Harold Cheatham
Sometimes I’m very worried about the state of affairs, the deliberate sowing of of hate and discontent and disruption in these and out these attitudes that are being promoted in our present society, but in the long span of history, it’s not the first time and solutions were derived for ensuring the regaining of the forward progress and even stepping it up from where we found it. And I try to keep myself convinced that this is just one of those interludes, and we’re called upon to be our best self and to work as hard as we possibly can every time we for every opportunity and Live for the best and the best will occur.

Keith Edwards
Me. Hello and welcome to Student Affairs. Now I’m your host. Keith Edwards, today, I’m doing joined by Dr Harold Cheatham. Harold was the 56th president of ACPA and the first African American man to hold that leadership role. He joined ACPA in 1970 when he was a doctoral student and graduate assistant to Anne Pruitt, then ACP secretary, and later the 37th president. Harold’s writing and research addressed multicultural counseling, theory and practice, cultural pluralism and psychosocial development of African Americans in us. Higher Ed is currently the dean emeritus and Professor Emeritus of counseling and educational leadership at Clemson. I’m so glad to be in this conversation with you as we get going here in just a minute. But first 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 details about this episode or browse our archives at Student Affairs now.com This episode is sponsored by evolve. Evolve helps higher ed senior leaders release fear, gain courage and take take action for transformational leadership through a personalized cohort based virtual executive leadership development experience, and also Huron. Huron education and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovation, financial health and student success. As I mentioned, I’m your host. Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he? Him, His? I’m a speaker, author and coach, and I help higher ed leaders create transformation for better tomorrows through leadership, learning and equity. Can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com and I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is at the intersections of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. But let’s turn to our featured guest today. Dr Harold Cheatham, welcome. Thank you for being here. You are here as part of our ACPA 100 episode that we recorded on stage at the ACPA 100th anniversary with Steven John Quay and Susan KOVAS and Denny Roberts and so here, we’re here to have the Encore conversation and put all of the attention on you, which I know is something you don’t enjoy at all, but we’re but thank you for doing it anyway. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and your journey and your career.

Harold Cheatham
Thanks for connecting this to our ACPA 100th because I’m here today because Denny Roberts and I had coffee at his invitation a couple of weeks ago here in Clemson. And as we were chatting, he said, well, that needs to be recorded also. Next thing I know, I’m hearing from Keith. So thank you, and thanks for the welcome.

Keith Edwards
But you know, today we get to kind of look back at your career, both scholarly and in leadership roles and through professional associations. Why don’t we begin just, why don’t you tell people a little bit about your journey,

Harold Cheatham
a little bit about my journey. I that’s an interesting, I guess, opening option. It was very long, intense, happy, fruitful, challenging, all the rest of that, and

Harold Cheatham
I think, largely unpredictable, how I got to hear from there probably defies everything that we Have have been written texts about vocational development, vocational counseling and advising. I got here without a roadmap. I got here without a whole bunch of intentionality. I got here by thinking that I knew where I was going, at the beginning, selecting a career option, and then going where the path led me. Seemed like I was going someplace else altogether, and then undergraduate school, once I had decided I was going to be a psychologist in undergraduate school, one of my Principal Advisor, my Principal Advisor, in fact, said there’s a teacher in there, and if you hold still for a minute, I think I could help you to get him liberated. And she actually, frankly, pushed in. So she took over, because it was really at a point of advising class, signing, signing up for classes, and I was actually looking for my designated academic advisor, when she happened upon me and asked me, What was I doing there? And I told her, and she said, come in, and at the end of 15 or 20 minutes or so, she said, Now you go downstairs and tell him that I’m your academic advisor from now on. That was that’s probably in my fourth or fifth semester. So she got me aligned with the teaching block and got my credits and selections organized in such a way as I would could go student teaching and then go look for a job teaching. She was a Graduate University of Chicago, and she also had targeted me as somebody who she would groom for going to graduate school at or sponsoring. I don’t mean sponsoring in that sense, but pushing me along to and so one of the sessions or more that I had in her office was about the prospect of going straight to Chicago for graduate school, and by that time, I was married and father my senior year, well, Father My first year, and that just didn’t fit economically. So going to graduate school didn’t work, but going to teaching worked because I had a double major in history in political science, so I went off to teach in secondary school in upstate Central New York, and saw a couple people in the guidance office and the guidance function, and I said, Oh my God. And so I actually thought that I would go into counseling and and guidance, and that’s probably the only independent decision that I made about my career to go from teaching to preparing for when one of them retired or left, I would be prepared to go into guidance counseling suite and do What I was doing anyway, I and a couple of other young, new faculty members were doing most of the counseling and guidance Well, frankly, the people who were responsible for it regaled people in the or attempted to regale people in The faculty lounge by making jokes about students problems and living that’s why I knew that I had to go to guidance and counseling.

Keith Edwards
You know, we hear so many people who get into Student Affairs either because they had a great student affairs mentor and they want to do to others what that person did for them, or they had a terrible student experience. And I think this has got to be better for other people. It sounds like you had a little bit of both, right? You had, as you mentioned, some agency and some choice, particularly around this guidance counselor interest, but also some serendipity. And I think what we maybe now would call intrusive advising sound like somebody telling you what you should do and where you should go, and that sounded interesting and appealing and something you hadn’t thought of before.

Harold Cheatham
Yeah, actually, that’s a good word that you use, Keith, intrusive unapologetically, because most of my experience has been that way and and that’s how I think I’ve largely conducted myself as a prospective mentor for students. I if I see something that I think the student doesn’t see, if I see something that they are seeing only dimly. Diggs. My task, it’s my challenge, actually, to get in there and ask them, Have you thought of Yeah? So yeah, I think intrusive is the right word. But as I said, I didn’t do it from any kind of laid out plan just like, Okay, this is an intersection. What what do you do? And frankly, my career trajectory, my shifts of past largely have been guided by somebody outside of me saying, Have you ever thought of. Of, or I think you’d be good at, or come watch me, or Come be with me. Got me where I was going,

Keith Edwards
yeah. Well, sometimes we need people to point out things we maybe never knew about or thought of or considered, and sometimes we need people to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves. Right? See something possible. Where did this entrance and guidance counseling? Where did things go from there?

Harold Cheatham
Actually, I went down to Colgate to prepare myself for the eventual succession into the guidance suite in the school district where I was in high school. And as I have said frequently, Martin Luther King was assassinated while I was on my way home from the interview at Colgate. And it was in the spring, February, March, April, and by the time I got back to my secondary school job and got settled in a little bit, I had a call from Colgate offering me full fellowship if I could shake myself loose From my secondary school job to come down to Colgate and work on and work on the master’s degree full time, rather than part time, as I had gone to inquire about. And I was able, fortunately, to make the arrangements to go full time. And this is recorded several places, probably, but what I discovered was that I was being recruited to co gain. You know, about the third hour after I was there, the courtship began. It was pretty intense full court press encouraging me to consider staying there as changing my role from a graduate student in counseling and guidance to our Student Affairs to Assistant Dean and not going back to secondary school. And that lasted throughout my program of study. And I give all credit to my suitors, because they said, Well, okay, we got we get it. You don’t want to come here, but you shouldn’t go back to secondary school because too few people like you are in higher education. We haven’t been successful, but let us point some places that you might consider going instead of and so they actually promoted my inquiries, which landed me a Case Western Reserve as coordinator of the University Counseling system, and hence my my meeting with Ann Pruitt and My trajectory on toward the PhD and academic career.

Keith Edwards
And the Ann Pruitt name is a really pivotal one in your journey and in student affairs. And let’s see if I remember this right, you were sort of mentored, maybe intrusively. Maybe this is another intrusive mentor by Anne Pruitt. And Anne Pruitt has roots back to the beginnings of the Student Affairs field. Is

Harold Cheatham
that right? Yes, Esther Lloyd Jones at Teachers College Columbia, she was mentored by Esther Lloyd Jones and I was mentioned by her,

Keith Edwards
yeah, so between the three of you, we’ve got 100 years covered, no pressure. How did Anne Pruitt and that connection and that relationship then lead into some of your ACPA leadership roles?

Harold Cheatham
Oh, that was easy. That was a piece of that was a piece of cake. The when I was, when I went to Case Western Reserve as counseling system, there were four or five units on the campus. In fact, that might my title was technically the coordinator of the University Counseling system. A long way to say director, or way not to say Director of University Counseling. But essentially that was what was what it was, because in 1970 70 Keith Institute of Technology of Western Reserve University. I’m sorry, 67 had federated into Case Western Reserve University, and there were counseling establishments or systems or units in each of the colleges. And Dr Pruitt was the director of the counseling unit in Mather College for Women. It was College for Women, college for men. Cases to technology and Western Reserve College. So there were five units. So my principal task was to make sense out of what what was there to create a functioning, university wide and easily accessible counseling unit and so and Pruitt was At once my guide and counselor and colleague and mentor, because she was adamant. She and I, each time we’ve been able to be together, we have redone this history that goes back to 19 spring of 1870 when she says that she was not as intrusive as I say she was. It’s kind of our but she was intrusive. And I’ll beg pardon of those listening this. They heard it before, but my story in hers is the same, but what I heard her say is, what I heard her say is, I understand that you don’t need a doctorate. I understand you say that you don’t want a doctorate, but you’re going to get one, and I’m going to be your mentor. So lower your voice, lower your shoulders, and watch my cues that that was an improvement, succinctly stated, at least from the recipients died. She said, No, I was, I was more subtle than that. Never.

Keith Edwards
And that led you into a doctoral program, yes, and then eventually into some ACPA leadership roles.

Harold Cheatham
Actually, I was a kind of tag along, but it was a long way from an ACPA leadership role during those those days in the late 60s and early 70s, there was a dance going on between ACPA and not act and

Harold Cheatham
the other student affairs, they’ll kill me anyway. The as I recall, one of those early conferences where they spent years talking about creating a single unit. And I remember the, well, Anne was the secretary, so I did the Woolman sack tape recorder production of the minutes for the meeting. So I was there during those meetings early on, when there was discussion of creating a single student affairs unit. And my recollection is the most intense of those was with women Deans not act. And ultimately, after it seemed like to me a year or two of the intense study and courtship, not accent it was not in their best interest to join with ACPA at that point, and so that was over. You know what happened a couple times more before we had the exchange of memberships, and the ACPA becoming its own Association out from under H a PGA. But I was, I’m I really consider myself to have been more on the fringes, more on the border of this. I wasn’t particularly interested in administrative or elected leadership in the association, but one thing led to another, and I never forget, I was sitting at my desk at the Coast Guard Academy in the early 70s, 72 three, whatever, when they’re wearing the conference was in Cincinnati, and I got a telephone call from Betty Fitzgerald. And I said, Yes, but you were appointed to the board of editorial board the journal, college student, personnel. I think we’re. Called jcsp Then, and I’m phoning to inquire whether you’ll accept and from there, my involvement engagement in ACPA took off because I got on to the editorial board, and from there to ACPA media board, and from there into involvement, engagement with the establishment of, well, the disaffiliation from the PGA and the establishment of the ACPA national office in Dupont Circle. I was president when that happened, and handed off to Carmen Newberger as our first. Well our second, but our first, our first director of ACPA national office. The rest is, history is tritely. It goes

Keith Edwards
well, there’s this theme of serendipity and also some intrusive saying, hey, you’ve been nominated. Will you do it along the way? And as you said, sort of one thing leads to another. I mean, I was a very similar doctoral student, graduate assistant with Jeannie Steffes when she was a CPA president, and I showed up to I didn’t even take minutes. I handed out muffins and picked up trash and delivered Fresh Diet Cokes. But I met so many different people along the way. And so there is, there is quite value of just being in the room in what our capacity, and meeting people and hearing the conversations, and then other people connecting with you and and seeing that in you, you sort of skedaddled right on through from taking minutes to being a CPA president and and establishing a new national office.

Harold Cheatham
I didn’t actually take minutes. I recorded them on the wall and sack recorder, okay, and, and I guess whatever transcription is, and I wouldn’t even claim that I transcribed them. I My job was to run the wall and sack Yeah, sure that that reel to reel tape recorder was functioning and that there was an accurate two set of records of what we’re saying. I don’t know who transcribed them and or whatever, but my job as a graduate system was to just the wool and sack.

Keith Edwards
Well, we mentioned in the opening that you were the first African American man to be president of ACPA, and I believe Anne Pruitt was the first African American person to be president of ACPA, that’s correct. And you two were not far apart in your leadership roles. I mean, obviously you two knew each other, but you want to speak a little bit to that experience of sort of breaking boundaries of your own and watching, watching her do that, and I’m imagining that was intense.

Harold Cheatham
You know? I don’t, I don’t have any strong sense of recollection of barrier breaking with exception to one disruptive incident. In my knowledge, there wasn’t much emphasis on gender and ethnicity. I mean, I was there was an equal professional. One of the reasons that ACPA is so so dear to me, because whatever your distinguishing characteristics, my experience was that there wasn’t much made of that. It was like, here’s the job, here’s what we’re doing. Where do you get in? Where you fit in, as that as that song went. And while in some instances, we weren’t as aggressive, assertive vocal as we possibly could have been. I mean, to the extremes. That’s why CPA is as dear to me as it is, because there’s a place for everybody in a CPA. And we may, we may be slower than the then the specific population benefits from, or would have us be in, fully incorporating them seamlessly, you know, being a part of it. And I was, I wasn’t at all conscious of Ann Pruitt’s ethnicity, that she was the only black person or the significant black person at the meetings. We were there doing ACPA work, and only when somebody protested her being succeeded, or the prospect of her being succeeded by another black woman did race come up. And this was written some place in my Oh, I guess it may see that person was confronted, and I think, effectively dispatched, Mary Howard, stayed on the ballot and became the successor president and Pruitt, but It was remark. This isn’t verbatim, but it’s close that we can’t have one black woman succeeding another one, otherwise people think this is a black organization. What a ludicrous observation from the person in you know, supposed to be there for humane involvement, engagement, ensuring access and viability. And so I I really didn’t have any strong sense about being a pioneer, the first black male to black man. I noticed a emphasis is on black man rather than black male. I I was mentored by ACPA leadership, and I think it had less to do with my ethnicity. I’m confident it had less to do with my ethnicity than it had to do with my temperament, with my how I was perceived. You know, Don Kramer, I’ll call his name, because he’s one of the ones who was busy encouraging me to it hadn’t occurred to me to run for president my CPA, but between him and Bob Brown and probably Denny, four or five of them. And then there were ACPA colleagues who thought, yeah, the time is right. You have the temperament, the experience, etc, to provide the leadership we’re going to nominate you for. And in fact, I Carol Collins come Carol Collier, Cummings, I think is her name the right correct order. And and Rochelle Pope stand out to me because they they were one who brought the message to me that you’re going to be nominated for and I said, I’m not interested in being president. And one of them said something to the effect, if not precisely, but we’ve made your decision. We’ve made our decision. You can make yours. Now we’re nominating you. And I got the word that I was nominee, a candidate for a CPA president, and so I set up and acted like I was a candidate.

Keith Edwards
I’m so glad that throughout your career, there’s so many people who don’t listen to you, right? There’s the one they so many people who don’t listen to you.

Harold Cheatham
I blame that on myself, yeah, not on them. Yeah, they don’t listen to me. I blame it on myself, yeah?

Keith Edwards
But I do see this pattern of people really, you know, I think anyone watching and listening senses your humility, and other people seeing so much more beyond that, but then that also being one of your leadership strengths, I think you’re referring to your temperament, is your sort of your humility as a part of that, and your sense of wanting to be of service rather than being about you and you being a president and this pioneering and barrier breaker, you just want to be of service to the association and the people and do good work and contribute the way you even seen other people do.

Harold Cheatham
I was probably as surprised as anybody in Clemson history or or upstate South Carolina the day after I was hired here at Clemson and the Green Hill news beamed Clemson hires first black Dean in. Its history, whatever that caption was, it hadn’t occurred to me. I I looked at the job description and the configuration of the university and the configuration of disciplines within the college, and said, Yeah, can do that. And I applied, and I survived the process, got here and said, Oh, it was news to me that they had not hired any not any person who wasn’t white in the tough leadership positions in its whole history. Of course, I knew about Harvey Gantt being the first black student, after some petitioning to be admitted here, I knew that history, but I just didn’t. Hadn’t paid too much attention to the administrative academic. I didn’t pay any attention to I knew it was down south.

Keith Edwards
You You mentioned this transition into this ACPA leadership role, and outside that one person sort of making a fuss and then being confronted, it just, it just wasn’t a big deal. And your experience, right was the move to Clemson and the move to south and the barriers breaking there was that also not a big deal. I mean, you said it wasn’t a big deal in your mind. But what was your experience of making that move and being in that leadership role and doing that? Did that

Harold Cheatham
tell me that again, Keith, I want to make sure that I understand what you’re asking me. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
as you’re talking about these, being the first black man who was president of ACPA, not really being a big part of what you were thinking and didn’t really come up as much at the time in your role, in your leadership, and all the things you were doing in that leadership role, in navigating. But then you also talked about this other barrier, going to Clemson barriers there you talked about moving down south, and I think you mentioned Danny Roberts a couple of times now, and he said, I think your experience navigating that transition to Clemson, to the leadership role, to living in the South, There were some things to navigate in that journey,

Harold Cheatham
yeah, from day one to last day,

Harold Cheatham
there’s a challenge because of the history and climate and perspectives of people who are here? Let me try to put this into context. One of my neighbors is a Clemson graduate. Lots of them around here have returned to here. He went to school in upstate Central New York in the county or the school district, pretty close to the one where we were last week. He said to me that he could not believe what he read in my moments and memories essay in the Clemson emeritus college publication about the environment. He said, What year was that? And I said, it was late 1996 that we got here, 2530 years ago, but it’s still the same Clemson. He said, nah. They said, Yes, it is there. I

Harold Cheatham
Well, let me, let me tell you what I took the last, my last official day at Clemson was emeritus day when we were celebrated for our contribution to the university, given a lovely plaque. The ceremony was in the we were on stage, and tears were in a semi circle, and the provost was at the platform, welcoming us and thanking us for our collective number of years of service. And you know that speech when there was one chair, the one immediately, that’s the one that I was seated in, all of which had the names of the potential occupants in the seat. When we got there in our caps and gowns to take the seat, I he she was underway, and stage right, someone was peering through the curtains, moving in and out and about and whatever. And ultimately, he decided, I guess, he had to sit in the chair to. Was vacant, but as he walked up to the chair that was vacant, he leaned over to me and said, Are you in the right place?

Harold Cheatham
And I said, I’m so certain that I am. But to me, to me, that’s exemplary. I mean, the sight of me being there to emeritus day convocation, he just just couldn’t fathom it. I presume he was from one of the external campuses or facilities that he had never bumped into me on campus and or read the newspaper figured out that I was here, but the fact that matters, that we’re so scarce that a prospective colleague would lean over and ask you, ask me in the specific ceremony if I was at the right place. So it doesn’t go away, it’s there and but if it precedes you, you’re in trouble.

Keith Edwards
You were, you mentioned you were at Clemson. How long were you at Clemson? Five years, five years in that leadership role, right? You were in ACPA leadership roles. I You were in other leadership roles previously. I’m wondering, as you look back at sort of this collective multiple leadership experiences. I What are your big takeaways about leadership? You know you have, you have expertise in in counseling, you did a lot of ACPA work, but sort of above that those details and competence was this, this leadership role.

Harold Cheatham
It’s not often that I’m stumped, but I’m stumped because I just really don’t think, even having taught Leadership Theory, where’s paltarano and taranzini. They’re over my right shoulder here. I mean, I meant to say Pascarella and taranzini. Potterrano is over that shelf.

Harold Cheatham
I don’t give much thought to that. Something needs doing, and you have perspectives, you step forward and engage, immerse work, it call on others with like skills or similar skills to to get the job done. I I just don’t have any I don’t go looking for leadership roles. They maybe find me, and I don’t hope that doesn’t sound arrogant. Probably, if you know, if asked to write a descriptor for myself leadership, I probably wouldn’t put that word in there. I just do what needs doing.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, reminded me. Someone asked President Obama about what his suggestions were for young people who want to be in these leadership roles, and he said, Get good at getting stuff done. That sounds like, like your approach. You know, get stuff done. What needs to be done. How can we do it? Very focused on that. You’ve mentioned Ann Pruitt, you mentioned an intrusive advisor who are some other people who made a profound difference in your professional life.

Harold Cheatham
Well, my academic dean, Rodney Reed at Penn State, again, he probably was, haven’t verified this, but he probably was the first, and maybe only in the College of Education, far as I know, Dean of Dean of the College. And he had a profound impact on my career, because when he came to Penn State, and that was probably in my I don’t know what year I was in, I had, I had been there probably 10 years, and. In that department. And one of our earlier, early conversations after his deanship was he asked me that very question about leadership. I said, I have responsibility for the college student personnel program in my department, but I don’t have any ambition to necessarily be a department head. Department department head. I became one under his guidance. It was a competitive spot, and it had to be selected by by your peers. It was by vote, but I never even fantasized about being head of the department. I did what they hired me to do with my curriculum and leadership of the college student personnel program, and I was, I was happy doing what I was doing, but I ended up being groomed to be to Be a dean, and ultimately became one. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
any others who’ve been important to you on your journey,

Harold Cheatham
there are a number of people, but some of the more intrusive than others. I guess they don’t come to mind, but immediately knowing this conversation, but I acknowledge them, have to look in my address book and see who the people who over span my career, I still send personal notes to and and receive some from also from those whom I’ve had the pleasure of being intrusive with.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, sounds like you’ve returned the favor a time or two, right? I guess as you look back at your journey professionally. There’s lots that we’ve talked about, but so much that we haven’t even touched on at all. What’s something important that you don’t want to get lost? What’s something important that you want to make sure gets said here today for others to hear. I

Harold Cheatham
I don’t know, to put it in a capsule. A little while ago, I said, get in where you fit in. And it’s important, I think, to be flexible in your definition of who you are, how you’re doing and where you’re going, so that you are susceptible to counsel, to intrusive, to intrusion, uh, a and and being flexible to least consider adopting or incorporating what is suggested to you as ways that you don’t have to abandon what you’re doing or where you’re going, but it’s all all a piece of of who you are, where you are, and I think that’s what, what has worked for me is that the intrusions that I have gotten were more braiding. Then, then they were nothing was to my record. I don’t, I don’t recall anybody ever trying to counsel or guide me any direction that you know, career wise, that I didn’t consider, and ultimately, apparently, for what I’ve been saying for the last however many minutes, I found utility.

Keith Edwards
I love that notion of braiding, I guess, guess what I hear you saying is have a strong sense of self and identity, but not so strong that you’re not open to feedback and other people’s ideas and their suggestions, and be open to other people’s thoughts and ideas, but not so much that you lose yourself in that and braiding those to. Together, this sense of self and identity with other people’s perspectives and ideas and paths that braiding those two things together. It’s not an either or, but how do we connect those together? Yeah, and you, you started this by saying it was, it was a journey that you never would have mapped out in the beginning, right? This is not a path that you would have plotted and planned. It’s a path that you ended up done as you look back on it. Now, what do you see in terms of the path that ended up

Harold Cheatham
well, I was actually saying that in the academic sense, in terms of plotting, plotting one’s career path, that’s interesting. I have to work on that plotting and plotting, yeah, because some planning probably is good, long as you know when to get off the dime and move responsibly into direct, you know, to opportunities, options that are available to you. But I don’t know. I this crazy thing. If I had all to do again, what would I do differently? Nothing.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, because all of it shaped your experience and who you are and how it went,

Harold Cheatham
it worked for me. I pleased two proud parents. They gave us much career guidance as they could. They chastised me when the career path that I was starting off on, or thinking about getting off of it onto another one. But as I tried to tell those who my counsel, it really is a different world that they’re inheriting, and so I might not know what the best career path is for you, but you do what makes sense, and stay flexible to to yourself using your God given Talents. It works out. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
Well, as you mentioned, you have been emeritus for some time, and you’re still very engaged. You were at ACPA visiting with past presidents and other folks you mentioned, you know, it’s a different world. I’m curious what you see as the the current of higher education and student affairs and what you see ahead, anything worry you, concern you, excite you.

Harold Cheatham
You know what? It’s probably going to sound trite.

Harold Cheatham
Sometimes I’m very worried about the state of affairs, the deliberate sowing of of hate and discontent and disruption in these and out these attitudes that are being promoted in our present society, but in the long span of history, it’s not the first time and solutions were derived for ensuring the regaining of the forward progress and even stepping it up from where we found it. And I try to keep myself convinced that this is just one of those interludes, and we’re called upon to be our best self and to work as hard as we possibly can every time we for every opportunity and Live for the best and the best will occur.

Keith Edwards
I really, I really appreciate that, especially now when what I see on the news and happening around us feels so, so immediate, so serious, so harmful, often as you pointed to and I really appreciate that long view of history of. We’ve been in these places before, it has been hard and it has led to some progress and some good things, and just keep doing good work,

Harold Cheatham
right? Yeah, that’s my sense.

Keith Edwards
Any final thoughts you want to add here before we conclude?

Harold Cheatham
No, I’m trying.

Keith Edwards
Well. Dr Harold Cheatham, thank you so much for taking time to reflect and share your journey, and for an entire career of leadership and service and seeing what needs to be done and getting to it all along the way, I was able to see so many people at ACPA who knew you and had connected to you, or knew someone who had connected to you, and the impact of your professional life and journey was remarkable, and then also your wife with you following along was was Wonderful to see, and we absolutely must thank Denny Roberts, who we had a similar conversation, and Denny’s outreach to you to have coffee and then outreach to me to have this conversation. So thank you to Denny for making this happen.

Harold Cheatham
Let me close you out with a thought that you stirred at ACPA in Chicago, my wife and I were sitting at breakfast, probably the third morning down there in the cafe, and the woman at the table next to us stood up, and she was looking directly at us as she was approaching us. She said, I don’t know who you are, but I’m getting ready to find out. And she sat down for a few minutes and we began chanting. I told her my name. She said that she knew my name, but who did I know? It turned out that her provost is one of the people who gives me credit for having some impact in her career. So she ends up, after having said, I’m getting ready to find out, having really, actually found out that’s the value of ACP and of our association.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and someone who sees you at breakfast doesn’t know who you are, but thinks you’re interesting, finds out that you have been a mentor and help guide a Provost who has meant something to her, right? So a little serendipity, a little intrusive advising along the way leads to quite a legacy

Harold Cheatham
Provost, actually, this person is currently in a provost position, and Provost to the person who introduced herself to us. Yeah, wonderful.

Keith Edwards
Well, what a great lesson to about about our impact, but also, if someone seems interesting to have a conversation and find out, I think that’s great. Thank you for filling in with us. Harold, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode evolve and Huron evolve helps senior leaders who value aspire to lead on and want to unleash their potential for transformational leadership. This is a program that I lead, along with doctors, Brian Rao and Don Lee. We offer a personalized experience with high value impact. The asynchronous content, six individual and six group coaching sessions, maximize your learning and growth for transformational leadership and Huron. Huron collaborates with colleges and universities to create sound strategies, optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Huron promotes institutional resilience and higher education. For more information on them, you can visit go.hcg.com/now as always, a huge shout out to our producer, Nat Ambrosey, who makes us all look and sound good, and thanks to all of you our audience. Without you, this podcast wouldn’t be possible. We encourage you to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube and to our newsletter, where you can get information about each new episode each Wednesday morning, you can also leave us five star review and help great conversations like this one with Dr Harold Cheatham reach even more folks. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks to Dr Harold Cheatham, our fabulous guest today, and to everyone who is watching and listening, make it a great week. Thank you.

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