Rob Kelly
You know, I think a big one is you can’t punish people, you know, when something doesn’t turn out perfectly, and in some situations, you have to, how do you lift people up and say, Hey, we tried something and it didn’t work. Yeah, like, we tried something, it didn’t work, but it informed where we’re going to the next time and again. I think as we think about everything from whether it’s fundraising or student enrollments or kind of how we manage our resources, we have to find new ways to do it. But just because something didn’t work immediately how we thought it might doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. How can that idea then be tweaked and changed a little bit to then move us forward?

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs now. I’m your host. Keith Edwards, today, I’m joined by Rob Kelly and Colin Stewart, two authors and editors of disruptive transformation, leading creative and innovative teams in higher education. They’ve offered not just a call for creativity and innovation, but gathered authors who are higher ed leaders, who are making change and sharing their insights on how to do so. I’m really excited to talk with you more about this book and what you’ve learned through the authoring and editing process. Student Affairs NOW is 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 details about this episode or browse the archives at studentaffairsnow.com Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity, a true partner. Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. And this episode is sponsored by Routledge Taylor and Francis. You hear their complete catalog of education titles at routledge.com/education as I mentioned, I’m your host. Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker and author and coach, and I help. I help higher ed leaders and organizations create transformation for better tomorrows through leadership, learning and equity. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Colin, Rob thank you for being here. Let’s start with some introductions. Tell us a little bit about yourself and about this topic. And President, Dr Rob Kelly, we’re going to start

Rob Kelly
with you. Thank you. Thank you. Keith. So Rob Kelly, president of the University of Portland, and I’ve been here since July of 2022, and prior to that, I was I spent some time at my alma mater, Loyola University, Maryland, but had a wonderful, blessed have a wonderful and blessed career in higher education where I was able to serve as a senior student affairs officer at Seattle, Loyola, Chicago, did my doctoral work at the University of Maryland, My master’s at the University of Vermont, and undergraduate degree in political science from Loyola, Maryland. But I during my path, I got to work with my co editor, Colin Stewart. So Colin,

Colin Stewart
Yes, my name is again. Colin Stewart, my pronouns are he and the he series, he, him, his. And I serve as the Special Assistant to the Vice President Student Affairs at the University of Portland. My career has brought me all around the country and the world, and my I did my doctor work at Illinois State in my grad work at Seattle University, where I got to work with Dr Kelly. And throughout the my career, I’ve been really passionate about creativity, innovation, and how do we help others be more creative and innovative? And so very excited to talk about the book, and so what we did before and where we’re headed next?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I really appreciate this. I I got turned on to this by a call for proposals for the next book. So there’s another version coming, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. But before we get to that, we want to talk about this current book that is out there and available. And as as Rob shared as we were getting started, Colin, you’re leading it. You’ve got it showing there. Tell us how this project came to be and how you what kind of instigated this.

Colin Stewart
Yeah, you know, we don’t, we don’t talk a lot about failure in higher ed, or brag about it or or really embrace it. But this, this book, really did come out of a failure. I worked with, with Rob and several other colleagues to to try to get a knowledge community started centered around creativity innovation, and I put a lot of effort and energy and and developing what I thought was the most perfect and beautiful proposal to again, to start this knowledge community. And essentially, NASA was like, This is great, but we, we, essentially, there’s so many other great knowledge communities we need to really, you know, we need not having so much knowledge communities. And I was, you know, talking with Rob. He goes, let me, let me take a look at the the proposal that you wrote, and I sent it over him. And he’s like, I think that this is a book proposal. And I, and I at that point, you know, I’d never. Anything like this before, and so I was kind of like taken back and and so then Rob and I got together, and we started having conversations, and we kind of fine tuned it a little bit, not a lot of tweaks to the original proposal, and then we submitted it to NASPA, and that’s how we got started.

Rob Kelly
Well, in common, I appreciate you saying it that way, but I also think there is a we’ve done a lot in higher education because of some of the challenges, whether it’s a demographic cliff that’s approaching, or people trying to kind of, how do we look at student affairs and higher ed, and how do we take it seriously? And we’ve, we’ve kind of stamped out, and we beat it out of people opportunities to kind of take risk and be creative and and try new things. And one of my mentors, when I was getting my my master’s degree at the University of Vermont, Jill Carnegie, said to me, Rob, try new things. You know, every chance you get, fill out a program proposal every single year, whether it’s accepted or not, the aspect of going through that is going to be good for you. Try to always write for publication whether or not it gets accepted or not. The act of doing that, try new things with students. Always emote a passion for working with students. But what happens is, I think, you know, in an institution where there’s, oh, you know, constrict, you know, budgets are getting smaller, and people’s slice of the pie is getting smaller. Sometimes people are afraid to take risks, and sometimes you can take calculated risk. You can think about it. It’s certainly not you want to be informed by a lot, but you got to go out there and try new things. And so whenever I have an opportunity to work with people they want to try new things. I always think we have to find a way within the organization to allow for that lane, to allow for us to try new things, test the waters, see what works, see what doesn’t work, because we always have to try to do things differently. We just can’t do things over and over, because they’ve always been done and so this, this book was an opportunity for us to look at, is there a new way to do things, and if we can’t, what’s the value in things not being disruptive? You know, let’s not look at it that way. So, but Colin, it wouldn’t have happened without your dedication and your pushing. So thank you. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
I appreciate that. And I think one of the things I often am saying to campuses that I’m working with is there are some things that we do that are life or death, and we need to get them right. And there’s a lot that we do that’s not life or death, but we treat it like it is. And Let’s lighten up a little bit. Let’s loosen up. Let’s try some new things. Let’s be innovative. Let’s fail and learn. Let’s do some of that. Rob Why do you think we have such a hard time moving into that space? What? What makes it so challenging that when Jill Carnegie says, Yeah, submit some stuff, whether you get approved or not, doesn’t matter. What makes that difficult that you see

Rob Kelly
Well, you know, some of it’s some of its perfectionism. We want everything to be done right, and we, you know, we want to be taken so seriously, especially when you think about the academy and how people look at the different different positions that we have. And so failure sometimes has a monetary cost to it. We simply need to be the best stewards of resources that either students or their families or taxpayers or donors or whoever, whoever is providing for the institution, so you never want to be wasteful of money at the same time. We have to find ways that we can always say, gosh, is there a more effective way for us to do this? And we have this, this, this exchange of, is something innovative? Is it creative? Is it both what needs to come first and how you set the right environment to be ready for that? And there, there are certain environments that are not ready for creativity. Sometimes people view creative people as threats or as inappropriately disruptive to the to the organization, and so those environments aren’t going to do it. Now, I’ll be honest with you, we don’t need everybody in higher education being always innovating and creating, because we have to be able, how do we work our muscles to learn how to do something, but it can’t be a situation where we’re being wasteful of resources. And I think that that’s that’s the big piece, and there’s this real tug of war and tension behind creation, creating new things, and also just managing, keeping the trains on track and managing the budget.

Keith Edwards
I’m really glad you mentioned the perfectionism, and I think that’s a big part of it. And right with that is our fear of critique and being criticized, or people not liking it. And the academy is full of critique and criticism, and it’s what we do. It’s what we do for a lot of good reasons, and sometimes that slips into cynicism, which I think can be a little bit dangerous, but I. Think, I think many folks are, are we get socialized to know the right answer, do the right thing and never take risks, and dabbling and experimenting is also something that the Academy does. We don’t often sort of applaud that. So I think that can be really an important part of it. Colin, you were really kind of shaping you have so many great authors contributing so many different chapters. Could you tell us a little bit about the book, the structure, how it’s organized, and what it might offer the reader?

Colin Stewart
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to also just briefly talk about the two things. One is like I felt with this book, and like the knowledge, original knowledge. I felt like our field needed to be more creative and innovative. Like there are so many challenges, so many crisis that we we have gone through, that we’re going through, that we will continue to go through. So I felt like that this is something that was needed in the field. And I didn’t, we didn’t know how much we were going to need this until the book, you know, launched in March of 2020, which was the perfect and most imperfect time for the book to be released and so and then the other thing just about this idea of failure, I think that we we need to take risks within higher ed, we just need to take calculated risks in depending on the culture of your institution, depending on your leadership. And what I really appreciate about Dr Kelly is he, he creates environments where people can do their their best work, which means he, like he encourages you to take very thoughtful, informed, creative risks and to to go back to the question you just asked, when what was really important as we, we built, then crafted this book, is we, we both, I think, can confidently say that we’re creative and innovative leaders, but what was really important for us is that it wouldn’t just be about creativity and innovation. It would be about the really the tie in the relationship between creativity and innovation and inclusion. Because we both believe that you can’t be creative and innovative if you aren’t doing that with an inclusive mindset. So the structure of the book, really, the first half is a really about looking at yourself, how can you become like, disrupt yourself and be this creative and innovative leader, so that you can lead teams? And then the last half of the book is really about how diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and access tie into creativity and innovation and that, that really great tension and the really great compliments that parallels that come with that.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and if we’re going to think new thoughts and have new ideas, we need new perspectives and different perspectives, different angles, different insights, different life experiences. So so much of that. I think one of the things that I learned as a leader is some of the things that people would say in conference rooms as ideas that I was really excited about and thought we’d be submitting a conference proposal with bomb out there on campus, and some of the ideas that I heard that I thought we’re not we’re not actually going to Do that, are we sometimes ended up being amazing in the things that we ended up presenting as conference proposals. And it really amplified my sense of humility to say, you know, what do I know? I mean, I have a thought about this, but I’ve been wrong a bunch of times before, and I think that that really fosters that Helen, tell us a little bit more about you give us kind of the big overarching parts of the book. Are there any chapters that really stand out to you? Like you said, it’s been four ish years since you published it, probably six ish years since you were really writing it and editing it? Anything really stand out to you?

Colin Stewart
Yeah, I think there’s two chapters that really that I still go back to and read. One was chapter 10, which is it comes from deep within spirituality in the creative process. Again, another one of my favorite people in the field, Dr Michelle Murray, when we were chatting with her, she had recently gone through not not just like one significant crisis, but it was like back to back to back crisis, like the worst things that you would never, you know, hope for that would happen on your on your campus. And, you know, I asked the question, How, do you still be creative when you’ve gone through such significant crisis on campus? And so that’s one of my favorite chapters. The other one briefly is the one by Dr Common and Dr Galvid. Is around student protests. And really what it is about being, especially with the current, you know, season that we’re in and we’re leading into at 2020, it’s, how do you partner and walk alongside students when it comes to protest, and because they’re trying to disrupt systems. And so how can we disrupt the way that we’ve been doing things to walk alongside them? So those are but two, two of my favorite chapters in the book.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. How about you, Rob, what stands out to you?

Rob Kelly
Natasha Terman and Bridget Turner Kelly did a book on using cultural wealth as a way to as a gift, something that you can then bring to the table. Because often people begin to think, Oh, that’s not who I am. I’m not a creative person, or I’m not innovative. I’m able to kind of take something to kind of run with it, and each of us brings something to the table and to that acknowledgement that we all have something to offer, whether it’s a group, whether it’s a setting, and often we do that really well, I think with students now we have, especially nowadays, you know, programs and innovation entrepreneurship, to kind of bring that out in our students, but often with our colleagues, whether it’s faculty or staff. We don’t want them to be that creative. And so we want them to kind of look again, look within, but also realize each of us brings something to the table that can help to make something a little bit more innovative, or put a put a twist on, on an idea. And I think that that was a really important one. And then the other one that, and this was Colin’s brain trial. It’s kind of the end. It’s not really the end, it’s just the beginning. And that’s how we end the book, talking about, you know, you can do all these things, and you know, not having 100% success at any one moment in time does not mean that something has not fulfilled its goals and objectives, and even failure sometimes is the beginning towards getting it right the next time. And so it’s, it’s just kind of motivated to just stay in there, stay with it, stay engaged, but keep it moving. And so that was just one of the gifts that Colin brought to the table. I will say he, you know, he mentioned how the book came out in March. You know, we would have never have dreamed that the world would have changed the way it did. And so that was really, it was really important thing for me to think, gosh, you know, disruptive transformation. What does that mean? And even as I talked about the book, over the course of when we were in the deep throes of the pandemic, disruption took a different, different tone, a different meat, because it was almost seen as, Oh, my God, you know, it’s, this is a negative thing. We can’t be disruptive in any any situation, because we wanted some sense of normalcy. We wanted something that we could hold on to, because the world was changing in every single different realm, yeah. And so they no one wanted disruption. And we said, Well, no, what we’re trying to say is, you know how disruption can transform the environment, and sometimes that transformation is really for the best. So it was, it was helping us to think differently about the role of disruption. But you think about how, how words change. Of course, the pandemic changed the world. But then just how words, the word disruption changed, yeah.

Keith Edwards
And I think people with all of the COVID disruptions, people really wanted stability, yes, right, you know, which is very, very human. One of my favorites is, I think in 2011 at the APA Institute on the curricular approach. Charles Schroeder, who was a two time president of ACPA and Student Affairs leader in multiple institutions, told this story about how student affairs folks tend to form a committee or a task force on something. They they meet for a year, a year and a half, they make recommendations to an important person, and if that person approves those recommendations, they go out there and they start to implement and it never goes as planned. And he just really praised student affairs folks for being so good when things don’t go as planned, to being nimble and being flexible and making those adaptations right away, he said, but if you’re going to make adaptations for right away, why are you getting it like 100% figured out? Why don’t you just get like, 40% like, 40% figured out? Launch that sucker, see what happens, and make those adjustments. And all US type A folks in the room sort of gasp. And when you want, what 40% what do you what can you be talking about? But that’s a story I still tell 15 years later, because it’s one that sticks. And when I’m working with campuses, and I tell that story, and spend two days with them, around all sorts of things, around a curricular approach, and I come back a year later, that’s the most common thing that I hear, is we launch everything at 40% we opened our dining hall at 40 it’s a permission slip to not. It’s not a permission slip to be frivolous with our work as Rob. Pointing to, but you don’t have to have the whole next 12 months figured out. Get month one and two. Let’s see how it goes. Learn a lot and then make that those adaptations.

Rob Kelly
Yeah, I love that because, you know, often we can, we can spend time analyzing a situation like nobody else, and safe, isn’t it? And it paralyzes, it paralyzes us to just sit there and think of it. And so it’s either that analysis by paralysis, paralysis by analysis sort of thing. But you know, it holds its back. And how do we find ways to say, You know what? I got enough of this figured out, or at least I know where we want to go. And so some of that just kind of going back to, what are your values as an institution? Anna Gonzalez wrote a great section in the book on how, because higher education has not changed so much over the years, it’s a slow moving organization. How can that be used for the good? How can it be used to advance the advance higher education? So I think there’s just a lot of really good pieces, a lot of nuggets throughout the book, that as we think about what might be next, as we think about kind of the next era of this, how we can be more relevant in higher education, because so many institutions need to continue to move beyond where they were, to go towards something new.

Keith Edwards
Well, as we mentioned, you, you edited, you proposed a knowledge community. Turned into a book proposal, brought people together, got submissions, read what they’re writing, writing on your own, editing, going back and forth, a publication delay releases in March of 2020, everything that has come since then to now, I’d love to hear what you learned and call we’ll start with you. What did you learn in the process of writing the book, and since it’s been four years, what have you learned since the book came out that you’re thinking about and ideating on that has meaning and value around this topic to you now? Yeah,

Colin Stewart
well, I think I’ll start. And what I learned when we started the process is that just affirmation that we have so many wonderful, creative, innovative, inclusive people in our field that are that are doing incredible things. And so what, what I what I learned was, how can we again tap into the great network in our colleagues that are doing good things, and when we get stuck on our institution because maybe a particular campus or culture is not inviting, that’s what I talk a lot when I’m connecting with colleagues of like, Hey, you can do this. And you say, con you don’t understand you can’t do that here. You wouldn’t be able to do that. And so amidst of us having the all these creative individuals that there’s some campuses and some leaders and cultures that don’t that don’t encourage that and foster that when what I feel like we should, and so that I think, as we’ve gone through the last four years, is that, and I think this is a kind of a bridge, or a back into what the second book was about, because the first one was, really, how can you be a creative and innovative leader yourself, And then how can you lead your teams? But really, we’re talking about transforming culture, which is a lot more challenging and difficult than just looking inward or just your team that you’re working closely with with on a day to day basis. The other thing that I really appreciated, and this was, again, the first book that I ever done, and it was, you know, a little bit nervous to take part in the process, but I really appreciated how much time we did a retreat before we even got started, and just really visioned out what we hoped it would be, what we hoped it would be, when We said it was close, but it was, I’m so glad that the way that it organically in fluidity changed, changed to get where it became and and I’m excited for this, this next one, because what I hope it would be, versus where it will it’s going to be just being willing to accept and embrace the winds of change, so to speak.

Rob Kelly
No Colin, you mentioned kind of where we thought it was going to be, and then kind of where it ended up going, and that, I think that came about by reading each of the chapters. There was just this feeling of the we talked about, a quintessential character of hope. Each person wrote from a very passionate point of view and a very like you know, here’s the information that I know, and here’s where I think this can take us. And when you bring those things to those two things together, that’s informed, it’s informed. It has passion to it. That’s what true hope is about. And I didn’t realize the what people were longing for, that there was this, there was there is this sense of hope and optimism and forward thinking in higher education, because often you think of it as an industry where we know what we want to do, everyone, keep the trains running on track, and no, no one, no one go out color outside the lines. And I think that there’s this desire for us to be able to be greater, to do more, and to reach a new plateau in terms of what we’re doing in higher education. And so that’s I feel like I saw that when I read each of the chapters, and where I think the entire book evolved, it evolved to a much more hopeful place about higher education. And then, of course, the pandemic hit, which is why it was even more and so I remember talking to folks at NASPA talking about, Gosh, people are reading the book. People are actually utilizing you. Had time. People had time with their hands to read the to read the book, but it was, it’s leading us to a much more hopeful life giving place in higher education, where people have a lot of time to think about the organizations they want to be a part of, where they want to work, and what their own value is to the field and to their organization.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and I think that is your pointing to hope is really important. And then COVID came, and that became really important. And here we are, before an election and and cultivating that sense of hope, that things can be possibly better. And I have a role to play in that. I think that’s just absolutely critical to how we’re going to keep things moving forward. Anything else you want to point to that you learned through the process of writing, and then we’ll move to the next book that is already in the works.

Rob Kelly
Yeah, I think for me, it was really being open to where things could take us some of the some of the chapters, I learned a lot from what some of the authors shared, and it took me to a different place as I began to think about different ways to look at Innovation and Creativity, whether it’s through a Human Resources lens, whether it’s through a legal lens, a purely academic lens. And it’s my hope that we can, we can continue to have lots of different people from different perspectives write about this issue.

Colin Stewart
One thing I’ll just maybe share is one thing that I wasn’t he wasn’t prepared for was being, being the editor for someone that was my faculty member in grad school. So Dr Bridget Kelly, she she taught me how to be a writer like she in so to be I was not prepared for that.

Keith Edwards
And then you got to grade her.

Colin Stewart
Yeah. So I was like, pretty Yep, everything looks good.

Keith Edwards
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, you you currently have a call for proposals. I think the call for proposals may have expired. Is that where we’re at?

Colin Stewart
Yes, it’s officially but if someone has a burning idea. Please, please reach out

Keith Edwards
if you would like to be disruptive in their editing and developing process. Send them along. So as I mentioned, this is seeing this call for proposals is how I learned about this. The new book planned, right as we just talked about, that it always evolved. Is beyond disruption, building creative and innovative campuses, as you mentioned. The first one is really about individuals and leaders. This one sounds more cultural organizational. Is that right?

Colin Stewart
Exactly? And again, even since 2020 when the book came out, so So much has changed in our field and in our work. And so this really is about the again building on the foundation of the book. But what looking to how do we creatively lead when activism and politics have cyclically changed since then? How do you lead from interim roles? How do we continue to really embrace and honor our principles and values around diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and access in a time where we are getting pressured to not do that work? How do we be empathetic in our creative and innovative leadership when mental health issues and challenges are arising across the country, not just for our students, but for our faculty and our staff. And then we have, you know, since the book related ai, ai has has exploded, and how, how do we continue to think outside the box of, how do we utilize this, this amazing technology and tool, ethically and and creatively?

Rob Kelly
You know, it’s interesting, because having thinking about the next era of where this book can take us, so much of higher education is. Is it’s just linked. It’s linked together, whether it’s art and technology and the sciences and the humanities, and we have to figure out how we’re bringing all of this together in a way that is going to fit appropriately in students lives, but not just our students lives, our faculty and our staff and how people coming to the table. So it’s creating those opportunities for us to work as much more of an ecosystem, as opposed to one offs. Often you think about student affairs, you think, okay, Student Affairs is going to be very creative and innovative. We’re going to bring this to but we are one part of a campus environment that includes the finance people and faculty and students and certain donors and people who, from a philanthropic perspective, care about the institution. So how does that all to come together an ecosystem that is life giving and certainly fosters more of that environment around creativity and innovation that we want, but it’s much more about the whole campus, how it all campus comes together, as opposed from the individual. So it’s looking at it from both perspectives.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, this is really exciting. I love the beginning with the individual work, as we talked about, a lot of that begins with inner work, particularly around the equity and inclusion and justice aspects and that self awareness and what’s getting in my way, or what are the ways that I think it just has to be because I haven’t seen other, other perspectives or possibilities, and then moving beyond that to creating cultures and organizations, you’ve both pointed to people sharing, we just can’t do that here. We just can’t take risks. We just We just can’t tolerate failure. We have to get it right, and that really limits the creativity and innovation. I’m wondering in maybe the proposals you’re seeing, the things that conversations you’re having, maybe another retreat you’ve had, are there any keys to creating that kind of culture of innovation and creativity, where people feel a little bit of permission to take some risks and do something differently and try something new.

Rob Kelly
You know, I think a big one is you can’t punish people, you know, when something doesn’t turn out perfectly, and in some situations, you have to, how do you lift people up and say, Hey, we tried something and it didn’t work. Yeah, like, we tried something, it didn’t work, but it informed where we’re going to the next time and again. I think as as as we think about everything from whether it’s fundraising or student enrollments or kind of how we manage our resources, we have to find new ways to do it. But just because something didn’t work immediately how we thought it might doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. How can that idea then be tweaked and changed a little bit to then move us forward? But we have to lift up opportunities for maybe it didn’t go as well as we wanted, or it was a mini failure. We have to lift that stuff up so that people don’t realize I’m not going to get my hand slapped, or I’m not going to be fired or terminated, or I’m not going to be embarrassed, because the fear of failure has become so great, it’s become even greater, whether it’s you say the wrong word, you know, quote, unquote, cancel culture, whatever the case might be, the fear, there’s so much fear out there, we have to find ways to break that down and then build people up.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and just because something didn’t work doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It might have been a great idea, poorly executed, or there might be other things going on, or it’s not quite the time. I think one of the things, as I coach executive leaders that they’re saying, How do I create this culture? One of the things I’m saying is, the next time you make a mistake, make a huge deal about it. Just say, hey, sorry, folks. I totally dropped the ball on that. Here’s what I learned from it, not in a self flagellating way, because that can then you’re sort of scolding yourself and you want to do that, but hey, I made a mistake. So sorry. Here’s what I learned from Ed, you know, I’ll try and do better, and that just role models for others, that you can make mistakes too, and it’s going to be okay, and you can admit them, and we can all learn from them. And I think that can be really powerful in creating those cultures of learning that we want. Colin, wonder, what do you want to add?

Colin Stewart
Yeah, I think for me, there’s a couple things. Is maybe you have leadership or even a supervisor that is that really doesn’t foster that. That doesn’t mean that you cannot foster with your team and or your division or your department, or even, even if it’s just you. That does not mean you can’t still be creative and innovative. Because for me and again, you know, Dr Kelly does this quite a bit. But how do you create environments where people can do their their best work, even if you are not in a system, a culture, an office that that does that while recognizing the history or historical aspects of. Of the institution that you’re at, the cultural aspects, the politics, I think, for folks that want to be like just run into the battle, take, take a moment to learn and understand before you completely go, go all in. And when I talked earlier about taking thoughtful and creative risks, that thoughtfulness is you’re thinking through all the aspects. And in the book there’s, there is a little model that kind of shows like the things that you should be thinking through, like the connections when it comes to, you know, DEI, what’s the budget, you know? What are your supervisor? What is the culture? What are the X factors? And thinking through those so that you can have vision beyond your resources. Because we’re right now in higher ed there’s the the money is not flow, there’s not there’s not opportunity. But that, for me, that’s just another like a challenge, a barrier in any opportunity in the process. That doesn’t mean that you don’t you don’t stop. I also think it’s important for leaders out there, don’t just hitch your wagon or your your identity or vision to just one idea. Have lots of different ideas. You know, use the you know, like the farming analogy, like throw your seeds, like everywhere, and like things, some things will grow and some things will will not right? And then you, you move on, and, and so, so, yeah, take, take, not just one risk, but lots of creative risks.

Rob Kelly
Yeah, I like that. Colin,

Keith Edwards
I think, I think maybe you’ve got a metaphor for your introduction chapter right there? Well, we are beginning to run out of time. This podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. We always like to end with asking, inviting our guests to share, what are you thinking, troubling or pondering now? So, so what’s on your mind might be related to this conversation or might be related to other things. And if you want to share where folks can connect with you, that would be great as well. So Rob, what is what are you troubling now?

Rob Kelly
No, oh, gosh, yeah. So I’ve been doing a lot of a lot of travel lately. It’s kind of the job now, a lot of travel, and I’m often sharing with people, you know, here’s what you need to know about higher education. And I tell you, the assault on higher education has never been stronger than it is now and and we’ve had institutions make real missteps, or sometimes it’s leaders who’ve made mistakes, but also it’s just kind of like it’s a misperception about who we are and what higher education, higher education can do. I will say nothing else has been put in place to advance people’s lives and change the trajectory of lives more than higher education can do. But I spend a lot of time traveling talking about it, and I’ll say that the people, people are there, people are believing where we’re going. When they see strategic planning happening, that really does make a difference. When they see access to higher education being where the doors are being opened wider than they ever have before. People are they appreciate that when they see true transformation happening for students in their lives, like you have that aha moment. You do something you never thought you could do. You get that internship. You create something in the world. People love those individual stories. We have to find a way to get those stories into the hands of people who can be philanthropic donors, influencers, benefactors of institution, because the money will flow then and then. It creates this it structures our muscles a little bit more to be more innovative and creative. So I’m seeing a nice kind of symmetry of kind of what I’m doing now in my presidential role, on how I was so prepared to do it because of my background and in higher ed and student affairs, but it’s leading in the direction of institutions being more creative and innovative, because it’s making a difference in the world. Our world needs it now more than ever before.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful, wonderful, Colin, what are you pondering now?

Colin Stewart
I’m thinking a lot about AI that’s, that’s probably on a daily basis. That’s something that I’m, you know, trying to learn more, trying to push ourselves on and we, you know, speaking of creative risks, the other day with the cabinet at the University of Portland, we created essentially a simulation using artificial intelligence that responded depending on how the cabinet said, you know, they said, Hey, we want to do this. Then it would respond a certain way. And I did. I practiced the simulation five times, and it was about 95% of where when we did it, it landed around 80, 85% I wanted to do again. It wasn’t perfect, but it still was a great step and moving forward. And so how, how can we on our campuses be thinking on how to you utilize artificial intelligence, thoughtfully and ethically to transform our work. And I will say this, even though I’m passionate about ai, ai will never replace the work of higher education or student affairs, but it can make you so much more powerful.

Rob Kelly
Well, and Colin left out that it was an emergency management tabletop exercise, that every eight minutes this we were being thrown new challenges and news based on what we had shared. And I thought it worked really well as as someone who, you know, we can’t always plan this stuff out. I mean, think think about you never know what emergency is going to hit. And I thought using the AI in the way that you did one it illuminated something for members of the senior team, they were like, Oh, I never thought we could do this. And so it now has opened the door for us to look at how, again, how we can use it ethically, but how we can make it better in our work and not something that needs to be feared. So I thought, I thought it was a great way to introduce something new to people who shape a lot of the life of the institution. So thank you for that.

Keith Edwards
Sounds like it was disruptive, which is kind of the theme here, right? In a good way, in a good way, it was beyond disruptive. Yeah, beyond disruptive look at he’s already pushing the new book that hasn’t even been written yet. Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for joining me and for this conversation today. This has been terrific, and I really appreciate your leadership in this space. I also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode, Routledge and Symplicity. Routledge Taylor Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They’ve welcomed Stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching, Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more, Routledge is proud to sponsor student affairs now view their complete catalog of education titles at routledge.com/education 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 LinkedIn. As always, a huge shout out to our producer, Nat Ambrosey, who dissolved the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. And we value these conversations, and if you value them and want them to reach a larger audience, you can really help us out by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or to our weekly newsletter, where we announce each new episode on Wednesday mornings. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. It really helps more folks engage in these conversations. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks again to the fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you both.

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