Valerie Sheares Ashby on Mentorship, Team Building and Measures of Success

Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Erin Hennessy, alongside Teresa Valerio Parrot. And in each episode we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher ed leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’re joined by a guest who will share their own experiences and perspectives. This week we’re talking with someone who has been on our list of dream guests since we first conceived of this podcast. We’re thrilled to be speaking today with Valerie Sheares Ashby, the President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. You will not want to skip through this conversation, but before we talk with President Sheares Ashby, Teresa, what’s on your mind?

I have so much to talk about, Erin, and part of why I have so much to talk about is I’m living out of a suitcase right now, and I know you’ve been doing the same. I have had three conferences in the last three weeks and just wanted to give a little bit of highlights about those. I’ll start first talking about NASPA and then maybe the two of us can talk about ACE, and then I’m happy to talk about PRSA as well. But just wanted to give a highlight of what I heard at NASPA and why I think it’s something for all of us to pay attention to. So I got to present two different sessions at NASPA, which was fantastic. One was just for vice presidents and one was to the general public, general attendee list. And it was interesting to hear the differences in what they were talking about.

For the student affairs vice presidents I heard this real fatigue in talking about the great resignation and they really weren’t that open to talking about it for student affairs or for other areas. So I thought that was curious. And they also were wanting to stay away from some other topics that talking about in public, but they were happy to talk about as vice presidents, like this conflict that they’re feeling in the cabinet among cabinet members. So it used to be that cabinet members maybe had some disagreement over budget, but they didn’t disagree about bigger fundamental leadership topics. And they said that tensions are getting a little bit high as they talk about a whole bunch of topics. So maybe some of that fatigue and frustration is shifting from how they’re working with everybody to instead how they’re thinking about working with their colleagues.

And then the last part that I wanted to note, and this comes right back into the communications world, is that the student affairs leaders and vice presidents, they want to talk about the SCOTUS cases that includes affirmative action and also loan forgiveness, and they want to be working on plans now. This aligns with what you and I talk about from a communication standpoint, which is we have a good enough sense that we only need one or two scenarios for that, and we should be finalizing plans now. And any leader who is not is really missing the opportunity to have the time and the runway to do this the right way. So Erin, what do you think about those three topics?

I appreciate you starting us off with something really easy to parse and work our way through. I would-

I mean, I didn’t want us to start with anything too easy. Let’s just go ahead and solve SCOTUS and the great resignation.

Yeah, absolutely. And then we’ll take the rest of the week off. I do share your surprise that vice presidents of student affairs are tired of or reluctant to talk about the great resignation. And I think there are probably any number of theories about why that is, but it clearly is something we’re still grappling with. And we’ve seen data from polling and other survey work that folks are still looking to leave jobs or not coming into higher education. We’re still struggling to fill positions and particularly those that are most directly student facing.

So I’m fascinated to know why they’re reluctant to continue talking about that issue. Is it that they’re just frustrated because they don’t have an answer? Do they feel like the institution is part of the problem in terms of benefits and salaries? And so how can they fix it when the institution isn’t giving them the resources to do so? I’m really interested in that and would love to have been able to sit in that lobby and sip some coffee and dig in further with folks to better understand why they didn’t want to talk about that issue.

And I’ll give you my gut sense. I think the reality is that they are fatigued and it’s a lot harder for them to be fatigued and to continue to have this conversation. It’s easier just not to have the conversation because I think for a number of them, this aligns with what we’re seeing with presidents. They’re tired and they’re thinking about whether or not they want to stay. And so I think let’s just not have the conversation rather than have the introspection right now. That’s my gut.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. When we talk in a little bit about what we heard at ACE, one of the data points that I know is going to come up is around whether or not presidents are tired of their own jobs and looking to exit those. So I think every indication is that we still have a really significant retention and recruitment issue across the industry, across the institution, and I’m just not sure that not talking about it is going to get us where we need to go on that.

And I think that aligns with what their frustration is with their institutions for not talking about getting institutions and teens poop in a group to talk about what’s going to happen with SCOTUS and how they’re going to communicate that to their campuses because we have the luxury of time. We’ve had that since the fall when we heard the oral arguments. So for them to be frustrated that their institutions aren’t moving forward says a lot. Those campuses should be ready now and again, there aren’t that many scenarios that we need to be thinking through and we need to be thinking for some of these about how we’re going to be doing business once those decisions come out.

And again, this is sort of a circular conversation, but you and I were in DC and even at the ACE annual meeting, granted we weren’t in the presidents and chancellor’s only sessions, but I didn’t hear a ton of conversation about SCOTUS and what a decision is going to mean for us moving forward. So I really hope that our industry isn’t, I’m going to quote you to you, isn’t counting on hope being a strategy because it’s a fairly crummy strategy. We are going to need a response. We are going to need to shift our approaches to a number of different things. And even if this SCOTUS decision comes down and manages to surprise us, it’s clearly still going to be this issue around affirmative action and admissions is going to continue to be an issue. And if SCOTUS doesn’t decide in the way that some political movements in our country want SCOTUS to decide, the action’s going to move to the state level. So whether it’s this summer or next summer or sometime in between, this is an issue that isn’t going away and we need to be ready to address it.

Agreed. And I think it’s interesting because I always bring athletics into this because it’s just popping everywhere. And part of the conversation that I’m seeing around NIL is that institutions had the ability to do something and then states had the ability to do something, and now we’re waiting for the federal government and Congress to do something. So we need to be really careful about when we kick the can and who we’re kicking it to. And that makes me nervous for our industry. But Erin, let’s talk about ACE and the two of us meeting up in DC and taking on the city.

I would love to talk about the ACE annual meeting because you know it is one that is near and dear to my heart. I spent six years working in the public affairs office at the American Council on Education, and the annual meeting was one of my prides and joys during that time. I was really excited for us to be in the room for a lot of these conversations. I was particularly excited that this was one of the years that ACE releases the results of its American College President Survey, which is one of the largest and richest collections of data around the American college presidency. And it’s one that I love digging through. Some of the top line numbers, and Teresa, you and I had made a bet before we went around what the average tenure for the American college presidency would be. I think I-

And, Erin. Erin, tell me a little bit more about this bet that we made. Go ahead.

Your impression of my mother is getting better and better. I think I aimed for four and a half and what was yours?

I was at five and something, what was I at? Do you remember?

It was definitely longer than mine. I think it was about five and a half, 5.1.

I think it was maybe like… There we go.

5.1.

5.1. Yeah, I was a little bit, as I said, I’m going to be a little bit more optimistic.

If we were playing by The Price is Right rules, Bob, you win for being the closest without going over. The average tenure was 5.9 years, which is just more than two and a half years less than the length of tenure reported in 2006. Unsurprisingly, the American college presidency remains, as one trade publication put it several years ago, pale, male, and stale. So it is a lot of White men in their sixties. But what was really interesting, and I know you want to weigh in on this data point, is that more than half of the presidents surveyed, 55% plan to step down from their current position in the next five years. That is going to be an enormous sea change for our institutions. And it’s going to be a really interesting time to watch who is coming into the presidency, both what are the skillsets that boards are looking for, but also who wants to take on this deeply, deeply challenging, sometimes enormously frustrating job and take on these institutions.

So I’ll pick up from there because if half were planning to leave within five years, one in four anticipated stepping down within the next two years, think about that. I just sat and thought about the numbers, and as you and I talked about, we think that ACE should rerun this survey and have interim results in about two to three years to see if that happened because 25% is significant. And it reminded me a little bit about this report that the Chronicle recently did, and it’s called Welcome to Hell.

And I loved that title for the report because it reflects how we’re hearing about presidencies and how people are thinking about it. And specifically, there’s this chart and this data that talks through involuntary presidential departures. And the interesting thing about that is, this ties back to the ACE report, there are still pretty consistent areas in which presidents are losing their jobs over, and that includes finances, that includes enrollment, and it includes athletics.

And so if you look also at the ACE study, they looked at what the topics were that presidents said that they needed more training and or development for. And this won’t be surprising. Academic issues are on there. There are finances, they’re at admissions. So what’s the topic that’s missing? How about athletics? It actually was one of the areas where presidents felt they didn’t need training, which was fascinating to me. There’s this blind spot there. So there is this disconnect between how they’re losing their jobs and where they think they’re confident and comfortable with their own skillsets. And that I thought was just amazing.

And it aligns nicely with the other batch of survey data that was released at the meeting, which was the Inside Higher Ed, What Keeps Presidents Up at Night survey. That survey, you and I roll our eyes every year at one particular set of questions that ask presidents to assess, for example, whether or not there are issues related to race in higher education. And a large number of them say, “Oh yes, most certainly there are.” And then it pivots and says, are there issues related to race on your campus? And the vast majority of them say, “No, race relations on my campus are great”, and the law of large numbers tells us that that can’t possibly be true for every president that is responding to these surveys.

So you and I spent some time in the lobby bar talking about what is going on with presidents? Are they trying to will some things to be true? Are they simply not aware of what is going on day-to-day because they are engaged in other portions of their job description? The consistency of answers around some of these topics is really just mind-boggling, particularly three years after the death of George Floyd. And as we continue to see race issues roil this country, I’m just absolutely boggled that that question consistently is answered the way it is.

And I think if you roll up all of those areas that were identifying as potential soft spots for presidents, if you look at the tenures for those who were around for quite a bit, they were able to wrangle those topics. So I think that actually leads really well into our interview with President Sheares Ashby because she followed someone who was in his position for so many years. And at the same point, she has really great perspectives on her own of how to talk about these really tough topics.

And you’re absolutely right. There is just one more data point that I want to pull out of the ACPS survey. And I think this is something I’ll bookmark so that we can really dig into it in the future. But there is a question around, or a set of data around perception of disclosures within the search process. And as we’re looking at potentially large scale turnover in the presidency, consistently, presidents of color report at lower rates that they feel that they received a realistic assessment of the institution’s current challenges, a full and accurate disclosure of the institution’s financial condition and a clear understanding of the boards and the institution’s expectations. And those differentials are about 10% lower for presidents of color than they are for White presidents. So I think there’s something really interesting to be talked about there. Anyway, I think those data points are really interesting and I think they’re worth further discussion. But I don’t want to delay our conversation with President Sheares Ashby any further. So I will share her bio with our listeners and we’ll get right into this conversation.

Today. We’re absolutely thrilled to have with us Valerie Sheares Ashby, who began her tenure as the President of University of Maryland, Baltimore County on August 1st, 2022.

She is the first woman to serve in this role, and she joined UMBC from Duke University where she served as Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to her tenure at Duke, President Sheares Ashby served on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired its chemistry department from 2012 to 2015 as a researcher, President Sheares Ashby focused on synthetic polymer chemistry with an emphasis on designing and synthesizing materials for biomedical applications. And she holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed post-doctoral research in Germany as a National Science Foundation, post-doctoral fellow and NATO postdoctoral fellow. President Sheares Ashby, welcome to Trusted Voices.

Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.

President Sheares Ashby, I’m excited to talk to you too. And I have to admit, I kept repeating wow to myself with each title, accolade, career milestone and all of what you’ve accomplished as I was reading your biography. I have a little bit of a professional crush on you, I have to admit. And I’m curious how you prepared to take on the role of President and set your own course for UMBC when you followed someone who was synonymous for leading UMBC and at times had his own brand eclipse that of the institution. Can you let us know how you approached this role to make it your own?

Sure. So perhaps I’ll back up a little bit and say a little bit about how I think this happened. Okay. So let me start by saying I have incredible mentors and I have [inaudible 00:16:35] them since I was 17 years old and stepped on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I met my first mentor there who is still a mentor now, and they have helped me to walk out every step of my career, and I had no idea what it was going to be. So when I was 17, I knew I loved chemistry, and that’s all that I knew. I did not think that I was going to be a faculty member. I didn’t even consider getting a PhD, none of that. My sister had gone to medical school. I thought I might try that. I fainted at the sight of your blood do that’s not against them, but I’ve always loved teaching and chemistry. I just didn’t know what career that was.

And every step of the way my mentors have guided me. I mean, literally guided me. So my first mentor introduced me to a National Science Foundation undergraduate research program for underrepresented students in STEM. And the program was to prepare them to go to graduate school and then to become faculty. I participated in the program not having any clue about what it meant to become faculty. And then my next mentor was my PhD advisor who said, “You can be a faculty member.” And I thought both of my mentors at that point were saying, “You’re a faculty member.” And I thought, this is crazy, but I love teaching and research. And they said, that’s what the job, that’s what it is. And then my next mentor was an administrator, Holden Thorpe.

And Holden said, “Oh, you’re a leader.” And so I thought, well, this is interesting. I’ll be of service to my colleagues as chair, but I thought I was going back to do what I loved, which was to be a faculty member. And all three of my mentors at that point said, “No, you’re going forward.” And I thought, that’s crazy. And so they said, “Well, maybe you’re a dean and go practice interviewing.” And I did that and I was like, “Oh, I love that job.” It was like being a department chair times 38, and I say times 38 because I had 38 units in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences from dance to philosophy to economics to computer science. It was beautiful. But every job I’ve had has been my favorite job at the time, every single one. And I had no idea before doing any of them that I was going to be doing it.

So I was in my seventh year at Duke in the second five-year contract, and I love that job. I love those people. Oh my God, yeah, I love that job. And someone from a search firm called me about this job. Someone I knew. Actually, she had run the search for the Duke jobs, so I knew her and she told me Freeman was retiring, and I didn’t know. Freeman, by the way, is another one of my mentors, but I didn’t talked to him in a while, and I thought she was calling as all search firms do to ask me for names of people I would recommend to put in the search. And my mind started working. She’s like, no, I’m asking you. And I said, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Who follows Coach K? Right, right. Who does that? And I will tell you that I called all of my mentors and each one of them saw the values, values, not values, values of UMBC. And each one, particularly Holden said, “That’s you.”

That’s excellent.

I had no idea. I mean, literally in January, I was doing my job last year at Duke, and in February I was submitting an application, in April I was announced and I didn’t know at Christmas last year that I would be in a new job. So that’s how it’s happened.

I think it’s so refreshing to hear your passion and your positivity for the industry and for the experiences that you’ve had, because I think that really makes a difference for how you approach the job and how you think about what the different pieces entail.

It is, I think of it as a calling. I did not wake up thinking I was going to be a college president or desiring to be one. I loved every job I’ve had, and it’s just come to me. But what I would say is that if you do not love academics, and I mean people now, I mean, if you don’t love faculty and the way our crazy minds think. I mean, we create knowledge so of course we don’t think the rules apply to us. But if you don’t love that, this is not for you. If you don’t love students who just are going to be students, they’re figuring out their lives. If you don’t love that, they’re going to protest. And then this is not for you.

I love it when my students protest because it tells me they care about something that’s bigger than themselves. Even if they’re dead wrong, doesn’t matter. If you don’t love staff and the people who actually make this thing work. So that’s why I’ve loved every job, because I love my people and I love our purpose. So, and these jobs are hard and they’re complex and things happen over which you have no control. But every day it’s thrilling to me. Every day somebody’s life is changing. Well, it’s a faculty, student, staff, community member. We’re doing great work. And if that’s your calling, this may be for you.

I’m going to speak for Theresa here, and she’s usually the more gushy one. But to hear someone speak about this job with such evident joy is so refreshing. And I almost wonder if there is a connection. We talk with a lot of presidents in our line of work who had that path laid out, and once they got to faculty member, they were plotting the course to associate dean to dean to provost to president. And I think some of them, because the job has changed so much in the last five to 10 years, arrived at this finish line and realized the thing that they had been chasing is has changed so profoundly, and perhaps they aren’t interested in it, skilled at it or willing to do it.

And I’m fascinated by your trajectory where you said every job I had was the greatest job I’ve ever had, and that this wasn’t an end goal for you, but coming to this role at a large public institution, how did you prepare for all of these disparate pieces of what the job is today? I’m sure being a dean in Trinity College at Duke was running a small institution, but coming into the public sphere and coming into this large institution with such a great reputation, how did you think about the different parts of the job and how to prepare for them in the days before you actually stepped into the role?

Sure. So let me say a little bit about coming from a private to a public and also just I have to remind people here, I spent my entire life K through age 56 that I am now, except for those seven years at Duke, in public schools. So I’m a public school kid. This is what I do. And I love the mission of public institutions. And even the reason I love being at Duke is because we have a little bit of a public institution goal. We were trying to deliver this amazing education to this breadth of students who came from all over the world, not just the state of North Carolina, but the impact that we wanted to make was really about changing lives and making the lives of human beings better, that’s public. So that private to public, it’s not as big of a deal as people think because my whole life has been in a public institution.

But as far as preparation is concerned, I go back to my mentors. One of the things that they have helped me to do is to say yes to the things that are good for me and actually are great for me, and to say no to the things that may be great for someone else. And so in doing that, I’ll pick on Holden just for a second, because he had navigated UNC Chapel Hill at every level. He introduced me to, well, how does an alumni association work? Well, how does fundraising work? Well, how does institutional advancement and development work? When he was the chancellor, I was his COI officer for the university, so many different experiences, but I got that from my PhD advisor. He said, “Okay, you might not ever want to run a company, but you’re going to watch me do it. And you’re going to learn how to engage with industry partners.”

And I learned from Hank Frierson, what does inclusive excellence mean and how do you work with graduate students across the disciplines. So they’ve put me in places all along to learn things. And then when I went to Trinity, it’s a small school. We were 80% of the undergraduates, about half of the doctoral students at Duke and across all the disciplines and essentially the only core discipline that I’ve never led is engineering. And we even had computer science within the college. So many of those experiences were very helpful. Now, here’s the other piece that… I have two more pieces. One is I have a leadership coach, and I will tell people all the time that if you think I did something well, that was a team effort. And if you think I didn’t do something, well, that’s my fault. That’s the way that has to go. You can never be fully prepared is what I’m getting. I think the one thing I do well that I will say I do well is that I hire phenomenal people, and you-

But I would also guess that you support them well too based on how you’ve described all of this. And that means you allow phenomenal people to be that much more phenomenal.

Well, I appreciate that. And I will tell you, one of my favorite people in the world, Sally Kornbluth, who’s about to become the president of MIT, who is the president of MIT, but her inauguration is upcoming, was my provost at Duke. And what she did was let me do my job. Oh my gosh. She was completely supportive, but she let me be me, and she let me do my job. And if I can hire great people and let them be themselves and let them do their jobs, then I don’t have to be able to do everything. I cannot do everything. So that’s the way I feel about it. And then I’m always going to be surprised and I’m going to go get some help when I’m surprised.

I want to stitch all of that onto throw pillows and leave them on different people’s couches in their leadership suites. Because I think that point about hiring great people and letting them do the job, so many times we see folks, as you say, get surprised by something and they decide I’m the smartest person in the room, or the buck stops with me. And so I need to be elbows deep in that. And it’s sometimes the case, but not all the time. And if you haven’t staffed yourself well enough, then you are going to be surprised, and you are going to have to find yourself elbows deep, and that’s not how that job is supposed to work.

No, and one of the things that I do recognize is how new I am at this. So you should know this is all Valerie, all of eight months in the role. So ask me these things maybe eight years and I will have more details. But that sense of you will always be surprised. Let’s just be clear. What I have decided is that we’re in the business of people. There are some more than 15,000 people out there. We’re all just people doing the best that we can, and sometimes that best is surprising. And so that’s just the nature of the beast.

But I will say that just having that team, that’s my safety, whether it’s my leadership team, my mentorship team, my leadership coach, even people who are not related to the institution, who are just wise human beings in my life. I have a whole life that’s not this, and then you just do the next right thing, and the buck by the way, does stop with me. That’s the difference. When you talk about how the job has changed, I think the buck has always stopped with the president, but it’s really clear that something could be, as I tell people, something could be happening right now on my campus, and in 20 seconds I could lose my job and I don’t even know what that thing was.

Yeah. Right.

But the buck stops with me.

And you’re aware of it because I’m always surprised with some presidents who don’t have that awareness, and I will say, I’m going to join you in the Holden Thorpe fan club as well. He’s been so gracious with his time and his advice to me, and he just has this great sense about him to help you just have these personal epiphanies.

Yes, yes, he was. He has fantastic.

So there has been recent attention given to a wide swath of public institutions, and specifically there have been questions asked about what type of institution is going to survive and what type of institution is going to thrive in the future. I think that framing makes some big assumptions, and for that reason, I’m curious what you wish the media would cover for institutions like UMBC? How should the industry think about your future and where you thrive and the pressures that institutions like yours face?

Oh, I love the question. Let’s see where to begin. So let me just say that I don’t think I’m naively positive about our future. I think I’m holding back in my positivity, but I don’t think it’s naive at all. This is an institution. Have you ever read our vision statement? I should ask you that question. If you’ve never read it, I think everybody in the world ought to read it because I actually think it’s the vision statement for higher education, public higher education.

Tell us about it just in case our listeners haven’t read it.

Everywhere I go, I talk about it. So it’s actually the first time I read it was the first time I realized, “Oh, this may actually be for me.” It says, “We are redefining excellence in higher education through an inclusive culture.” Now, right there, there are a lot of measures for excellence in higher education, but rarely do people say, we will not call ourselves excellent if we are not inclusive.

I mean, just think about it. That’s a bold statement, but it goes on to say that we’re going to do this through innovative teaching and learning, which we deliver on that here in some significant ways through research across the disciplines and also through civic engagement. That’s a big calling card for us. We care about our communities. If they’re not thriving, we’re not thriving. I look out my window at the city of Baltimore, we have an obligation and we take it seriously. It goes on to say that we’re going to advance knowledge, but that’s what every institution should be doing. But then it attaches to that we’re going to advance knowledge, economic prosperity, and social justice.

So now we have a different mission. And so this is why we’re public, because when our students come on this campus, we can change their economic trajectory for their families and for generations to come. That’s the kid I want on this campus. Some can write the check, but I want a lot of them that cannot, that need because this is about changing the trajectory. And then we have this social justice mission, which the world totally needs at this moment. And it’s not about activism. It’s not about whatever the hot buttoned words are. For us, it is just a simple statement that we refuse any hierarchy of human value, period. Period.

And then it ends with this beautiful statement because all of that feels really big and it can feel overwhelming. But the beautiful statement with which it ends, it says, “We’re going to welcome and inspire inquisitive minds from all backgrounds” that’s how we’re going to do it. That’s easy. And every single human on my campus can decide that today we’re going to be welcoming. I don’t care who you see, they’re an inquisitive mind from my… It could be a faculty staff, student member. What if I just welcomed minds, inquisitive minds. Welcome. It says welcome and inspire. So I’m going to say something positive. Every single human can do that on this campus. Every single human can do it in the world. That’s what we do. That’s so powerful that there’s no day that that’s going out of date. As a matter of fact, right now, the world needs that and higher education needs that more than it ever has.

And then we do it. We deliver. We produce more students of color, I believe more Black students in computing than any other institution in the country. We produce more students of color doing statistics in math and biosciences than any other institution in the country. That’s not about numbers. That’s about being welcoming and inspiring and having a culture and climate that refuses any hierarchy of human value. That’s what that is. So you ask me why I love this job. That’s what we wake up every day and do. Then there’s all the complexity and drama of people. But if that’s your why, then the other pieces get right sized. So I don’t worry about our standing because we’re standing on something that’s just so powerful. What we have to do is to make sure that the world knows it and we can recruit and retain people who care about what we care about and want to make the difference that we want to make.

That’s such a beautiful pivot point to the next question. That language is so inspirational, and I can see how it is so motivational for the people that elect to be part of that culture. But I also know that in higher education, we’re at this moment where people are saying, “That’s all well and good, but show me the value.” And I think higher ed continues to struggle to answer that question in a really compelling way. So I’m just wondering how you’re thinking about as you talk with legislators in the state of Maryland, as you talk with the governor’s office, and when you talk with parents and employers and all of those folks who are looking to us to prove ourselves a little bit more, how you take that really inspirational language and translate that into words or metrics that mean something to those folks who are really skeptical audiences right now.

Sure. So one of the things that I should say is that I could not be in public higher education in any state. This joy is not stealth. No. Because if I can’t be me and do what we do, I can’t be in every state right now in public higher education. So that’s the first statement that I would admit. Maryland is a phenomenal state for higher education. The university system of Maryland is incredible. The leadership is incredible. The values, doesn’t matter whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat and the governor’s office. As a matter of fact, when I took this job, there was a Republican governor. Now there’s a… Didn’t matter. I took the job, because public higher education here has not gotten caught up in all of the drama and politics. It’s just about how do we serve these citizens that we love in this state?

How do we serve the families and the communities? And Maryland still believes education is a way. Everybody doesn’t need a bachelor’s degree or a PhD, but we still believe in education in the state, and we still have great support for higher education. So that’s one thing. So I chose very specifically where I was going statewide, but when I talk to folks, then I still have to prove these are still state dollars and the dollars of our citizens. And the beauty is that our kids leave here and they get… I say kids, but anybody who’s a student of mine, I think of them as my child.

I too. Yeah, I know.

So our students love the state of Maryland. They love the DC Maryland area. Many of them remain here after being educated here. And we are doing incredible workforce development therefore for our state. A lot of that is in STEM fields just because of the nature of the industries that are in this area, but also for the federal government and lots of employers here in those spaces. So we are a great producer of talent, and that’s an easy sell because everybody is looking for great talent at every level, whether it’s a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree. And we are certainly big STEM, as I say, big STEM producers, but we also have incredible humanities and social sciences, and we don’t disconnect those things. And so that workforce piece, the community piece, and our graduates are leading all over this state and federal government and nonprofits and industry. It doesn’t hurt the speaker of the House is a proud UNBC alumn. We have folks who are leading all over, and I think our graduates and their impact on the economy and the workforce and on communities, that’s our calling card.

I just wanted to add onto that question because some of our listeners may know that Maryland recently was in the vanguard of states that have removed a requirement for a lot of state jobs that people hold a bachelor’s degree. And is that coming up in conversations that you’re having either with legislators or leaders in the state, or do they see that as separate issues? Is it a question about the value of college or is it more of a social justice approach?

I don’t know that it’s either. So I will say there’s not a question about the value of college, let me say that. And I don’t know that it’s necessarily a social justice approach, although some people will have that approach. I think it’s just the reality that there are a lot of ways to have a great life, and this happens to have been our way of having a great life, and it will be the way for many Marylanders, but there will be jobs and lives that people can have, maybe with certificates or some kind of upskilling. We also want to participate in that, and we do in a significant way, and we will do even more of that. So it’s not just about the degrees that we’re giving, the typical credentials, but there are other types of credentials that people can have and have a great life.

Absolutely.

I’m going to shift our conversation just a little bit, and I’m going to talk about it. Let’s do it. Let’s talk about rankings. So much of the attention given to higher education in the media and through public discourse focuses on some of those elements that rankings value, like endowments, low college acceptance rates and other prestige markers, and the ways in which you’ve talked about UMBC are so different. You’ve talked a bit about this, but I’d love to hear more about what success looks like and feels like for you, and what are the types of measures and success that you aim to reach based on how you’ve talked about UMBC and what do you celebrate as well?

Sure. I so appreciate the question. So let me say that this is one where, let me walk it out step by step here. So because we believe… Note that we didn’t say we’re redefining excellence in higher education through inclusion. We didn’t say that. We’re through an inclusive culture. And so we’re not just doing inclusion for the sake of inclusion. There’s some more that comes after that. We’re doing inclusion for the sake of being excellence in teaching research in civic area. So what I want people to understand is that while our focus is on being inclusive and making sure that all of the talent that is possible has an opportunity to participate in knowledge creation and solving problems, we’re doing that for the sake of being excellent. So I actually don’t need to change the measures if we do this. What I’m saying is if we do this right, we’ll be even more excellent.

So for me, when I think about what matters as far as the measures, it matters to me that we’re one of the top institutions in innovative teaching. That’s a ranking, but that’s because we did it through an inclusive culture. So if you do it right, you don’t have to make the people change the rules, because excellence is not at a challenge with diversity. You see what I mean? Okay. So we just became a research one institution.

Congratulations.

That’s somebody else… Yeah. I’m so excited. That was long before I got here. That work was going on for decades. But what we’re going to do is inclusive research. And if we do that, our solutions will be better. Our grant proposals will be more successful. Our papers will, because we have included people, and therefore you get the most creative ideas and solutions.

It ought to make us better by those same measures that everybody else is measuring. And so I don’t worry about the measures needing to change. What I’m saying is we’re going to be better if we do it through an inclusive approach. So for example, I think about how are we going to deal with climate change? How are we going to deal with cybersecurity and privacy and the ethics around that and unintended consequences when 19% of the graduates are women and everybody is, “What? In computing only 19% are women? And we’re wondering why the ethics are shaky.” So excellence is achieved through inclusion, and if we do it our way, we refuse to do it the other way. If we do it our way, we will actually be able to compete in ways that we would not have been able to compete by other people’s measures. So that’s how I think about it. So it’s the only way for us to achieve excellence. What I wish and what I hope for is that the people who have achieved excellence without being inclusive will ask themselves what kind of excellence is it?

That’s great.

And if your measures allow you to check the bots without being inclusive, something is wrong with the measures.

Agreed. We could keep you all day and just continue to absorb this joy. But I did want to ask you before we let you go back to everything that I’m sure is on your plate today. You talked earlier in our conversation and in other interviews we’ve read with you about the importance of mentorship and about coaching. And I worked with a leadership coach last year. It was a transformational experience for me, both personally and professionally, and I have been evangelizing for others and encouraging them to make that commitment as well.

Can you talk a little bit about how you, if you were in this position, made the case to those around you that this was not something you were doing because of a perceived area for development, but instead an opportunity to build on strengths? I think so many organizations see bringing in a coach as part of a performance improvement plan as opposed to a proactive building of strengths. And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that for listeners that might be thinking about wanting to take that step and bring an executive coach on board to work with them.

I so appreciate that perspective. So what I say is, and it ties mentorship and coaching together. The reason I have mentors I have discovered is because there is no reason for me to know how to do something that I’ve never done. Zero.

Agreed. Agreed.

So I have to say that to my graduate students who think they should know how to do graduate school. “You’ve never been. Why do you think you know how to do something you’ve never… You’re smart, you can learn, but coming in the door, you don’t know.” And so I say to them, “Why should I know?” By the way, it gets back to your question about Freeman and being synonymous with the institution and being such an icon in higher education all so incredibly deserved. He’s just incredible.

Agreed.

But I don’t get hung up because the first thing is I know they hired me because they hired me. They know me and they know who I am, and all I have to do is be me. The second thing I realized is that why would I know how to do a job that I have never done? He did it for 30 years. Day one didn’t look like the 30th year. And every good leader, this is what I want to keep telling people. You think that people are not getting help because you just see the outcome. You don’t know. We spent hours preparing for that presentation that you saw and thought it was just that’s what they do. That’s who they are. No, we thought about the approach. We thought about the audiences. We thought about what questions might be posed. We thought about the impact on a different community. That’s what coaching does for you. It makes you your best. It’s not a deficit model.

It’s the same thing as mentoring. It’s not a deficit model. It is about helping you to show up fully as your authentic self, as effectively as you can with enough humility to know that you should not know how to do anything you’ve never done before. I don’t care how much… There’s no preparation until you’ve stood in the shoes. So yeah, I have actually chaired my mentor, by the way, I tell you his name. His name is John Baird. He’s extraordinaire. B-A-I-R-D. Just published a book called Love Leadership, which is unbelievable. And I have shared my coach with people on my leadership team. There’ll be moments, life shifts or something new happens and say, “Oh, you need John.” And I probably have three or four people on my leadership team who are with John at any particular time, including me. I’m always with him.

Because we’re all learning together and developing. We did a version of that with all of my department chairs when I was at Duke. They called it, I loved it, they called it chairapy. That wasn’t what the name was.

That’s great. I love that.

Actually, I was in chairapy, if you will, at USC Chapel Hill, and I thought, this is amazing. Be able to get that kind of feedback from people. It was coaching, but it was more group coaching. And then I created it at Duke and it was great because why would you know how to be a department chair when you’re a psychologist? You’ve never been a department chair. You’ve never managed people.

Isn’t that how higher education works? We have people who become experts and haven’t taught in the classroom, and suddenly they’re the professor. And we continue to have people either sink or swim in these opportunities, and sometimes we give them grace and sometimes we don’t. So I love the way in which you’re talking about the intentionality of building skills, resources, and leadership.

Well, it’s an interesting thing. There’s a little bit of arrogance. So what day are you going to let a first year medical student operate?

Right.

That’s insane. But there’s this thing in higher education where we don’t even let kindergarten teachers do that. We do not do that. But we will take a freshly minted PhD who probably has never taught, or the buck has never stopped with them in a classroom. They may have done TA work, but it’s different when it’s your course. And we will let them teach 300 students for whom that is their only experience in the course. They don’t get to do over it. This is their organic chemistry one course, and we will put that new person in that classroom and just let it happen. Something is a little arrogant or either it’s naive or I’m not sure what it is, but we do it over and over again.

It’s just how it’s been, right? What we say is, that’s what I did, and that’s what they’ll do.

Yes. So I don’t believe in that. There are people who are naturally great teachers. They just come out of graduate school and they’re just phenomenal teachers, but we don’t even teach them how to, in my case, run a research group. My PhD advisor did that for me. He knew I did not know how to do that, and he taught me every single day by his example of how to run a research group. But that’s what we do. We don’t teach people how to teach and we don’t teach people… Why should a chemist know how to run an institution? That’s insane. I make molecules, and there is some interesting thinking that overlaps, but I was not trained to do this.

So I just want my faculty and staff and students to not be overwhelmed with a sense of I’m supposed to know how to do everything. So I think that that’s how we want to invest in our people. Every single student we admit, I have a responsibility to their success. They have a responsibility. But I also have. Same with our faculty, same with our staff, same with our leaders. So yeah, it’s an interesting thing that we do that I would like us not to do, so.

President Sheares Ashby, thank you so much for your time today. I love the way that you’ve talked about your leadership positions and also how people have given to you and you’ve given to others. It’s been really inspirational. We have a lot to think about as we prepare for our debrief. And we’ll be back in your feed shortly to share what we hope will take away from this episode. Between now and then you can find links in the show notes to some of the topics and articles referenced. Be sure to follow Trusted Voices wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, thanks to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed, and the Volt team for a great episode, and thank you for listening.