Neil E. Golemo: Welcome to, Here’s the Story, a show that brings student affairs to life by sharing the authentic voices and lived experiences of those who are shaping the field every day.

My name is Dr. Neil E. Golemo. I’m your host and the luckiest guy I know. I’m blessed to serve as the Director of Campus Living and Learning on Texas a and m, sunny Galveston Island campus. My father, a husband and a son over here, just trying to do my best to do a little good or at the very least, get caught trying.

I’m here with my co-host.

J.T. Snipes: I’m JT Snipes and my pronouns are he, him, his, I serve as an associate professor and chair of the educational leadership department at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and I’m trying my best to live as a free black man in a world that would have me live otherwise.

Neil E. Golemo: All of this is brought to you today by our wonderful sponsor. Evolve. Evolve is a series of leadership coaching journeys designed to bring clarity, capacity, and confidence. Empowering courageous leadership to reimagine the future of higher education. If Keith Edwards is involved, you know it’s gonna do worth your time.

J.T. Snipes: Neil, what’s going on today?

Neil E. Golemo: Hey, I can’t wait to introduce you. Have you met my friend, Frank Haw. No I haven’t. Hey Frank, why don’t you tell us a little bit? That’s a lie.

J.T. Snipes: I’m totally kidding. I actually know Frank and I’m super excited about it.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. So Frank, tell us about yourself. Oh, so this is where I just jump in and tell my story.

Tell us about yourself. Why would people care who you are besides the fact that we love you? Hey

Frank Shushok: Gosh, my name’s Frank Shushok and I’m, I have the honor of serving as the 12th president of Roanoke College, which is a small liberal arts college in Salem, Virginia, which is in southwest Virginia adjacent to the city of Roanoke.

It’s a beautiful community in the Blue Ridge Mountains in. I’m living my best life with a young woman that I met when I was 15 years old. Her her name is Kelly, who was below mine. And we took it from there. And we’re still doing life together. We got three great kids all grown up now and like you we’re just trying to.

Acknowledge that this time that we have on earth is precious and that we have an opportunity to do the very best that we can and the most good that we can with what we have. And that’s the journey I’m on and I feel incredibly blessed to have known the two of you. For a very long time. And as I told you recently, I’m just incredibly proud of both of you and the humans that you are and the kind of professionals that you are.

And humble to be here with you on a show that you are hosting. Who knew? That’s a great,

Neil E. Golemo: you’re making me blush. Got off to a great start. I just wanna say doing great.

J.T. Snipes: Yes. So you have a story for us.

Frank Shushok: Yeah I went back and forth on a story and I’ve been I’ve been thinking about a way to connect it and it’s such a formation story that is connected in a roundabout way to you, and has been a foundational part of everything in my life.

So I want to tell a story about how. I found my way to higher education and and why it is that I believe in people so much and especially taking chances on people. So let me start, Frank Schock, that goes back to the first grade in school and that’s when I was diagnosed with dyslexia and a learning an auditory process processing disorder.

And that began back then I was called a resource student and people would come and they would pull you out of class. And the long story, the short story is that that helped me. I accept an identity for myself that I wasn’t smart. And as I went through school I just believed I didn’t, wasn’t very bright.

I wasn’t good at school. I struggled with reading. I didn’t do well in math. And when you take an identity for yourself, you often live into that identity. And we know this from a student development perspective, and by the time that I had gotten to high school, I think I had just stopped trying and that was that living into that identity.

And this is the first by, by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was failing just about everything.

I had to go to summer school to repeat English, to repeat another class. And I had failed it. It was, it gotten to the point where I was really wondering, can I graduate from high school?

And it was about that time that I encountered two incredible human beings. And one of them is named Keith Christian and the other is Gail Pack. And they were both high school teachers. Gail Pack failed me in Spanish, and Keith Christian was doing his darnedest to help me pass algebra and a, these two people.

Did something that I think is so important for us that work in student affairs work is they saw potential in me that I could not see yet, and essentially they kicked me in the rear end. They confronted what they thought was a false identity that I had accepted for myself. They challenged me to to embrace my learning differences and find alternate ways to succeed.

And slowly but surely, thanks to those two people who believed in me. I started to unravel, not immediately, but over time. And when I say unravel, I went from a failing student to the next year being a BC student, to finally at the end of my senior year of high school, being an a b student, like literally the last semester, which was.

An incredible, unexpected turnaround that began to shape a new way of viewing myself. Now, why is that important and how’s this connected to you? Because that young woman that I told you about, Kelly was going to the school, Baylor, and of course, I didn’t know that I was gonna be college bound at all.

And, so she was going to Baylor where you young men went to school. And so I thought, I’m gonna apply to Baylor. I’m gonna go to Baylor too. I’m, I want to go to college. And so I applied to Baylor and I was summarily rejected. I got that complete rejection letter, but I was embolden that maybe I could do this, that I could do this.

I mean that like Gail Pack and Keith Christian and my effort and all those things coming together created a belief into me that I could be successful in college and I just needed to convince somebody to let me in because, I, freshman year, sophomore mean my grades were terrible. They looked, they were, you looked at my transcript and you’re not thinking.

This young man is college bound material. So I started researching people who were on the board of trustees at Baylor, and I found this board of trustee member, his name was Dave McCall that lived near me in Plano, Texas. Essentially made my case to Dave McCall that I was worth a chance. Dave McCall picked up the phone and he called the president of Baylor University, Herbert Reynolds, and he said, I’ve met this guy.

I believe he needs a chance. Is there a chance he’s been rejected from Baylor? Is there a chance that we can let this guy come to school there? Dr. Reynolds said, Hey, listen, if you’ll come to Baylor in the summer and take two courses and pass ’em, we’ll let ’em come to Baylor. So I went to Baylor that summer.

I took two courses, physics Oh, and a course, and I two A’s, and when I got to Baylor, I learned. Not only that I could be a student, but that I loved being a learner. And it just, it is such a reminder that we’re not all on the same timeline. Good people. So why do I believe in people who want to take chances on people?

Just think of those three names. Keith Christian, Dave McCall. All taking a bet, taking the time to listen to a young man and hear about their dreams, to help ’em decipher the identity they had for themselves to see potential. They didn’t know that they had yourselves. Now, listen, if I hadn’t gone to Baylor, I would’ve never later on had the opportunity to go back to Baylor.

Be a se an administrator there, and I would’ve never had the opportunity to know you two and be influenced by the two of you. And you think about legacy and how legacy works. That’s how it works. And like I said you all. Have influenced me tremendously. We had a great run at Baylor together, you as students, as me, as an educator or teacher, or we knew each other in lots of contexts and I got to see, I think your potential before you fully recognized it as well.

And man, can you believe we get to do that? And now, decades later, I’m on your podcast. And I and I told you, I’m in awe at who have you, you have become, I remember so many early on conversations and seeing your remarkable and your potential in such clear ways, in ways that I suspect that you didn’t really understand.

And at least while I was at Baylor, I was trying to exploit your potential. Help you find your own identity that was authentically yours, and now you are doing that for another generation of young people Now, is this a life worth living?

J.T. Snipes: Oh yeah. Undoubtedly,

Frank Shushok: that’s my story. Sticking with it.

Neil E. Golemo: I haven’t cried in in a podcast for a minute thanks. Seriously.

Frank Shushok: And

J.T. Snipes: so Frank, I, I’d love to ask you a simple question that I ask all of our guests. Why did you wanna tell this story? At this time?

Frank Shushok: First of all,

I like telling this story because I didn’t tell it, and I didn’t tell this story until I was 38.

So why didn’t I tell that story? I thought there was something to be ashamed of, that I almost didn’t graduate from high school. And along the way I had picked up an identity.

I think people believed I was smart and, I did well in college and, then I started writing and teaching and I think for so long I didn’t believe myself to be smart, so I relished the being smart part. Yeah. And I thought that it was something that would expose me if I talked about being dyslexic or struggling in school or failing high school classes.

And so I literally.

I kept that a secret until I was 38, and now I tell it a lot because I realize all of us are in the journey of becoming, we, and what we need are stories of victory and reminders that. All around us are people who are in process of becoming their next best self.

And it reminds me that who I am today is nothing more than the product of a whole lot of people who invested in me. I didn’t arrive anywhere by myself.

J.T. Snipes: So I’m curious, and Neil feel free to jump in after this the story with calling Dave McCall. I would love if you could take us into the argument that you made with Dave.

Because for me if I had gotten a rejection letter from Baylor, I would’ve just said, oh, I guess I’m not meant to. To me, I would find different ways either transferring, like accepting the no. Yeah. And I’m curious, like what was the conversation and what made you not accept the initial No.

From Baylor?

Frank Shushok: I think this is residual gift of those teachers who, imagine going from having zero belief in yourself to having enough belief to advocate for yourself. That was gift to me from them. Ooh. So I was that I wanted this and, I have a bit of a justice orientation and I thought, it’s not fair that I didn’t figure this all out until later. And look at my progression, I went from this failing student to now I’m making mostly a’s at the end of high school could come. Can you take a look at that? And me, essentially, I in a. 17-year-old way, I told that story and said, I really want to give this a shot.

I, I can be su I think what I said is, I can be successful at bay,

J.T. Snipes: I

Frank Shushok: promise if someone will just give a chance.

And we, we have a society that this isn’t my story, but as a lot of our stories mean, a lot of this is just not opportunity for some people. Absolutely. Environment. You didn’t have the opportunity to have certain kinds of courses or certain kinds of teachers or the kinds of resources in the system says no.

And now it could have been. So this is where we just need to talk about this guy, Dave McCall. He didn’t have to listen.

J.T. Snipes: Yeah.

Frank Shushok: And he could have said no. And my guess if he had said no and didn’t advocate and didn’t use his social capital, meaning I know the president of Baylor and I can call the president of Baylor up.

He didn’t have to use that. Just like we don’t have to. When a student comes in and says, I need a chance, I need you to listen. I need you to hear my story.

We don’t have to listen, we don’t have to act. And probably had Dave recall, not, I probably would have pursued some sort of opportunity along that I would not be having this conversation with you. This would not have occurred. Our later intersection. And remember, I came back and worked almost a decade as a senior faculty member at this institution that rejected me.

J.T. Snipes: Now see you Trying to give me the shout. That’s a implication to be like, won’t he do it?

Neil E. Golemo: I can say that it’s interesting because I knew a little bit of that story, but I didn’t know a lot of it. And, something I’ve always just admired about you and honestly taken with me from the beginning of my journey has been like, I feel like you’re so good at seeing what’s important.

A situation and there’s so many times I, and I can tell multiple stories about, we were worried about this and then Frank walks in and is isn’t the real problem this? And and I don’t know. I just admire that so much. And you’re so accomplished and you’ve done so much. I think it really says a lot that you tell that story in a lens of help that you got along the way.

’cause you’ve accomplished a lot on your own. And I think that’s unfortunately too rare. People who acknowledge all the help that they’ve gotten along the way. I, no I try to be more like that. That wasn’t really a question, but

J.T. Snipes: that’s a good reflection. I do think too, one of the powerful points of your story for me was this idea of unraveling.

And I really love that language because I’m thinking. In, in that, in some of the circles that I’m a part of, there’s talk of deconstruction, right? And there’s a sense of I have to take what is, what has been established and I have to destroy it and I, I really want to play. Now you have me thinking about what it could mean to think about transformation as unraveling, because there’s a sense of.

Who Frank is today has always been present. And there were things that were restricting the true essence, if you will, of Frank, from coming out. And the process is just allowing those things to unravel as opposed to this imagery of having to work and destroy and remove. I don’t know, there’s something beautiful about that language and I’m wondering if you’ve thought about unraveling in, in.

In different ways or even the process of growth and development.

Frank Shushok: Yeah. Yeah. I love that you used the word beautiful because I think evolution and becoming is ultimately beautiful. And it’s actually additive. Unraveling. If you think it met it metaphorically, it’s revealing.

And so if you think of a human being as this remarkable thing from the get go and this is what I always to say to prospective families and new students is we’re certain that you’re brilliant and that you’re remarkable, and we’re also. Certain that many of you don’t know that yet.

And our job is to walk alongside you until you, that is clear to you. And Keith Christian and Gail Pac, they didn’t get to see all of the, they let, they handed me off at the end of high school. And I’ll just tell you two really interesting sidebars to that is my middle child such a learner and I really wanted her to meet Gail Pack and Gail P had breast cancer and a year before she passed away we went out of our way to go visit her. And I have this beautiful picture of my daughter and Gail Pack and me being able in front of her to tell how important she was to my transformation. Now she’s passed away on a equally, fun was at my presidential inauguration and to, in front of 500 people, ask Keith Christian to stand up and tell that story, how important he was this guy who.

Didn’t think he was gonna go to graduate to graduate from high school, is now being inaugurated as the 12th president of a college and getting to ask him to stand up and recognize that again, that standing up wasn’t happening without that person.

J.T. Snipes: It’s powerful. And I think about the potential is one. Another thing that you said in your story that really stuck with me is the potential I couldn’t see yet. Yeah. And I think that is such a powerful framing for the work that we do with our students. I I’m wondering if you could say a little bit more, not about me, because everyone could see my potential but maybe you could talk a little bit about Neil what you saw in terms of potential.

Frank Shushok: Had a little, we had a little pre-conversation. I told you some of this, but

J.T. Snipes: Right.

Frank Shushok: I told you just is yesterday. In my head I can. Be right in the moment of our very first encounters. And I, I think jt I shared with you that your depth and your wisdom. I told you, I can remember the first time I encountered it outside of a residence hall, Martin Hall at Baylor University.

I, you were am mere 18 years old.

I remember a conversation with you about your family, about your identity, about what your responsibilities were to your family, and here’s this 18-year-old. Who was beginning the process of unraveling what it means to give a, to live a good life. And I remember saying, wow, this guy is remarkable.

I bet he has no idea how cool he is. And similarly, I told you, Neil, I remember being in Bennett Auditorium at a, eight. Residence hall, student staff training, and you being this young Catholic young man at a Baptist university as an 18-year-old trying to help a large group of people be more inclusive.

I remember thinking that guy has a lot of courage. That is gonna be something that is gonna serve him so well, and then. We got to spend, that’s so fun. I got to, jt, we talked about watching you become a scholar. You were and it, not only did I get to see that, I also told you that you made my classes.

I just go back to these relationships aren’t one way. They’re, we we do this together. We just happen to be different ages and at different stopping places along the continuum of life, but it all continues, right? So yeah, for sure. Yeah. Can we just acknowledge how fascinating is to think that Keith Christian and Gail P and Dave McCall are now part of your legacy?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They’re part of, you are part of their legacy and you’ve never met them. That’s how, this is how this goes down.

Neil E. Golemo: That’s unraveling, right? I love the idea that, the cap on our potential so often is the story that we tell about ourselves and letting that go and letting just the truth of who we are play out.

That, I don’t know. I think that’s the perfect way to put it, is. You have to let that image and that mystery of control that we think we might have sometimes you just have to give it up.

Yeah.

J.T. Snipes: I just wanna acknowledge too, frank, publicly that it is both ways, and you have indel when we were talking in preparation for this, I mentioned.

The way that I try to teach is based on many of the things that you modeled in terms of caring deeply about student learning and inviting us to wrestle with ideas that don’t offer easy answers. I consistently referenced the law of requisite variety in meetings, right? Because the goal and the push is that simple solutions can solve complex problems.

But you taught me, and made it obvious that complex problems require complex solutions. And that makes a difference in my teaching and in my leadership. So just wanna say publicly thank you for. Modeling what a true scholar practitioner yeah. Looks like.

Neil E. Golemo: Thank you. I talked about burnbaum and trashcan decision making yesterday, like absolutely

Frank Shushok: unabashed.

That’s great. Yeah. Gosh, it makes me so happy. But nothing brings me greater joy than, seeing that you’re paying everything forward. Just, that’s all we do. And that’s, it makes us be generous ’cause we realize people have been generous with us. And that’s how good gets loose in the world.

And it’s why these careers are such a privilege and, we gotta. Remind ourselves of that. I love this quote by EB White is always be on the lookout for wonder. So easy to miss it. The wonder, and I think what we’re talking about here is the wonder of being an educator in higher education despite all the hardness and craziness.

And attacks that we’re experiencing at the moment. The wonder still continues, and if you just pause for a minute, it’s there.

Neil E. Golemo: Frank, you talked about how far you’ve come and what you know, how much has changed and how much you’ve evolved and seen evolution. Like this may not be a fair question, but where do you see that going next? What would you like to see either in your own or just for your path?

Frank Shushok: Yeah. If you follow Eric Erickson’s developmental theories when you’re fortunate, you begin to see life through a generative lens, and that you realize, that you realize that.

You know that the most important thing that you’re doing is looking behind you at who needs to who support you can offer, who you can offer s for whom you can offer support and clear pathways use your social capital and your network to provide opportunities. To make connections, to create experiences, to provide funding.

Whatever I have is is really less about, I hope developmentally about taking me somewhere next and more about where I can help someone, but go next.

Neil E. Golemo: We’re always there. We’re always evolving and speaking. Of evolving. We wanna thank our guest. We wanna thank the people paying the bills. Over 20 years evolved.

Higher education leaders are facing unprecedented challenges. We need courageous leadership now more than ever, and poor leadership has never. Spend more costly. At Evolve Institute, they are empowering a new generation of leaders with the capacity to turn these challenges into possibilities and lead with and through them.

At Evolve, we help leaders develop the capacity to lead with clarity, confidence, and courage. We offer leadership coaching journeys for leadership teams and individual leaders focused on executive leaders, emerging executives, emerging leaders, and those leading for equality. This has been, here’s the story, part of the Student Affairs Now family.

We are so glad you joined us to laugh, cry, learn sometimes commiserate, but always celebrate being part of the Student Affairs experience. If you have a story and we all have a story, please consider sharing with us by leaving a two minute pitch via voice file at Student Affairs. Now. Com slash here’s the story.

Every story is welcome and every earnest perspective is worthy. And even if you don’t feel like sharing yours, you can still find ours and others@studentaffairsnow.com. On YouTube, please smash the subscribe button and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode has been edited by Nat Ambrosey. Thank you, Nat, for making us sound better than we have any business sounding.

Everybody, I hope this has fed your flame a little bit because your light matters. Keep using it to make the world a brighter place. Until next time, this has been, here’s the story. I’m Neil Golemo.

J.T. Snipes: I’m JT Snipes. Thanks again, Frank, for joining me.