action to protect the innocent. Instead, the image of the institution, in this case Michigan State (and USA Gymnastics), was placed above the safety of more than 200 young athletes. And again, another president was complicit in ignoring the facts, presumably hoping they would simply go away. I've read incredibly stunning things with regard to Nassar and MSU, but as a member of the higher education community, President Lou Anna Simon's admission that "I was informed that a sports-medicine doctor was under investigation. I told people to play it straight up, and I did not receive a copy of the report. That's the truth," has left me angry and incredulous. How did she not ask for a copy of the report? Do people actually think that plausible deniability is still a valid response? 

Sadly, based on recent conversations I've had with colleagues, there are indeed still those who do believe that the best defense is to be uninformed. People who believe that the image of the institution is far more important than acting with integrity. And we need not wonder if there are more stories just waiting to break out into the open, because 15 Michigan universities have asked the state legislature to delay votes on bills that would extend the statute of limitations on abuse cases, expand the list of mandated reporters, and remove immunity for governmental agencies. More evidence of a culture of putting the institution above all else.

Changes in demographics and state financial support have made higher education a competitive venture at a level perhaps never seen before. In the quest for more students, higher appropriations and larger donations, the image of an institution is a critical component for success. However, if that image comes at the cost of protecting the heart of education--our students--then it is nothing more than a facade, hiding the rot of corruption that will inevitably be revealed, and ignorance will not be accepted as an excuse.

Because a Strong Woman Raised by a Strong Woman Raised Me

It's been a week since my grandmother's 95-year life drew to a close. It wasn't unexpected. If anything was unexpected, it was how long she stayed with us. I had been expecting the news at any time over the previous month as her health had precipitously declined since Thanksgiving and her 95th birthday two days prior. And yet, she had made so many rallies, another one wouldn't have been surprising either.

Granny (as all of her grandchildren called her) was born in a house that was heated by a pot-bellied coal stove and had no running water. The Great Depression started just before her seventh birthday and thus shaped the majority of her childhood. When I was a child, she often took me to the house where she grew up to visit my great-grandmother, who continued to pull water out of a well multiple times a day up until her 90th year when she started living with her daughters. My great-grandmother was a hard working woman who shaped my Granny into the strong woman she was. In turn, she raised my mother to be a smart and strong woman, and well, you can guess the rest. One of my favorite examples of the inheritance of our generational trailblazing is this: Granny was a first-generation high school graduate who then saw her daughter earn a master's degree, and her two granddaughters earn their doctorates.

I suppose that most of us fail to see the life lessons we pick up along the way until something causes us to stop and reflect on the things we know that not everyone else does. Just a few days before she passed, I stopped to contemplate some of my most vivid memories of her, the lessons she taught me in the process, and I penned the following words. Reading them at her funeral was unspeakably challenging (my apologies to those there who had to listen to my sniffling and my frequent and extended pauses to try to compose myself enough to choke out a few more words), but will remain one of the greatest honors of my life. 

When I was a kid, pretty much the first thing I wanted to do as soon as I got inside a house was to take off my shoes. When we went to visit Granny’s mother, this was a problem. Her house was heated by a coal stove, so there was always a fine layer of coal dust on the floor, and Granny didn’t want me to get my feet dirty. So she would wrap tissue paper around my feet and secure it with yarn at my ankles. And in doing that, she taught me to be resourceful in solving problems and that there is more than one way to get what you want in life.

I always loved when we would visit Granny’s house at night because she would take me out on the closed-in back porch and show me all the lights sparkling throughout Charleston. And in doing that, she taught me to see the extraordinary beauty in ordinary things.

When Granny would tell the server in the restaurant to pre-heat her coffee mug with hot water, she not only taught me that she had an asbestos tongue, but also that there is nothing wrong with setting expectations and asking for what you want.

When Granny spent hours volunteering at the Culture Center and Congressman Wise’s office and took me along to walk in local parades with the Congressman, she taught me about the importance of giving back to your community and being part of something bigger than yourself.

When Mom, Granny, and I would go to lunch a “disagreement” would often ensue about who was going to pick up the bill. On the occasions that my mom won in the restaurant and then Granny would give me cash to sneak back in mom’s purse, I learned about the fierceness of a mother’s desire to always provide for her kids, no matter how old they are. I also learned to pre-negotiate with both Mom and Granny about who was treating whom when I became a working adult.

When we would pick Granny up to “go to town” and she would be decked out with her jewelry and lipstick, and of course with her hair done, she taught me that it’s always a good time to put your best self forward, but you are the only person you have to do it for.

When Granny was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm that could “go any time” and she rejected the risky option of a surgical repair, she taught me that while we rarely have control, we almost always have a choice, and in the choice is where we demonstrate our strength.

When Granny told me just last week that if I brought her a pair of red cowgirl boots back from my trip to Texas that she would wear them and we would have a dance party in the front yard, she taught me that laughter is the best medicine, and that hope springs eternal.

Early last month, Granny’s condition lead us to believe she likely wouldn’t see 2018, which would have made her the only one among her parents and siblings to die in an odd numbered year. But wouldn’t you know it, not only did she see the arrival of 2018, she stuck around for a whole week. And in doing so, left me with one last lesson: always live life on your own terms.

I am a strong woman because a strong woman raised by a strong woman raised me. That gift, and the gift of granny’s lessons, will be with me always. And for that I am so grateful.

Identity in the Age of Filters

"We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us." - Taylor Swift (Shout out to my friend Amanda for sharing this quote with me.)

Working to control others' perceptions of us is not a new phenomenon. It probably traces back to the beginning of human existence. But as media has expanded, the ability and perceived need to do so has certainly grown as well. Most of us probably remember from history class that FDR and his associates worked hard to keep the visibility of his polio-induced paralysis to a minimum (although some of what we learned was exaggerated according to this Time article), and who doesn't love a good slide show of celebrities without makeup.

But today each of us, not just celebrities, can broadcast a carefully curated version of ourselves and our lives--not just to our family and friends--but literally to the entire world. And we recognize the often contrived nature of what we share through social media. We know none of you "woke up like this," we know you deleted 15 versions of that selfie before you posted it, and we know your house/apartment/dorm room doesn't always look like that. Because we're over here doing the exact same things. Except somehow, we've fallen into a mindset that what we see on others' timelines is real, while we know ours is incredibly filtered. So why is that important?

Here's one reason: because when we start to believe that people are without flaws, we run the very dangerous risk of not seeing them for who they really are.

With the emergence of the Silence Breakers over the past few months, the most shocking revelations, at least among many people I've talked to, were those against Matt Lauer. Why were people so much more surprised at the thought he had harassed and assaulted women than others accused? My theory is that it's because of the image so many had of him. Millions of people trusted him to deliver their news every morning, he was an integral part of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast, and was the face of the cultural touchstone that is the Olympic Games. The wide-spread respect and trust people placed in him stand in stark contract to the image of a man who wielded his status and power to  intimidate and abuse women. And if my theory that people's  "persona blindness" leads to insurmountable cognitive dissonance if that person is called out for bad behavior is true, well, perhaps we have somewhat of an explanation for why allegations can be so widely known without anyone speaking out.

"I just can't believe it!" Ever heard/felt/said that? If so, consider why. Is it because you have had a long-term, personal relationship with the person and the accusation is incongruent with all of your interactions with him/her? Or is it because you think you know the person. (Remember, you know who they want you to think they are.) And even if the answer is the former, don't we owe it to each other to look beyond the curated "reality" we've been shown and look deeper?

Yes, people deserve due process and a presumption of innocence, especially in our legal system. But people also deserve for others to listen when they dare to expose what lies behind the filter.

Paying it Forward

 “Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living—if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor.” — Denzel Washington

When I think about the things that have contributed to the level of success I have achieved in life, there is no question that the investment a number of mentors have made in me through the years is among the most significant. Reaching way back into my past, I think of so many teachers (school, dance, piano, Sunday school) who encouraged both my intellectual and creative abilities, and I think of my dad's (female) engineering students who showed me that the cool girls were also very, very smart. As I reflect on the early years of my career, I think of so many colleagues who took me under their wings and provided me with encouragement as well as specific ideas and suggestions of how to be a better teacher. Even today my life is full of mentors, both older and younger than I, who are always available to provide me with their unique insight and perspective when I need it.

Because of the strength I have gained from all of them, it has only been natural for me to share that with others. For a long time I didn't really think consciously about my role as a mentor, but over the past few years (particularly since becoming involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters) I have been much more deliberate and intentional in establishing mentoring relationships with others.

“Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So recently, one of my dear friends (who has also honored me by calling me a mentor) and I were texting and we started talking about her dissertation. She entered candidacy a little over a year ago, and with a major career change/move she's been struggling to carve out the time to write her prospectus. She was discouraged over of her lack of progress, and those feelings were keeping her from the focus she needed to write and make progress. A vicious cycle, for sure. As I shared trying moments from my own writing process and encouraged her to just take it one step at a time she said, "I just need you to be my dissertation coach!" So I said, "Of course!" After I convinced her I was serious, we started making preliminary plans for how I could help guide and encourage her to make progress toward her goal.

Later that night I thought of other colleagues and former students who are also struggling with the dissertation writing process, in many cases because the whole task seems too big to tackle and they feel uncertain of where to start (or if they have started, where to go next). And I thought...perhaps I could do others some good as a dissertation coach. Really. I've been through the process myself. I know the challenges and a few strategies to use to conquer them, and I actually really enjoy giving people feedback on their writing. And I'm at a new point in my career where I would actually have the time to give to others in this venture. So...here I am, offering Thesis/Dissertation Coaching on this new site, and excited about the potential to mentor even more people as they pursue their goals for a higher degree.

Henry Adams said, "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." I'd like all of my mentors to know that their influence is getting passed on for at least one more round. I think they would be proud.