Denny Roberts
We’ve not been including the truth. And it’s so important. I think, if we’re going to create inclusive communities, we have to own the reality of what our systems have created. We have to recognize them, and we have to critically examine how they can be modified, to make a difference. And so I think that that’s a very exciting forefront for us. And you know, diversity has always been important to Student Affairs people. It’s not a new topic. It certainly looks different today. It has different details. Because we basically, were just drilling down.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we have a special conversation with another student affairs legend Denny Roberts. Denny was ACPA president, a senior higher ed leader in the US and in Qatar, and a deep learner and contributor around leadership and many other things. Thank you so much for joining us today Denny. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week. On Wednesdays find more details about this episode or browser archives and studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is brought to you by Stylus visit styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. Today’s episode is also sponsored by Symplicity, a true partner Symplicity sports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him is I’m a speaker, consultant and coach, you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe people’s. Denny, let’s get to you, I’m so glad that you’re joining us today. And here for this conversation. We talked a little bit leading up to this about the many different places we go. And I’m sort of excited about where we plan to go and where we end up going. But let’s just begin by hearing a little bit about your career and your life journey as a leader as a scholar, and maybe even a musician. And anything more. Tell us a little bit about you.

Denny Roberts
Well, first of all, thank you so very much, I’m honored that you would include me on a list of people to, to chat with. And, you know, I really enjoy these kinds of things. Especially because I am now retired. Sometimes I’ve referred to myself as semi retired because I really can’t accept the concept of being retired. But I really am honored by it and hope that you know, this reflection time will have an opportunity to, you know, resonate with some people and bring up some issues that folks might want to think about. So I was I’m a native of Colorado, I was actually born in Arizona, but I grew up in Colorado and Boulder these days has a reputation of being kind of a glitzy, glamorous, expensive sort of place. It was not when I grew up there. It was actually just an amazing place because it had the University of Colorado had the National Bureau of Standards at the National Center Center for Atmospheric Research. So it had scientific and educational focus. But there were a lot of just regular folks who live there. And my family actually moved there in the 50s. To own a farm and worked on farms, I lived in the countryside for the early part of my youth. And what’s significant about Boulder was that it was kind of an unpretentious place in the 50s and 60s. But yet it was very progressive, very educationally focused, and a place where people were just really kind of thinking in different sorts of ways. And you know, of course, people kind of stereotype, the hippie movement. You know, they think of the hill of University of Colorado where a lot of political and kind of social things occurred, particularly in the 1960s. Why was it around that all the time. But I thought that was the way everybody lived, right. And what was amazing was that I had no one in my family who had ever been to university before, even though we lived in a university town. And so I had no clue what higher education was really all about. But I primarily learned that from high school classmates. And I remember high school classmates getting awfully dedicated to their application processes and talking about schools like Dartmouth and Middlebury. And I was just thinking like, why on earth did you go to school like that when you could go to Colorado State. And so I had no idea that higher education was, in fact, organized by a hierarchy of a leader. I had no idea, let alone how to actually begin an oath negotiate it, but fortunately enough, I had classmates that kind of gave me the aspiration. And you mentioned music. I had fallen for music at a very young age, age five, you know, so I started playing piano at five. And by the time I was in middle school, and especially in high school, I was competing in various juried events as well as kind of public arts events. And the result of that was that, when I started applying to colleges, I was offered scholarships for music. And that became very critical because at the point that I went to university, my family didn’t have a tradition of funding, it didn’t really have an idea of what that was all about. But those scholarships really helped me fund my education. And so I chose Colorado State because they gave me the best package. And because it wasn’t in my backyard, just far enough away, right? just far enough away to get some space, you know, so that was really a good thing for me to do. And I had, again, no clue about what Colorado State was all about in those days. And I was primarily engaged in music at the very beginning. And I played piano string bass I sang. So I did a variety of kinds of musical things. But I also got really connected with Student Activities at Colorado State. And literally in the second summer, in between my first year and second year of college. I have a friend who was supposed to be on the orientation staff in the summertime. Well, he backed out at the last minute and, and told the director, I have this friend that might be interested. And so I had already taken a job for the summer. But when they called and said, Would you be interested, I snagged it immediately, and thought that that would be a great thing. So literally, that was the beginning of my real journey of digging deep into Student Affairs. At a Colorado State, I was involved in orientation, I was involved in a fraternity I was involved in Residence Life eventually as an RA and a hall director in that kind of thing. And I didn’t realize that Colorado State in those days was just full of the early pioneers of the Student Development era. You know, so i The people mean, I took my RA class from Ursula del Werth. Jim Denning was there. Jim Hurst was there, Danny Madsen was there? Jim Cooter was there. There were just these amazing people who were really kind of on the cutting edge of student development work. And they were very excited about trying to foster student engagement, and empowering students to do things. So I mean, I was literally involved in some of the early peer leadership things in orientation. I was the RA. On the first coed residence hall floor. at Colorado State, I lived in a building or two buildings that are called the towers. They were big, tall buildings. And I think that torn them down now. Because they were such a bad idea. But they were 12 story towers, one was male, and was one was female. Well, in the middle of the year, the guys on my floor decided that they thought it would be a really cool idea. If we moved over to the women’s tower, and traded places, and tried to co experiment and I’ll be gone after the Residence Life staff didn’t let us do it. So we wrote a proposal, and we proposed it to the administration. And they said, Yeah, sure, let’s give it a try. And it was a real success. And within two years, the entire buildings, both of them were integrated in terms of alternating floors, of men and women. So I was involved in that kind of thing. I mean, because I was a music major, I was obviously very, very dedicated to trying to get music and other people’s lives. So you know, I asked my director, if I could buy a grand piano for the, the commons area of the tower. They found the money, I went to Denver, I picked out the piano, they bought it. And I started an art series right in our residence hall as a result of it. But that’s the kind of example of can you imagine, you know, in the 1960s, being able to just create that much and to be so empowered, as a peer. And I know that that was very unusual for many institutions at that time. And what that caused me to do was that by the time I got to my senior year, I couldn’t figure out how I was going to make a career out of music, and particularly a performance because I knew it took a lot of dedication and a lot of talent. And I wasn’t sure I had either. So I went into the dean’s office, and our Dean was Dean Burns Crookston, if you are familiar with that. And I went into Dean Crookston, and I basically start a chat with them about what’s your work, like, how did you get involved with it? And by the time I left his office an hour later, I was sold, totally sold. And so I then applied for graduate school programs and I included Colorado State as kind of a backup school. But they gave me the best assistantship. So I stayed at Colorado State for my master’s also, and continued to work particularly in both orientation in the summertime and residence halls during the academic year. And that landed me then

Denny Roberts
post my master’s with doing a job search, and I did an exhaustive when I went to all the conventions, I went through all the placement processes. I mean, I can’t even tell you how many interviews I had. But I, you know, by the end of it, I was glazed over in terms of not being able to even think straight, but ultimately had a couple of different options. And some wonderful people that had invited me to consider coming to their campuses. and Maryland was the one that seemed to be the most promising. And I was kind of in the back of my head, I was thinking, Well, you know, maybe I might eventually want to go for a doctorate. And I knew that they at least had a doctoral program, didn’t know anything about it, but just knew at least it was available. So when I got to Maryland, I was, I was hired as the Assistant Director of orientation, my boss quit within the first month that I was there. And that basically resulted in my being named as the interim director because they had to do something. And then they launched a search process. And lo and behold, in the meantime, Thomas was selected permanently as the Vice Chancellor there, and but selected me to be the permanent director. So I then had a great platform to begin to experiment and to use the ideas and the empowerment that I had learned at Colorado State at Maryland. And we implemented academic advising by peer advisors, we introduced new approaches through media and experientially based learning rather than just the pocket kind of programming that was fairly common in many of the orientation programs. And so Maryland was this just incredible laboratory to basically take the ideas that I had learned experientially as an undergraduate at Colorado State, and then make them work at Maryland. And as things evolved, there was another guy that came up on on the scene there it was Drew Bagwell, and but hired him to be the Director of activities. And so eventually, Bud and Drew got together and decided that they needed to do something that was more intentional in terms of student leadership development. And because I’ve been pretty successful with the orientation program, I guess, they invited me to come over to activities, and to start the Leadership Program. No resources, just a corner office, relatively small space, nothing to shout about. But it was the beginning. And that year, and this is 1976. That year, I went to the ACPA convention, and I was at the commission meeting, which is the group that focuses on student activities, involvement, and Greeks and that kind of thing. And the chair at that time, was kind of refereeing a conversation about leadership. And all of a sudden, he said, Well, you know, it sounds to me like we’ve got a lot of energy behind this idea, as people are struggling with what to do. Maybe we ought to have a task force. And he said, Is there anybody out there that would be willing to chair a task force on leadership? Well, I was dumb enough as to basically say, Yeah, sure, I’ll do it. And they did it, you know. So they created that task force. And it was that task force in 1976. We worked for several years, to basically gather ideas. And back in those days, you weren’t talking about web searches. You were talking about mail out surveys, getting examples, creating basically a file drawer of all of these options that people were using, as they tried to develop leadership and their students. And most of those initiatives were position based. And so it was like working with resident assistants or orientation advisors or student government leaders or Greek leaders. So it was very positionally based at that point. However, the task force stumbled into some very, very early writing about basically the need to re understand this whole idea of leadership and to be more inclusive. So as we started to dream this all up, we thought of ways that we might create a comprehensive leadership program that was available to all students so that you would have programs that were focused for positional, but you would also have those that were just interested in the idea of leadership. And that taskforce did a lot of inter Association work with groups like ACUI and ACA NASPA. So we were kind of networking and drawing in ideas from other associations as well and doing some workshops to kind of stir up interest. And eventually, that led then to our publishing the book through ACPA, Student Leadership Programs in Higher Education in 1981. And that book, as far as I know, I have not had anybody ever challenged me. But I think it’s the first time anybody wrote explicitly about how to approach leadership learning for students in higher ed setting, there have been never have never been anybody that had tried to put that together. And that book, even though it’s very, very old, it has some absolutely stellar contributors to it, it was an edited book, and we just gathered in the best and the brightest that we could find and put it together. And it went out and started to make waves in terms of the the leadership area. So the the thing with ACPA that was so amazing, then was that it really is characteristic characteristic of it today, such an inclusive organization that welcomes young professionals very, very actively. And so as a young professional, you know, I had had a great experience with ACPA with the Commission. And I don’t even know how I decided to do it. But then I decided to run for the vice president for Commission’s coordinating position. And then that led me to running for president and was elected and served as President, my presidential year was 1985 86

Keith Edwards
is about 10 years into your postmasters,

Denny Roberts
Right. Exactly. Well, 79 was actually when I completed my doctorate, but yes, right. I mean, I entered the field in 73. So yeah, I mean, 30 years later, I was able to get the position of ACPA president. And it was an amazing experience, to to network with so many people and have the opportunity to shape an agenda. And, of course, my advisor who was leaking Apple cam, from the University of Maryland, where I had done my PhD simultaneous to my work experience, she influenced me, incredibly. And she basically, she was coming up with this whole idea about generativity in terms of the field, and the need to create a professional kind of kind of a meaning making approach where you connect with those that are your elders, and you can learn, but also, you think of sharing knowledge and of learning and development as a generative process, right. And so the convention in 1986, in New Orleans, was keynoted by Lee. And the title of the convention was generativity, and it wasn’t too long after that. It actually was probably simultaneous to Susan Komivez, had preceded me as ACPA president. And she had had a conversation with Lee as well about generativity. And so, after the the convention, or was it may have been simultaneous to it. We created the generativity Committee, which then began to do some work in terms of historical records and interviews with some of kind of the key personalities of our field. And so, you know, Lee was incredibly powerful in terms of she was really leading the charge in terms of student development and and all of us that were there at Maryland at that time, were just completely captivated by that. And did you ever have a chance Keith to see her speak by a chance?

Keith Edwards
No, I never did, but I heard from Susan Komivez, so many wonderful things and connections and so I felt like she was like another faculty member in the program in absentia, because of all the influence she’d had there. And so many of the other people you had mentioned too.

Denny Roberts
She was profoundly influential at Maryland and she was profoundly influential and as a speaker, because she spoke of ACPA and NASPA. She also there, started speaking at ACI ACU So she really got around. And she always spoke about student development as a, as a partnership wasn’t just about student affairs people, but it was about student affairs, connecting with academic faculty and other areas to be able to foster student development. So those were really heady days, you know, you know, saw some of the personalities that you know, Chickering and Perry and both of the, oh, gosh, I’m searching for the names. The Doug, Keith and Roy, he’s both. There were a variety of really, really fun student development people that were leading in those days, and in Lee was kind of the center of that. So I did a lot of that translation, you know, work at that time and learn it all through ACPA. My career in higher education in the US, it started at Maryland, obviously, but I also worked at Southern Methodist University, worked at Lynchburg College, which is now known as Lynchburg University. That is different than Liberty University. Some people used to get confused and think that Lynchburg was Liberty, no, very, very different kind of school, but Lynchburg. And then I went to Miami University. And the police I served the longest was actually at Miami, I worked there for 13 years. And I continued through all three of those institutional settings to refine ideas about leadership, and try different kinds of models and experiment. And I published quite a bit, you know, throughout that period of time, as I was kind of marking the journey of, you know, what are we discovering about what’s effective and leadership throughout that time. So those three institutions were, again, great playgrounds to be able to learn things, do things try things in very innovative ways. And that led into the last full time position that I held, which was abroad in Qatar, for Qatar Foundation. And the irony of that was that it’s the only job that I never sought. And Qatar Foundation had, what they had the partnerships with the universities there and it presently has eight university partnerships. And for people that are unfamiliar with it, it includes institutions like Virginia Commonwealth, Texas, A&M, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Northwestern, those are the American institutions that are there. And the, the branches, actually, we’re working with the foundation and trying to make sure that the idea of holistic education that is characteristic of those American institutions, the foundation wanted to make sure that the students that came to education city, were getting the full deal, right, not just the classroom, that they were also getting out of class experience as well. And the branches, frankly, we’re having a difficult time, because in the early days, I joined them in 2007. There weren’t adequate residence halls that wasn’t a Student Union. There was nothing connecting students in the out of class environment. So the branch personnel basically lobbied the foundation to create a position. That was the second line reporting position to Dr. Abdullah Al Thani, who is the vice president of education. And he coordinated all of the universities in that I coordinated the student development and support services across those eight branches. And it was, you know how, like when you go to graduate school, and you’re one of your last courses is to write a paper on the ideal student affairs division. Yeah, yeah. Well, I did it. Yeah. And it was a little different, because it wasn’t within one institution, it was shared across multiple institutions. But, man, when I was invited to go over to Qatar, to actually try to take the US ideas about holistic development, and student affairs and development, enriching the entire student experience, I jumped on it. And I didn’t know how long I would stay. When I originally went over there. It was kind of an open contract, and it was renewable each year and about year five, I decided that there was at least enough groundwork that I could turn it over and live on. And so I talked to Dr. Abdullah and said, I think it’s time to go home and he said, well, not quite yet. You need train your successor. So he selected a guy by the name of Khalid Al Kanji, who was a country national as well, great guy at a counseling site degree. And just wonderful as a colleague. And so basically, he and I worked together for two years, in the final few years that I was there to help transition over for him to then head and the student affairs area for Qatar Foundation. And he’s gone now to work for Qatar University, is spreading more of the idea in other places as well. So you know, that’s, and the, I have to say that the Qatar experience, I certainly learned more than I taught, or gave in that institutional setting, I learned so much about culture, about the need for the adaptability of Western based ideas in learning. And I just learned so much about complex organizations and how to position higher education as a as a capacity building an emphasis, because in the Qatar example, I mean, they were investing in Qatar Foundation and education city as a Capacity Building Initiative in the country. And it started actually, with female students only at Virginia Commonwealth. And then when they figured out, it was really going to work well with Virginia Commonwealth, female students that had expanded and became inclusive so that all of the programs, they are all English, and they’re all co educational. And so I mean, the the journey of how that all unfolded, and the difference that it’s making in Qatar is pretty remarkable. For those of the viewers that might have watched the FIFA World Cup, I mean, Qatar took so much heat in the beginning, for a variety of things, and probably is sometimes in justifiable ways and terms of questioning why foreign workers were used to build new the build up for FIFA, the environment for LGBTQ athletes and citizens. I mean, there were lots of issues there that were brought up in the early days, I, I’ve been very, very public in terms of saying, Look, when you’re talking about working internationally, you have to understand that Western practices, you don’t just walk in and lay them down. And just all of a sudden, bam, things change. It’s a gradual process. And I can tell you even from 2007 to 2023. Those years are like centuries of change in many of our other Western institutions. So there’s still work to be done there. And there’s great people doing it. But man to see the progress that they’ve made is truly remarkable. And for me, it was just really very, very great honor to be a part of it.

Keith Edwards
Well, it’s quite, it’s quite a journey. I mean, I really let you go there because some of the things that I wanted to ask you about you were sort of hitting on them as we went but you did have the growing up at a farm in Boulder to never having anyone in your family go to college to then earning a PhD. And kudos to you for getting a master’s at Colorado State and a PhD from Maryland because I did too. So we share those little honors but I’m just imagining you know, saying to that intrepid, I’ll just go to CSU on the farm to you’re going to retire as a as a running higher education system in Qatar seems like an impossibility. But what a what a journey along the way. You mentioned so many wonderful people. But you forgot someone Susan Komivez, told me to to be sure to ask you. As she said, You have to ask him about Esther Lloyd Jones and the effect on his life.

Denny Roberts
Right. Yeah. Well, and and I have to say that Susan is herself, you know, an incredible influence in my life. We just exchanged emails today. In fact, we’re going to catch up week after next.

Keith Edwards
And you said you’ve been friends for 50 years now.

Denny Roberts
That’s right. And the closest and longest standing relationship I’ve I’ve had and so you know, we’re, we’re if it weren’t for Ralph, she and I would be joined at the hip. No question. Ralph is an awesome guy too. Yeah, there’s one that I know Susan is a very, very dear colleague and I’ve learned so much and had so many opportunities through her. What a what a incredible power for all of us. But yeah, I mean, one of the things I did when I was exiting the ACPA presidency, this is 1986. It used to be that the ACPA presidents would because this is back in the day before there was an executive director. So there was no such thing as an executive director. It was all done by volunteers. And so on your second year, so the year, which would have been 86/87. I wanted to get as many of the old presidents back to the President’s breakfast as I could find. And so I started digging around to see some of the ones that had not been to ACPA for a long time, and discovered that actually Jones had not been there for a while. And she was right in my backyard. She was living in Dallas at the time. And that’s what I was working on working at SMU. And so I reached out and I said, you know, Esther I’m, uh, I’m the past president this coming year, and we really want you to come to the convention and took a little bit of convincing, but she agreed to come. And I agreed to be her her valet during the experience. And so that first year, I mean, one of the most stunning moments was walking into a keynote that was being given by Nancy Schlossberg. And I had at that point, I didn’t even know all the connections that Esther had, I walked into the room and Esther’s in a wheelchair, and I’m pushing her in the wheelchair. And Nancy sees Esther coming in the back of the room, and literally screams from the podium. And literally all the heads turned and there was Esther Lloyd Jones, you know, that was, it was like, being around royalty, it was just so amazing. But the thing that is crazy about Esther was that I’d spent a lot of time then going and visiting with her and corresponding with her for several years, up until the point that she passed away and just learned so much from her. And particularly, one of the proudest contributions I have made through anything in what I would remotely call a scholarship is a videotape that I made of Esther. And it was done under the umbrella of the generativity project. And, you know, I look, I watched that video every once in a while just to be reminded about the ideas that she had. And she was so innovative, and she was so far ahead of her time. And she really did reinforce for me, the critical importance of higher education kind of John Dewey roots in a student affairs, she reinforced the critical importance of peer to peer leadership and peer to peer influence how powerful that is. And she also reinforced that this this profession that we like to think of ourselves as being in student affairs, is something that is best given away. That, in fact, the greatest power of Student Affairs educators that we have, is enlisting students, and listing other faculty, and staff to help us create these incredible environments that empower student learning and development. And she said, and she was really very concerned about kind of the she, she looked at the earliest scientific movement in the 20th century, and kind of the specialization that was occurring in mid century, she was very concerned about it, because she thought it would create specialization that would then separate people, and would keep people from collaborating. And that was one of the primary thing was that I learned from Esther, and I carried it through the rest of my career from the point that I met her in 1986 87, all the way until, you know, I left that’s been, you know, something I’ve lived by.

Keith Edwards
So, yeah, well, and I think it’s something that I work with many campuses that they’re struggling with, is that in student affairs, there’s been so much specialization that we get siloed right, and your focus on Title Nine on all the regulatory requirements and all the things in that we’re over here on ADA and other regulatory terms for that, and we’re over here trying to connect with our alumni in the Career Center and everybody is busy, everybody thinks everybody else too busy, they don’t want to impose and it just undermines collaboration. So it’s, it does seem pressure to sort of see some of these trends coming that are now part of the challenges that right navigating.

Denny Roberts
You know, and I don’t think it’s an either or I think it’s a both and and the 21st century and you know, I I’ve struggled with it because I’m I’m much better at the philosophies of student learning and development and creating models and programs to be able to do that the administrative part and policy enforcement and legal aspects and finance, those those were not my cup of tea. I mean, I tolerated it. What I what I could, but it’s fairly or clearly there are many people that are much more professional at the managerial aspects of Student Affairs work. But I think what is what I hear about folks and their work environments now is that the press of legal and depressive the managerial is pushing out the ability to really pay attention to the learning and development. So vice president has fewer and fewer hours to actually be engaged. I mean, I had the luxury in my career, I taught, I taught all the way through my career, all the way through either undergraduate or graduate level. And that just doesn’t happen much. It’s just really hard to do that. And there’s a, there’s a theory to practice translation thing that I think occurs when you’re involved in the programs and involved in teaching, that those that end up in almost entirely managerial sorts of positions. They just don’t have the same holistic perspective. And I’m not criticizing at all, when I say that, I’m saying, man, it’s tough these days. And I seriously don’t know what I would be doing. But to manage in such difficult times. I mean, it’s hard.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, yeah. Well, you you’ve walked us through your career and your life journey, you’ve introduced us to so many wonderful people who influenced you and that you learn from and that you connected with, along the way from so many different places? What’s thing important that you don’t want to get lost along the journey here and important learning for you that you don’t want us to miss?

Denny Roberts
Right? Well, I do hope that we don’t lose the student personnel point of view. And I know there’s language in it. That is a little bit antiquated, and takes a little bit of translation into the modern era. But there are some central core truths there. And I think it’s easy also to think of the Student Personnel almost in a transactional sort of way. So what does it tell us to do, you know, give me the specific functional areas, etc. And really, the Student Personnel point of view is more important as a statement of philosophy. And as a statement of holistic learning, you know, and defining our role within that. And I think that student affairs are very important custodians of the idea of holistic learning. And liberal arts faculty, you know, clearly will say that they also do that, and yes, they do. And that’s where I go back again, you know, so work with those people, you know, make sure that we’re both working towards objectives that we can both then claim as victories eventually, you know, when we work together. So I think that remembering our roots is very, very important that I hope that does not get lost. I hope, you know, this is a little bit self serving. But, you know, I think the the work that has been done in terms of honoring leadership learning, both for undergraduate students, as well as for ourselves and for our graduate students, is a very important part of this. When I look back at my graduate training, I got my first introductions to leadership theory, actually, in my doctoral work at Maryland, over the business school, I don’t know where you got yours, Keith, but I got him over. At the business school, I took courses with a guy by the name of Ed Locke, who was actually he was a devoted follower of Rand. And her philosophies about the way that things worked and so forth are a bit askew from the way my world perspective is, but his level of rigor about understanding leadership and organizational behavior through that specific lens taught me a lot, but that’s the first time I would I had ever been exposed to leadership there. It was through Ed Locke and business school, you know, and there’s a young man by the name of I’ll think of it just second. And he’ll he’ll watch this videotape and he’ll be so mad at me because I’m struggling with names right now. But a wonderful student master student with me At at Miami, but he did research to look at how well, master’s programs are actually delivering on providing leadership understanding for Student Affairs colleagues. He found out that very little is being done. And so he’s started basically a certificate program, written a book about how to do it better. And his name is John Cole, by the way. But sometimes that’s hard. But, you know, I mean, John is really lifting that that up. And he’s saying, Look, you know, if we say that we’re about leadership learning, and this is a part of the portfolio and student affairs, we need to be serious about in terms of our graduate education, so I really appreciate the role that he’s played there. So I hope leadership learning doesn’t get lost as an important part of the Student Affairs portfolio. Internationalization has become very, very important. And actually, most of my writing, and most recently has been about internationalization and how to include international perspectives within curriculum, and specifically within leadership learning. Because the cat’s already out of the box on this. I mean, we live in an international world, we’re not moving towards an international world. We’re in an international world.

Keith Edwards
And Susan asked me to inquire with you to speak a little bit about international versus global.

Denny Roberts
Right? Well, she and I chose to distinguish those words very carefully, that we wrote together, and it’s. And globalization. I mean, people use the two words interchangeably a lot of times. And globalization really is more born out of economics, business and finance. And it was about the transfer of products and resources across boundaries, and globalization. And frankly, I mean, especially during the Trump administration, I mean, you heard all of the complaints against globalism, you know, which was kind of the partially the push, you know, for make America great, you know, that whole thing was really come from coming from the fear of globalization. And so globalization is really more about the business and the finance. And it’s also about creating sameness. Whereas internationalization is recognizing the uniqueness of cultures, the uniqueness of politics, across countries, the uniqueness of resources, all of those kinds of things, and not saying everybody ought to be the same. Yeah, but that we should recognize what the differences are, compare and contrast, modify as necessary, when you’re attempting to transfer an idea across boundaries, but to respect the culture, first and foremost, and then try to use the knowledge base to then apply to the prospect of internationalization. So is that clear enough to you in terms of.

Keith Edwards
What is it that, you know, you talked about beginning your journey and 1976 or, you know, depends on how we count the beginning. At this long career, Miami, Lynchburg, SMU, Maryland, Colorado State, Qatar all of these different places. And you I think you said before we recorded semi retired, you just can’t give it up. You keep doing this consulting, you keep doing these projects, you keep doing these writings keep doing this. So you had this long sort of past and you’re also very much engaged in the present of our work. What do you see a head for the profession? Maybe what excites you and for the profession, maybe what worries you prognosticate here a little bit?

Denny Roberts
Right? Yeah, well, and the crystal balls are, are dangerous for people with gray hair. So but, you know, I, I do believe that the focus on Inclusion, and on therefore, kind of deconstructing many of our ideas about knowledge. And the sad realization, most recently that, you know, is just right in our face is that we’ve been teaching history from a very myopic, and selective perspective. We’ve not been including the truth. And it’s so important. I think, if we’re going to create inclusive communities, we have to own the reality of what our systems have created. We have to recognize them, and we have to critically examine how they can be the model vied to, to make a difference. And so I think that that’s a very exciting forefront for us. And you know, diversity has always been important to Student Affairs people. Yes, it’s not a new topic. It certainly looks different today. It has different details. Because we basically, were just drilling down, you know, we’re going deeper and deeper.

Keith Edwards
Learning more and more language difference. expansiveness, as you talked about the generativity of learning just continues to grow.

Denny Roberts
So I think that this theme has always been there. And as a person who practiced Student Affairs primarily in the 20th century, I have to beg for forgiveness for failing, because I know some of the ideas that I had were not on target. This, we’re not on target. Considering the knowledge base that we now have available, but I hope you will, and others will forgive me for those. Those those errors and just not understanding fully what was going on. And that I mean, you said it, I mean, I constantly I read every morning, I’ve log every day, I stay on top of this stuff. And so I’ve not lost my energy for where higher education is going at all. I you, I told you that Susan and I had corresponded earlier today, what we’re talking about is how to do how to do retirement. Because Susan, is having the same difficulty that I am, which is just let it go. There’s a certain curiosity that both of us have that we can’t let go. And I’m not sure. Maybe that’s okay.

Keith Edwards
I don’t know. Yeah. Well, that I see in both of you that that curiosity, and that engagement, and that care commitment, right, this is still important to you, this project that we’re all on is still important to you, and you have something to say about it, you want to learn about it, and engage with it. What else do you see ahead,

Denny Roberts
In the realization there is that it’s really tried to do some things and some different institutional environments. And, you know, the, the remnants of those initiatives remain in some cases, they don’t know the cases. But it’s all about the people. It’s about the colleagues, it’s about the students, you know, and I communicate literally, in my holiday letter, or an email, with students from all generations in my career, all the way across. And in every place I’ve been. So it’s just incredibly gratifying to see, you know, the, see that there, there was a difference there. And it it’s, it’s very personal, in terms of people that are doing very cool work and making a difference in the world. And you know, that I was ever even associated with some of these folks, just is mind boggling. It’s fun. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
Well, you certainly dropped a lot of names. And a lot of really wonderful names, people have made a lot of contributions to a lot of other folks. And I keep hearing these themes from you have this connection with these different people who merely shaped you and change your trajectory and moved you from this path, this path, but also you speak really, almost mischievously about your innovation and risk taking and experimentation and just willingness to try new things. And then a constant journey of learning, constant journey of even what we were just talking about the things that you’re learning now. And looking back at previous choices and decisions, but but really learning.

Denny Roberts
And that is something that I had intended to speak at least a little bit about, because, you know, one of the realizations that I had, kind of late in my career was because I tend to think of things and, and different ways than many of the people that I’m around. And I, I do believe that that probably comes from an artist’s soul. That is my music, you know. And so, when I think about music, when I’m playing a piece of music, I’m always trying to think of not the individual notes, but I’m thinking of the the phrase, you know, and I’m thinking of the message, I’m thinking in the historical context, I’m thinking of the composer. I’m thinking all of those things in a very holistic way. Well, isn’t any great wonder that that’s been the way I think about my work. Right? Right. And that was not always welcome. And I took it personally, in some cases and terms of feeling as if well, you know, maybe I just don’t have a good idea. yes or no feeling as if somebody was, in some ways neglecting my perspective or not considering it well enough. And, you know, I found out later on that those moments when an idea is not picked up, there’s a couple of things going on. Number one, it may not be the time proposed a number of things that didn’t occur when I proposed it, but it happened later, right? Sure. So it was an issue of timing and resources and that kind of thing. And then the, the other part of it is just that when you have a creative or innovative idea, we can’t always expect for it to unfold the way that we envisioned it to, that is creativity in itself, is that, that the act of creation may create something different. And that’s okay.

Keith Edwards
Particularly when you have many other people contributing and collaborating. Yeah,

Denny Roberts
exactly. And, and that realization then frees us up, you know, if you happen to be a person that does think outside of the box, then it frees us up to be able to offer a point of view, not as any kind of an imposed will or this has to be done this way. That’s not what it’s about. But it’s to have a conversation. And it’s about trying to work collectively together to do the best that you can.

Keith Edwards
So this out of the box thinking when it’s not as welcomed as you wished, not seeing that not taking that personally, but then still offering that and seeing where do other people go with it? What did they create? How do they take it, their agreement, their disagreement? Exact I think that’s, that’s a wonderful perspective and some good wisdom. For many of us who get attached to our own ideas too much. It’s

Denny Roberts
very easy to get all wrapped up in that.

Keith Edwards
Well, we’re just about out of time. And you know, this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW we always like to end with the the last question of what are you thinking troubling or pondering now, so whether it’s related to what we just talked about, or just something that you wander the house ruminating, pondering innovating about?

Denny Roberts
Well, I, I’m really struggling with, with racism and classism. And I’m struggling with that in relation to my own local environment here. I live in the north shore of Chicago. And Chicago has a pretty bad history in terms of perpetuating racism and classism. Changes are underway, I think that people are being more honest, I’m proud that I’m right next door to Evanston, which is the first municipality that is even beginning to talk about reparations in our real and honest sort of way. So I’m bothered by that. And there’s a particular piece of that, that troubles me a great deal, I am a person of faith, I’m an inclusive faith person. So I see lots of different faith perspectives as being legitimate and a critical to find, find meaning in life, you know, so it’s not just my perspective, but the perspective that I practice is Protestant Christianity. And Protestant Christianity in America has done a lot of harm, in terms of racism, and perpetuating racism. And that troubles me deeply. And I’m working with my local church, I’m working with local anti racism group to try to do something about it. So I can’t let it go. But that that’s troubling me a great deal. And, you know, when you’re when you’re talking about it affecting your neighbor, you know, the person that sits beside you in the choir, you know, this isn’t a very, it’s a very human and a very personal thing. And I know that people experience it that way, all over the place. And as a privileged white person who’s had lots and lots of opportunity in life. I don’t even begin to pretend to, to know what to do. But I know I want to be engaged in the process. So that’s where my head is. Plus, I’m playing lots of music.

Keith Edwards
yeah, I imagine. Well, I think that’s a wonderful place for us to conclude as you continue this journey of all the things you’ve been learning about and thinking about, and innovating and experimenting, and maybe even a little mischievously, and then bringing the wisdom of the ego and not taking things personally, but still advancing and still learning and still taking action and still contributing. And still being this this holistic educator that you you’ve been for so long. So DEnny, thank you so much for joining us and sharing with us and offering so much of yourself. I really, really appreciate it.

Denny Roberts
Thank you, Keith. It’s been a real privilege.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Well, thank you to DEnny and thanks also to our sponsors of today’s episode Stylus and Symplicity. Stylus is proud to be a sponsor for Student Affairs NOW, browse their Student Affairs, diversity and professional development titles. It’s styluspub.com, use promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping. You can find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter @styluspub. And Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter, and LinkedIn. And a huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to make us all look and sound good. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list. While you’re there, check out the archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to Denny for joining us today and your wonderful contributions you give me a lot to think about and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Maybe make it a great week.

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