Have to start with this new book entitle he the empower evidence university. What exactly is the empowered university . Guest thanks delight he to be here with you. The notification is this, that our universities should be empowered to look in the mirror and be honest with self, and wite as a way of talking about leadership and talking about our society that institutions that are healthy and that are secure should be willing to recognize whatever is going well, to acknowledge that, of course, but also to be willing to say, but we have a way to go, and so its empowered to be honest with self, and the subtitle which is shared leadership, culture change and academic success start width the notion its not but the one person, not just the University President. Its about all of us working together with the vision offed of indicating students and thats the notion of empowerment. Host i found the subtitle interesting, too because if you even look at the cover of the book you dont have one listessed a higher or greater priority you them almost lid out concentric circles. Guest you said that well. Host they all rely on each other. Guest exactly right. Host why is that. Guest if have to tell you, get goose bumps and math. Theyre connected and thats the point. That when we think about culture change, academic success, when we think but leadership, those are not separate topics. Theyre ways in which we work collectively through those, through the intersection, to think about how i as a leader, whether im a College President , provost or faculty member. Work effectively in a culture to educate students and it is the notion of building synergy in the since of empowering the university. What is really interesting, your life story and your trajectory you tell an important story where the empowered university is never an overnight thing. The idea of building culture, the idea of academic success of, the idea of shared leadership, those can just be catch words. Those are things thats have to be infused and nurtured and you have to give time. You plant a seed and then give time to grow. And if think the experience you had at umbc is a great exam of that. As person is going through their own journey, how do the think about that in terms of patience and timeline which for a lot of leaders is not an easy thing. Guest sure. You start with the idea our campus, umbc, university of maryland Baltimore County is young. We were founded in the 60s and ive been fortunate to be there as president for over 25 years and what i learn is that the success that we have had and its been considerable has come as a result of the work of a lot of people taking the time to analyze to assess a problem, the challenges, to get to know our students and understand how the culture needed to change and then work in a very organized approach to making a difference and that means what . It means that we understand that in american Higher Education, half the students unfortunately who go to colleges dont graduate. So how can we increase substantially Graduation Rates. It also means that we need to think about what dot is anyone be aned indicated person and understand that it takes more than simply sending students to classes. Were trying to touch the hearts and the minds of people. It means that we have kind of selffulfilling prophecy which says when students come to our institution we want to make sure they succeed. Most people who go to college, are we dean or president said, look at the student to your left, the student to your right, one of you will not graduate. Thats terrible thing to say to young people or people who are not so young who come back. What we say is look to your left can look to your right, our goal is to make sure all three of you grad wait and you dont were at fat. So its a matter of having the patience as an institution but as you say as an individual to know you dont make substantive progress overnight. When you talk about improving Graduation Rates or discuss what it meaned to educated or help egg people understand how to work with people different from themselves it takes time to shape a culture make for success. Host and so for leaders goingly to the process, how do you know when youre on that right path of shaping the culture . Sometimes youve need those benchmarks to let you know, youre keep going, in the right direction, or change directions. Guest i use the quote from eric wiener book the geography of. Bliss. Culture is the sea we swim in. You dont appreciate it until you get out and look back at it. So i would suggest, the book suggests all are saying we have to get out of the culture, step out of it and look back at what is going on, and when thinking about success, and how successful we are, two approaches we have worked on for years, analytics, use of data, in looking at trends and disaggregating the data and looking at women and people of color and others, number one, and number two, and looking at the majors of students and their economic browns, but number two, focus groups. Have learned over these years, my colleagues and i agree, that the best way to understand what is going onon looking at data, which can seem a little cold, is getting to listen to the voices of people, of the student, of our colleague, what it working or not working to understand what is quite frankly sometimes very challenging, to understand what excited. The it its in that listening process that we learn more about who we are and what the challenges are. Host i think one of the fascinating things i think has happened at the university of maryland Baltimore County under your leadership is how you have reshaped what people see when they look at umbc. A university that prior to you frankly felt like a sleepy Commuter School, and now were talking about a community that is leading the nation in many ways, in how its training and teaching scientists and mathematicians and engineers and scientists but students of color who are scientists and mathematicians, engineers, et cetera. So, talk to us from how that transitioned to going from the sleepy Commuter School to being as many people know, blissfully and joyfully nick named the nerd factory, the house of grit. Guest its true that people talk about our first 25 years as years when we were not wellknown, and in many ways we were still commuting, we had not become residential as we are now but in the first years i want to make this opinion faculty were working hard to build a Solid Foundation to make sure the academic enterprise was sound and it was in that setting when i first came i realized we have some good stuff here etch me colleagues and i said we have set some high bars and we need now to see how we build on that and build the visibility. So were now a campus with students from over 100 countries. Youre there in new york. Whenow walk down the corridor on our campus you see students from all the world. Feels like the plaza of the nations at the u. N. We lead the country in predominant live white institutions and black but more important than that, quite frankly, is that we are educating students of all races across disciplines. The media people love the science and engineering and those areas are important but aim really excited our classes in greek and latin are full at 8 00 in the morning, we have students in the arts, that beckett is our muse, we get to the mesh College Theater festival and so many students studying languages and culture. Im studying french now. Students on campus who speak french to me. Stem is important and arts, humanities and social sciences are important and i brick it up because of something with say in the book. With as a society have to appreciate the fact its not one area of disciplines and another versus another. Its not stem versus nonstem. Its how do we integrate these disciplines, teach our future scientists to appreciate the value of ethics but make sure our humanists look at digital humanity and using technology. So part of looking in mirror at the university and looking at the anywhere roar at society is to say, how do we teach our students that they can be proficient in a number of areas, they can learn and love languages and culture even as they study math or vice versa. Host its right now also feel like this book is comping at such a powerful time because we have never seen the university as a system under such attack. The virtue of Higher Education, why people need that. Can we do more training and so on. Jobs of the future. How when you think about the empowered university, what is your response to that critique or that criticism and what is the role of the empowered university to counter that type of rhetoric . Guest i think when an institution us powered and were feel that sense empowerment on or campus we look at the big picture. College is not for everybody. A lot of students dont want to be in a traditional liberal arts setting and have the right to have other post secondary opportunities. But number two, that we need to appreciate the value of Community Colleges. They are educating almost half of ustudents in america and as a university we need to be connecting with k through 12, with Community Colleges and understanding what is happening in the post secondary world and we talk about being. He power evidence to appreciate the genius of the and versus the tyranny of the or and thats a jim collins phrase it and means its not one thing or the other not Research Universities liberal art colleges. American Higher Education and is rich and diverse with different types of institutions. When people ask me if Higher Education matters, my First Response is always, absolutely. in fact what i say is, if you show me a family that has seen some success in college, ate least somebody has gone through and got an college degree, and gone ton get a job, we will see a family where they continue to want others to go i dont see families that have had success in college and universities saying no, we dont need this anymore. The challenge we fails that most people dont realize is that only 30 of americans families have experienced College Graduation and if you have not experienced it, you dont appreciate what it can do for your family to move into the middle class, and so two things we need to say that the book talks about, empowered to say to our nation, and beyond, Higher Education matters, absolutely. Were creating citizens. Were teaching people how to think critically. Were teaching them the importance of Civic Engagement, things we do at umbc that other institution does, but at the same time we should be empowered to look internally at selfin mirror and say we can be much better. Host when you think but theres more that we can do, i cant help but think about your own personal story and youre own personal journey. A journey that brought you from alabama to maryland and now leading one of the most prestigious and forward looking universities in the world. Can you tell us a bit but your journey and the role that education played in the journey. I appreciate that. I am a participant in the childrens march in birmingham and to be the child of educators. And so all of my life ive loved reading and math and thats what i want for every child to appreciate the meaning of words and to understand their connections across these disciplines and i am very fortunate to be at a university that allows me to get to know people from all over the world. Could never imagine as a black kid growing up in bermle ham in the 50s and 60s i would be at a university that had people from every continent because what i am able to see on our campus at umbc, that is so remarkably inspiring, is people from countries that are so different in many ways and yet my students come and they appreciate what they have in common. They appreciate cultural differences, but the also appreciate that here in our country we have brought in people from all over the world who come to learn, who come to talk about ideas, and to prepare to be leaders, and so i think of my own journey was one where i have the chance to be around dr. King and the children and go to jail and have that experience as a little child care, child leader in that Civil Rights Movement who was inspired to understand that through community, and through values, we as a university can prepare people to lead in Civic Engagement, in stem work in the arts and other areas. My journey actually the year i had the honor to march with dr. King and the other children is the same year my university at umbc was founded in 1963 by the maryland legislature. So were together and ive been there at the university over 30 years. I would also say for public Higher Education and private Higher Education, as we tell our stories the question has to be who are the people giving us support, whether its our donors, alumni, but empowered means looking at context. So for every public institution, we are fortunate in maryland and i say this around the country to have a governor and a legislate legislature who come from different parties, Political Parties and yet they work well together. The way american democracy is meant to work. And so our political leaders elected officials, in the governor and the advisories work very close to ensure we are building the quality of education and Higher Education and its been very encouraging to those in the field cho appreciate that in the state of maryland, the understanding is very clear that the future of our state, the future of our citizens, of the economy, of our families, will be closely connected to the quality of education and Higher Education. You talk about how if you look at umbc student body and the student body of so many different places, not just people from baltimore or maryland or the united states. This is a Global Community. Yes. Host what was your first exposure to the Global Community and how did it change you . Guest i had the privilege of studying in egypt. My girlfriend at the time, now wife, and i studied in egypt as Exchange Students from Hampton University in virginia, at the American University in cairo, and there were students from all the world there and it was the first time i was in an environment where people first didnt speak english except for this at the university, often did not speak english and where i began to learn some thing about another culture, another religion, about the arabic language and to see how people viewed us as americans and as africanamericans, and it was a broadening experience in many way and it led me to appreciate what umbc does today as we work to encourage more students to have experiences abroad as we have more and more students who come to us as we have faculty from all over the world, and the most important thing i tell americans all the time is, for us to first appreciate the beauty of the american democracy but secondly to appreciate the responsibility we have in this country and this most privileged of countries to understand human kind and to reach out too other people with a sense of welcoming, to say that we are all a part of this human race. Host how much of your education was that . When i think about your leadership and impact on me and others, its an allencompassing love, its a love of accepting people where they are, and bringing them all along in this conversation. So theres a formalized education and theres something that you really touch on, which i the informal education. Guest yes. Host of the exposure. Talk about that. Guest sure. My experiences were shaped by being in egypt, by beinged a my beloved hampton in virginia and then the grad alma mater the university of illinois at urbanachampaign and when i began to understand the world was predominantly white, frankly, id been in my world in birmingham and at my college, while we had professors from other races the fact it my world had been primarily africanamerican and i began to see the differences and the challenges and the strengths of being in that integrated society at urbanachampaign, however all those experienced shaped me and prepared me for and working at other institutions for the umbc experience. Umbc is very special never state of maryland because its the only university founded at such a time that people of awful race of all races could go there black and white. So from the beginning we were an institution with people from different races. Ive gone robbed the country and what we worked to improve on at umbc, we have this is a colorful point but ill make it. We have desegregated now and we have students of all races and types institutions but with hat no entrily integrated and at this point in i life i have to tell the truth. When you go to most places you seem people with people like themselves there are times when its great. For people to know people from their own cull dispore brown. We should appreciate self. The question we have to ask as we talk the empowered university and society, are we teaching our young people how to interact substantively with people different from themselves. And this is one of the strengths of umbc. We work really hard, both in the classroom and beyond the classroom, to do one thing. We say this to student from the beginning. Get beyond your comfort zone. Dont want to know people from your own state, from your own race, from your own country. You wasnt to in the people from all kinds of backgrounds as human beings, because the world is so diverse, and we dont talk enough about how we should go about coming to appreciate other people, caring but other people who are very different from ourselves. This is part of our success at umbc and yet also we say, success is never final. We can always be better. So empowered university, empowered to be better than we are. Host i know we saw that perfectly on display and i say this as a nate tv baltimorean and still a current resident of baltimore saw on that display five years a