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Erin Hennessy:
Hello and welcome to the second season of the Trusted Voices podcast. I’m Erin Hennessy, alongside Teresa Valerio Parrot. We are thrilled to have returning, and new listeners alike, join us. Be sure to follow Trusted Voices because we’ve got another stellar lineup of guests planned for season two. One important change this season, you won’t need to wait a few days to hear from me and Teresa about what resonated during our conversations with guests. Those takeaways will now be incorporated right into the main episode. What hasn’t changed is our discussion in each episode of the latest news and biggest issues facing higher ed leaders through a communications lens. This week we’re talking with Reginald DesRoches, president of Rice University in Houston, Texas, an institution that is near and dear to Teresa’s heart. But before we talk to President DesRoches, Teresa, what’s on your mind this week?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
First of all, I just have to tell everybody what a nerd I am about this episode. I truly am wearing my Rice Owls sweatshirt and I have my block R Rice water bottle that I’m showing to Erin right now, and I could not be more excited to talk to the president of Rice. For those who don’t know, I am the very, very, very proud parent-
Erin Hennessy:
Very, very, very, very proud parent.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Very, very, very proud parent of a Rice Owl. So I will leave her out of this other than to say I just have a special connection to this institution and could not be happier for today’s episode.
Erin Hennessy:
And also, do your homework. Call your mother.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Don’t worry. She calls and texts.
Erin Hennessy:
Great.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So we’re on good terms. All as well. She is a beautiful, wonderful child. But I do want to talk about what’s on my mind from an industry standpoint because it’s been a whole summer, Erin. Did you miss me?
Erin Hennessy:
I so wish I had had the opportunity to.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
We still talk and see each other every day. So welcome back, everybody, after the summer. This summer. I’ve been really intrigued just thinking a little bit about how we’re approaching the opening of this new academic year because, as an industry, I’m seeing that we’re not just covering that opening, but we’re also talking about some closures that range from campuses to programs. And I’m seeing the conversations on LinkedIn and Twitter increasingly gravitating towards some proposed cuts at West Virginia University that have struck a nerve with a number of people. And the announcements of their cuts were in close proximity to a Wall Street Journal piece that talked about how flagships are raising money and spending it. It was a heck of an article if you haven’t read it, and kudos to Melissa Korn and her colleagues for the great work that they did.
The takeaway from both of those is that they both discussed, in respective ways, examples of excess. And this is juxtaposed with how we talk about closures, which often is too little, too late. So what I’ve been spending quite a bit of time pondering, and you know this because I’ll send you a Slack message now and then about it, is that it feels to me in some ways that leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I’m not justifying any custom; I’m not justifying any approaches. I’m just saying we need to be thinking about how we say, “Give thought to closing if you need to close,” but for those who take incremental steps, thinking through exactly why they’re closing what they’re closing, and what it is that they’re up against.
And the biggest takeaway for me is, beyond the specifics of these different institutions, is I’m encouraging presidents to really lean into some advice I’ve always given, which is do what’s in the best interest of the institution and then communicate the snot out of it. In other words, make sure you’re transparent in whatever that tough decision is and make sure that people can’t question why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Erin Hennessy:
I’m going to flag the first use of the word snot on our podcast.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I was going to go with something a little bit more colorful and then I thought I’m going to go ahead and allow you, for season two, the first drop of a colorful word.
Erin Hennessy:
I so appreciate that. The Chronicle story that you mentioned about WVU and all of this attention on spending and how we’re spending, particularly in this continued moment, I think we’re up to continued hour of distrust of higher ed and questioning about value and whether or not it’s worth it, is really fascinating. I also thought about the story that I saw recently about a small liberal arts college in Kansas that has, within a year, gone from, and I’m scrolling right now to make sure I get the numbers right, an endowment of $53.4 million to an endowment of 1.59 billion, with a B, dollars in one year.
And it raises similar questions of what are you going to do with this sudden largess and how are you going to spend it? And is this institution going to get tripped up with the same kind of challenges around how you’re spending, what you’re spending, what you might still need to cut, not because you can’t afford it, but because it’s not a program of interest at this point in time or a department of interest at this point in time? So I think this challenge is coming to those institutions that are fortunate to have larger endowments and larger budgets, as well.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And I think the interesting part with that big gift, reading that article, that was really incumbent on a donor who had a very interesting and unique match, and we’ve worked with institutions that have rolled out mega-gifts before. One of the things that we talk to them about from the beginning is you need to explain why this doesn’t fundamentally… It changes a number of things, but you still fundamentally are going to be fundraising. You still are going to need to be making very judicious financial decisions and you are going to need to make tough decisions even though you now have this endowment, making sure that people don’t think it’s… It is a whole new day with whole new rules, but they’re not all new. Some of them are just a little bit shifted.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, yeah. I mean we’ve all seen the story of the lottery winners who burn through an enormous jackpot in a short amount of time, and you don’t want to be that place. You don’t want to be those people. So hopefully there’s a good plan in place and a good communications plan in place around that remarkable change in circumstances. The other thing that we wanted to talk about today that I’ve been tracking and that we talked about a lot in season one is this continued leadership roller coaster. And summer is often when we hear from presidents about their plans to step down and institutions’ plans to seek a new leader. But this summer has been, I think, even more full of change than we have seen in the recent past.
Just in the last couple of days, Inside Higher Ed has had a couple of articles about presidents departing their roles, sometimes involuntarily and often after a relatively short tenure that falls even below the industry average that we’re seeing right now of about five and a half years. And we talked last year about survey data that ACE had in their American College President Survey about the number of presidents, and I think it was around 50%, that plan to move on from their current role within the next five years.
So I think for this year and this season ahead, one of the things that we’re really going to follow and track and try and dig into is what that means for the industry because there have to be institutions across the country right now that are about to go through a really big change and sometimes it is a positive change and it’s a great opportunity for an institution to chart a new path, bring in fresh energy and fresh ideas, but sometimes it’s really an enormous upheaval and can stall or even set back an institution in terms of its momentum and its forward motion.
Only time is going to tell, but we’ll be watching closely and, as we watch leaders depart, we also are going to watch very closely what boards are looking for in new leaders and whether or not we see a continued increase in “non-traditional” presidents, whether that’s from outside of higher education entirely or if it’s from parts of the campus where we don’t typically see presidents come from, i.e., the provosts, deans, folks in those areas. So I don’t know, I think it’s buckle up. What do they say on flights? That while … if you remain in your seat you should have your seatbelt on in case of unexpected turbulence. I think that this is a year where we might see a good deal of unexpected turbulence so I’m going to advise everybody to keep their seatbelt fastened while they’re seated.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And I’m going to add to that and say that, in an emergency, be sure to put your oxygen mask on first before assisting someone else. And that goes to some of the questions that we’ll be asking this season. We’re going to be asking, when we have presidents on, how they’re taking care of themselves, what work-life balance looks like because you have to put your mask on before you can assist somebody else with theirs. There is something that I want to go back to because this is something I advocated for last season and I still am a big fan of. So ACE, if you’re listening, I don’t know if you are-
Erin Hennessy:
For the amount of free airtime we have given ACE, we should at least get-
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I know. I know what you mean.
Erin Hennessy:
… a free podcast promo on their podcast.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Right. So here’s what I would say. I’m still going to advocate for a pulse survey that is midpoint between when they normally do their president surveys. What we saw is that, based on the timeline, at two years out versus five years out, when were people thinking of departing. And so we shouldn’t be surprised with the number of departures that we saw this summer because they told us in that survey that they were looking at the door.
But I think we need to know how many of those who said they were thinking about it or were going to do it have done it. And we need that pulse survey because if we wait five to six more years to see where we are, that’s going to be a really interesting point for us from a leadership continuity standpoint. So ACE, please listen to my appeal. I would love that pulse survey in about a year to think about where we are and where we’re going because those were the natural marks that they saw for when people were thinking about departing.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, and then I think the secondary question there needs to be: if you have changed jobs, was it voluntary?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes.
Erin Hennessy:
And I know asking folks to be honest there is probably challenging or folks might find it challenging to be honest in a response to that question. Because I think the other story we see the trades cover all the time, this person is out the door, this person is out the door, this person is out the door. And I’m not sure we’re getting as much information about what’s happening. And I don’t mean the gossip in that situation, but what are we seeing in terms of how boards are hiring? What are we seeing in terms of even how boards are putting together job prospectuses for these roles? And, again going back to that survey, how honest institutions are being with presidents and candidates about the financial position of the institution? Because we saw a lot of respondents to that ACPS survey say, “They weren’t straight with me about where this institution was and the challenges that are facing it.”
And that gap was larger for presidents of color, which I just would love to see somebody dig into that particular part of the story because I think it’s really interesting and says some really not great stuff about our industry. I’ll also recommend, there was a piece recently in the Chronicle focused on three women presidents of color. And it was a fascinating look at issues around whether or not boards are ready to support diverse presidents, whether or not these jobs are doable when you are getting so much pushback that is oftentimes based in misogyny, based in racism, and whether or not this pipeline is leaky for reasons beyond what we have always blamed for leakiness in the pipeline, mainly women leaving the academy to start families and wanting that increased flexibility that being a faculty member offers as opposed to what being a president requires.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I’m going to go back to something that you mentioned, that’s about involuntary leadership transitions. I’m going to get nerdy for a second, and that’s to say that there’s a 2018 journal article that talks about this and it’s from one of my academic mentors. Michael Harris did research on all presidential transitions within Division 1 institutions. That’s just how he sliced the data for ease for a dataset and complexity, similar complexity for institutions, and looked to see if they could figure out if it was an involuntary transition or not.
And they needed specific numbers of third-party validation points, so triangulation of exactly why the leader left, to say if it was involuntary or not everything. If it wasn’t clear it was involuntary, then it was “or not.” And one of the interesting findings about this is that private institutions have the ability to shape that narrative so much more significantly than public institutions do. So I’m going to add that complexity to this, as well, is that if you go back to some of those very big announcements that we’ve seen over the summer, they’re predominantly, not all but predominantly public institutions.
So there is this element to this, as well, and Michael Harris is replicating that research right now to update the dataset with Sondra Barringer and they are looking a little bit more specifically and differently at how institutions are reporting this to see if they can dig a little bit more in. Because one of the major reasons that presidents have involuntary transitions is tied to their relationship with their governing board. And private boards have a better chance of keeping that internal and not having that spread. So I think there are so many different elements to all of this, but it’s another way in which I want our public institution colleagues to be thinking about who’s saying what in the guidance that they’re giving to their boards about what the message is, moving forward.
And I want people to be transparent, I want them to be open, but I also want for us to have some humanity in this process, that we don’t always see. And I also think for our private institutions, it’s to know that it’s being observed. People are noticing that you’re able to fly under the radar a little bit more and that you’re still having transitions, too. So this isn’t a public thing, this isn’t a private thing. This is an industry-wide conversation that we all need to be having.
Erin Hennessy:
Speaking of conversations, I think we’ve geeked out enough.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes.
Erin Hennessy:
And I think we should go ahead and get to our conversation with our guest today. As I mentioned earlier, we are delighted to be speaking with President Reginald DesRoches of Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I’m excited to introduce Reggie DesRoches to everyone who serves, as Erin said, as president of Rice University. From 2020 until 2022, he also served as provost of the institution and had that internal promotion to the big job. Beginning in 2017, he was dean of engineering at Rice School of Engineering, and from 2012 to 2017 he held the Karen and John Huff chair at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and he graduated from high school in New York City. He attended college and graduate school at the University of California Berkeley.
President DesRoches was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for research and design of resilient infrastructure systems to mitigate damage from natural disasters and other extreme conditions. President DesRoches, thank you so much for your time today. So much has been made of the firsts that you represent at Rice. First Black president at an institution with this segregationist past, first immigrant president, and interestingly for an institution known for its STEM offerings, first president with engineering-based scholarship. How have or haven’t your firsts, including your first-gen status, impacted your approach to your position as president?
Reginald DesRoches:
Well, first of all, thanks for having me here. It’s a pleasure to be here to share my experiences following my first year at Rice. You really can’t decouple your lived experiences and your background from how you approach anything in life. And certainly, they shape, at least for me, they shaped my values and my priorities. And so what that means for me is, first and foremost, I greatly value the importance of education and transforming lives just like it transformed my lives and that of my siblings. I am a first-gen student myself, and I bring that mentality when I think about what we do at Rice and universities like Rice. I never forget that it’s about the students in transforming these young men and women’s lives.
I also greatly value diversity in all forms, from people from different backgrounds and experiences. I see how I have personally benefited greatly from diversity in terms of being around people from different experiences, both as a student, but also during my career at Georgia Tech and at Rice. I believe having a diverse and inclusive campus challenges stereotypes, preconceptions, it encourages critical thinking and it helps broaden the minds, and I think, inspire new ideas. And yes, I do think like an engineer. I love data and I approach problems in an engineering way, but that being said, I know it’s all about people, in the end.
Erin Hennessy:
We noticed with great interest that earlier this year you announced that Ruth Simmons, who’s the former president of Smith, of Brown and then, most recently, of Prairie View A&M and a trailblazer and a first in her own right in so many ways, would be joining you at Rice as a presidential fellow. And I’m guessing most presidents would be exceptionally jealous of having an advisor and a confidant and a counselor like Ruth Simmons down the hall or across campus or wherever she’s spending her time.
I can also imagine some presidents feeling a little less confident having this remarkable trailblazer sort of over their shoulder and maybe making judgments on how you’re making choices and how you’re running the institution. Could you just tell us a little bit about how you conceived of this opportunity in this position and what that collaboration is like?
Reginald DesRoches:
Yes, indeed. I am very fortunate and the university is very fortunate to have Ruth among us. I’ve known Ruth since shortly after I arrived at Rice in 2017 when I became dean of engineering, and ever since that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to call her a mentor. So shortly after she announced that she was leaving Prairie View A&M, I happened to have lunch with her here on campus. We struck up a conversation about her future and she noted that she has no plans to leave Houston. She has many siblings in the area and they’re very close and they live in the same area. So I said, “In that case, perhaps you’d considered joining us at Rice.” And she said, “Well, make me an offer.” And so I did and one thing led to another and here she is. So she does several things for me and for Rice.
First of all, she does serve as a mentor to me. We have a monthly standing lunch meeting and I’ll typically bring a list of questions and issues that I’m grappling with and we’ll just sort of plow through them and discuss them. Sometimes they veer off into completely different topics, but every time I have those meetings, I leave feeling so much more invigorated, and obviously, she’s extremely helpful with some of the challenges that I’m personally facing and the university’s facing.
She’s also involved in several strategic areas where her background and her experiences are extremely useful, including our emerging Center for African and African-American Studies. She had that experience at Princeton. We’re launching a strategic planning process, which she’s gone through several times, where we’re redoing our general education. So there are a number of specific projects that I pull her into and she’s helpful to our leadership. And she does serve as a resource to several of our other leaders on campus and she meets with them also.
What I appreciate most about Ruth, you say she’s intimidating and she is intimidating because she’s just so incredible and so successful, but she really cares about the academy, and she really is always completely honest. One thing I know about Ruth is she will tell me if I’m doing something wrong. She doesn’t hesitate to say, “You know what? I would not do that. You should do this,” or “This is what might happen if you do that.” And one thing I know I’ll always get from her is honesty.
Erin Hennessy:
That’s remarkable. We’ve had some great conversations including one last season with Valerie Sheares Ashby, who is relatively new to her position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, about the importance of coaching and mentorship and leaders needing to be willing to seek that out and have those conversations. So Teresa and I have just been fascinated, and if you ever have room for two flies on the wall during one of those lunches, we would happily come down and sit there and just soak it all in.
Reginald DesRoches:
Oh yeah, we’d love that.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think there’s this remarkable element to having someone who will tell you exactly what you need to hear, and as we talk about presidents staying in their positions or moving on in this flood of what we’re seeing of presidents moving on, I think that feedback is going to be that much more critically important, moving forward. How do you think about that as you maintain your own leadership position, but you also are getting the advice of others of how to keep your tenure?
Reginald DesRoches:
It is. I mean, having somebody like that, for one, that I have complete trust in, one of the challenges with these jobs is there’s so many different constituents that you have to balance. There’s the faculty and the staff and the students and the alumni and the trustees, and they’re pulling you in different directions. And for me, just being able to sit down with Ruth, it allows me to get centered and remember why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s just extremely helpful for me. It always sort of grounds me and brings me back to this is why we’re doing what we’re doing and this is what we should think about as we approach this job.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I’m going to shift gears for us just a little bit, and that’s because I think you have an interesting story to tell in this post-affirmative action world. And specifically, we’ve spent so much time, I would say, over the last couple of years, talking about what should be done with diversity. And one of the critiques that I often read about for selective institutions is that their diversity efforts aren’t doing enough to expand access to their institutions in the most basic sense.
In other words, they’re limiting the number of acceptances which perpetuate their eliteness and prestige. You have been very clear that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decisions won’t derail diversity at Rice, and you’re growing your undergraduate class pretty significantly. With these perceptions in mind, how are you thinking about the impact of the SCOTUS decision on higher education’s work, and can you share your efforts to maintain diversity and opportunity at Rice?
Reginald DesRoches:
Absolutely. So yes, I appreciate you mentioning that. We are growing the university. We’re one of the few universities like Rice that are growing by 20% in four years, which is pretty aggressive, pretty substantial, but it is an issue of access, given the number of applicants we get for a relatively small class. We announced earlier that we will continue our efforts to create a class of students that’s multifaceted in all ways, race and gender and ideology, ability, and special talents. We believe, and I believe, for us to prosper and remain effective and relevant, we have to reflect the wonderful diversity of the City of Houston, the most diverse city in the country, as well as the increasing diversity of our country and the workforce.
And there are several ways that we plan to do that. One is we will continue our practice of evaluating applications through what we call a contextual holistic review process that assesses the student’s performance and achievement within their lived experiences in academic environments. So that’s certainly one way for us to continue to enhance a diversity of our campus. We also know it’s critical for us to have targeted efforts to engage what we call historically excluded populations and to partner with various community-based organizations to try to identify talent everywhere that it may reside.
People don’t pay enough attention to the importance of having diverse faculty and staff, seeing people in the classroom that look like you is so important and impactful. And one of the things I’m most proud of is I’ve doubled the number of Black faculty at Rice since I’ve been here in 2017, and that just has a huge impact on students in the classroom in terms of their persistence. We’ve also recently established partnerships with historically Black colleges, TSU and Prairie View, and we will continue to expand those efforts.
And then finally, affordability is truly a powerful tool for us. With the Rice Investment, we offer one of the most generous and transparent financial aid programs in the country where we provide aid for families up to $200,000 and full aid for families making less than $75,000. So all those things are going to be tools that we use to try to maintain diversity at Rice.
Erin Hennessy:
I’m going to shift us from one incredibly prominent issue facing our industry right now to another, and I’ll just tell you, it’s odd for me to be asking the athletics question instead of Teresa, but I’ve noticed in doing our research that you served as the faculty athletics representative during your time at Georgia Tech. And I just wonder how that experience informs or has driven you in a different direction as you step into the role of president and as you think about overseeing a Division 1 athletics program, what are the things that are keeping you up at night that are specifically related to athletics?
Reginald DesRoches:
Yeah, for sure. My experience, both at Georgia Tech as a faculty athletic rep, has absolutely shaped my approach as well as my view of athletics. And I’ve been very vocal from the time I’ve been at Rice about my support for athletics and how it shapes a university. I often call it, and I just addressed the incoming student-athletes, I often call it the connective tissue bringing the campus together, and it’s a way for alumni and members of the community to connect back to the university. It’s also a powerful lens, in some cases the most powerful lens into a university because of the national exposure that it provides to universities.
I’ve also been shaped personally by having a daughter who was a – at Rice. She just graduated in May, was a four-year student-athlete on the soccer team. And I saw the commitment and the sacrifices that she made to play soccer at Rice while getting an engineering degree and having two knee surgeries and having to recover from those. It’s made her a better person, it’s made her more focused and more resilient and I think a better leader. And I think she grew in ways that she would not, were she not a D1 athlete in a highly competitive athletics program and academic program.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I also want to mention you just announced a new athletic director. How did you think about that hiring in light of the ways in which you discussed athletics now?
Reginald DesRoches:
It’s an important hire. It should be noted I’ve hired nine new vice presidents this year, out of 12. So it was a busy year of building the leadership, and this was the only search that I chaired. In part, I wanted to send a message that athletics is a part of the university and important to me personally, but an important part of what we do. But also because of the role that athletics plays both internally, as being part of the university, but also externally, I felt it was important for me to chair that search, have a great athletics director in Tommy McClelland.
It’s a challenging time in athletics and intercollegiate athletics with name, image and likeness, all the changing conference realignment that we’ve seen in the last few weeks and months, the transfer portal and having somebody that shares our ambition, but also our values was critical in the hire, and I’m excited about the future of athletics for the athletics program, but also for Rice as a whole.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, thank you. And I love that you’ve added some of your personal thoughts and your personal experiences as we’ve talked today. I’m going to take it a little bit more personal. The first year for a first-time president can be overwhelming for anyone, even when everything goes according to plan. And I know that a few months after you began your presidency, you were diagnosed with prostate cancer and you were very transparent with the campus community about your diagnosis. Can you share how you thought about the need for disclosure for something so personal, so early in your presidency?
Reginald DesRoches:
Yeah, and I tend to be a very transparent person. That’s just my nature, that’s my personality. So my first thought was I should share this with the community even though I wasn’t really sure if it was the right thing to do. So of course, I reached out to Ruth Simmons, the first person I reached out to, and said, “Hey, I need to talk to you.” And I explained the situation, my diagnosis. It was a very early diagnosis, a full recovery is expected, and she didn’t hesitate. She said, “You absolutely have to be honest and transparent,” and that I should control the message and not let somebody else control it for me.
And so after having that conversation with Ruth, and also called my former advisor who’s currently president at Emory, Greg Fenves, and he sort of said the same thing. I decided, “Okay, this is clearly the right thing I need to do.” So I worked with my team, my communications team, to craft a message, and I honestly had no idea it would get so much attention amongst our campus community, but the Houston community and our alumni.
I received dozens of email from men saying that they appreciated me sharing, being so open, and it was a reason that they shared their stories and in some cases, it was a reason they followed up with their doctor and they hadn’t been to a doctor in many years. And so in the end, I felt after I did it, I felt it was the absolutely… I didn’t hesitate. I knew it was the right thing to do.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Following up on that, how did you approach balancing the needs of the campus community with your own need to focus on your long-term health? And do you have any recommendations for creating balance for your fellow presidents?
Reginald DesRoches:
Yeah, this is a tricky one. I probably didn’t have great balance my first year as much as I would’ve liked to because I tried to be at everything. And that was another of Ruth’s recommendations. She said, “Your first year, go to everything. Don’t say no to anything. Anything you can fit in your schedule, do it, be as visible as possible.” And so I did, and that resulted in me being at probably six to seven events a week in the evening, rarely eating at home, being pretty busy, but I’m happy I did it because it just allowed me to really get out and meet a lot of people I hadn’t met before, even though I had been at Rice for five years prior to that.
There are several things I do to keep balance and to focus on my health. I am religious about working out first thing in the morning, six days a week. I rarely miss a day. Even when I travel, I know I have to work out. It makes me feel better. It’s good for my mind. I say it’s good for my soul in terms of how I feel. And I’m getting better about more sleep. This is something I’m really working on, is to try to get a good amount of sleep every night, something I haven’t done throughout my life in general. So I try to shut things down by 10:00 or 10:15, since I typically wake up at 4:45 or 5:00 to start my day with a workout. I will do a better job this year of protecting and blocking my calendar so I have a little bit more free time.
My suggestion to fellow presidents, I would say, is to take time to do things that you enjoy. For me, that’s working out, that’s watching sports, that’s spending time with family and friends. Don’t neglect your health. Again, I’m religious about working out, but also about going to the doctor and getting my annual checkup and blood work. And that’s really what saved my life is the fact that I had followed my prostate situation for years because I’d been going to my doctor. And then make sure you get tons of sleep. It’s so important to rejuvenate every night. And then have fun is the other thing I tell new faculty, in particular. I say, ‘Have fun. Make sure you’re enjoying yourself. Life is too short not to have fun.’ That’s important.
Erin Hennessy:
Well, we so appreciate you making time to be with us today. We know you’re a busy person. We can hear those emails and text messages coming in, and we hope it’s not anything urgent, but we just so appreciate you making this time. We’re excited to see where you take Rice, and I know Teresa is doubly excited to see where you take Rice, so we’ll let you go, but I just wanted to do that with our very sincere thanks.
Reginald DesRoches:
Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Thank you. As Erin mentioned at the start of this episode, this season, we are going to have one episode for each guest, which means that we’ll include our recap within the same episode. And for that reason, let’s go ahead and start talking about what we heard as we talked to Reggie. Erin, what were your thoughts?
Erin Hennessy:
It was just such a delightful conversation, and what I was really struck by was the energy that he brought to that conversation. And I don’t know if it’s first-year president energy or fall-semester-kicking-off energy or if that’s just who he is, but he’s clearly somebody who is energized by the work he’s doing, and it is just delightful to talk with him.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, and I would say, even going into that second year, we usually see a little bit of a drop in how presidents are thinking about the role. And he still has that love for the institution, first and foremost, in what he’s saying and what he’s doing. And I really appreciated that approach, too.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, it’s got to be so different to become a president at an institution that you have served already for a number of years versus coming in completely cold to a place that you don’t know. And so I am guessing that he would say there are different challenges and different gifts in that kind of transition. You don’t have to figure out where you park and you don’t have to get to know everybody fresh, but you do need to reintroduce yourself as a president and make sure that the perception sort of meets the position and meets the moment. Not that you say, “Well, now I’m the president and you need to treat me differently,” but making sure that people understand that you understand the shift that is involved, moving from a provost position to a presidency.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think he talked a bit about how he had recast himself into that new role, and I think that needs to be a concerted effort, and he talked about ways in which he had done that. And he also talked about something that I thought was interesting, 20% growth in undergraduate enrollment in four years.
We have a lot of institutions that are trying to do that because they’re so desperate to make sure that they keep their doors open, but to hear that Rice is looking to do that because they want to expand opportunity and they know they have the ability to do so, I just thought was so fascinating, and it’s also amazing to see that they’re hitting those marks. And just wanted to commend them for thinking about what that can look like in pairing that with doubling Black faculty and continuing to increase what those numbers look like. Their diversity efforts aren’t happenstance. They’re very strategic and he is still focused on that.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah. And you and I come at this conversation pretty regularly, he did mention making sure that faculty are also diverse, that the faculty is diversified, but he also specifically mentioned staff. And I think so often institutions focus on diversifying their student body and diversifying their faculty and often leave out staff. And you and I both know that sometimes the most impactful relationship that a student has at an institution is with staff. It isn’t necessarily with faculty. And that was certainly the case for me as an undergraduate. And so I’m thrilled that his vision for continuing to diversify the university is truly holistic.
The one thing I didn’t raise, but I wish I had, is whether or not he has any sense yet that those plans to expand the student body, the student population, over four years if he’s sensing any shift or any slowdown as the political climate in Texas changes. Granted, Rice is a private institution, but we have often talked about the impact, and we talked about this with Kevin Tyler on his podcast, the impact of state policies, state politics, state legislation on college selection.
And while I don’t think it’s going to be something that will derail this planned growth, I do wonder if there is some impact as Texas pursues policies around reproductive healthcare, around support for trans students. I’d be interested in a year to see where they are and whether or not Reggie feels that this has slowed their progress at all.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I would guess if it was a different institution, perhaps, in Texas, that might be a conversation, but to be, I’m going to use a four-letter word, but to be in the top-20 for US News and World Report and to have an 8% acceptance rate, I think that gives them a little bit more freedom to explore what growth can look like. And as we talk about some of the other institutions that are in that elite cadre, they have to, if they’re thinking about expanding opportunities, so they are allowing for diversity and they are allowing for greater numbers of students to benefit from their education, they have to be willing to sacrifice potentially some of those metrics like rankings.
Because there is the potential for their selectivity to potentially shift or their acceptance rate to shift. So I’m not sure if the institution will necessarily be able to separate out if it is based on growth and what that looks like from a metric standpoint, from numbers, or if it’s tied to political environment or if it’s tied to demographics or what it might be. But I applaud them for trying-
Erin Hennessy:
Agreed.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
… because I’m not seeing that elsewhere.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, and the faculty and staff side might be a better place to look to see if there is any impact because, as you said, there are a number of factors that go into the undergraduate enrollment picture.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Right.
Erin Hennessy:
And so …
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Right
Erin Hennessy:
…whether or not recruiting and retaining workforce becomes more challenging because of politics would also be interesting to look at.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
But it’s also an institution that is willing to embrace politics. And that was in part talking about Ruth Simmons and hiring her. There is a real vulnerability in some ways that Reggie had in reaching out to her both personally and professionally, based on his relationship, but also thinking about that greater ecosystem within the state. And I do want to mention one thing, and that is that he met Dr. Simmons in 2017. And the reason that I’m mentioning that is for those who are reaching out to mentors, for those who are reaching out to coaches, for those who are reaching out to others that they respect in the industry, you might be building a relationship for today, but that relationship could have, many years later, some really amazing rewards to you and to them. So when you think about those relationships, this isn’t a 12-month engagement or commitment or relationship. This is a partnership that you’re building for a much longer timeframe.
Erin Hennessy:
And that again brings Valerie Sheares Ashby back to mind because she mentioned how long she’s worked with the professional coach that she’s been engaged with. And I don’t remember the exact number off the top of my head, but I believe it was multiple decades of collaboration with that particular coach. So you’re absolutely right. A good coach and a good mentor is not just “Get me my next job,” but it is a much longer engagement.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right?
Erin Hennessy
What else is on your mind?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
The last thing that I wanted to mention is just the way in which he approached his sharing of his cancer diagnoses. So talking about how it’s important for him to be open and transparent with his campus community because it was going to impact the campus community, aligns with the advice that we give. And I think that that’s so critically important. It is a personal disclosure that you’re sharing, but it does have repercussions and impact on others. And to have that recognition, and he knew it and he got validation of that from Dr. Simmons, but also from President Fenves.
And I think this was an opportunity for him to gut-check how he was going to go about this, but also to double down on leaning into community and vulnerability. And as he said, he was able to reap benefits and also provide some awareness for others of medical testing that maybe they should catch up on or make sure that they have up-to-date.
Erin Hennessy:
And I just think of presidents that we’ve known and talked with before who have had medical events, for lack of a better term. And I also think about the weight on the staff that do know when not everyone knows and how hard that is to carry for someone else. So I agree that our most fervent mantra is transparency, and certainly not to an extent where you’re sharing so much that you feel uncomfortable and people who are receiving that information might feel uncomfortable about the level of detail, but being able to be open and really vulnerable and human, I think is such a great gift to the Rice community and such an indicator of what his leadership style is and will be.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Agreed. And with that, thank you for listening to this episode. You can find links in the show notes to some of the topics and articles referenced, and remember that you can always contact us with feedback, questions or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow Trusted Voices wherever you get your podcasts, and we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our eyes. Until next time, thank you to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed, and the Volt team for a great episode. And thank you for listening.
