Keith Edwards:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we have some student affairs innovators joining us to think and rethink student affairs work. What should we restore to what it was? What should evolve and what should completely transform. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on social media. Today we welcome our new sponsor, LeaderShape. Leadershape is a not-for-profit organization that has been partnering with colleges, universities, and organizations, creating transformational leadership experiences since 1986, with a focus on creating a more just caring and thriving world leadership. LeaderShape provides both virtual and in-person leadership development opportunities for students and professionals.

Keith Edwards:
When you partner with LeaderShape, you will receive quality development experiences that engage learners in topics of courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building to find out more about their virtual programs, please visit them at leadershape.org/virtualprograms. You can also learn more about them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Today’s episode is also sponsored by Anthology. Is your goal to engage in effective assessment, loose data fluency, and empower staff with strategic data collection, documented analysis and use of results for change, no matter where your campus is in the assessment journey, Anthology formerly Campus Labs can help you figure out what’s next with a short assessment, they receive customized results and tailored recommendations to address your most immediate assessment needs. Learn more about how anthologies products and expert consultation can empower your division with actionable data by visiting campuslabs.com/SANow. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he/him/his.

Keith Edwards:
I’m a speaker consultant and coach. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m hosting this conversation today from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral Homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. The framing to today’s episode came from an article or really a blog post in EDUCAUSE about how IT work in higher education and K-12 education should shift on the other side of the COVID pandemic. They asked what should restore to what was, what should evolve and get a little bit better and what should completely transform. So we thought we’d pose these questions to some well-known student affairs innovators. Each of you is well well-known for your innovative thinking and eagerness to be unconventional. So we’re so excited to have you here to help us think and to get this started. Love to hear a little bit about each of you, and then we’ll see what you want to Restore, Evolve and Transform. So share with us a little bit, we’ll start with Eboni, share with us a little bit about who you are and your role and a little bit about the work that you do.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Thanks for having me Keith Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher, I’m at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at Champagne. Here I have a couple of different hats that I wear. I am a professor in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership in our Higher Education division. I teach a course in community college leadership, policy analysis, dissertation writing you name that I teach it. But when I’m not teaching and advising what I spend a lot of my time doing as being a Director of the Office of Community College Research and Leadership otherwise known as LCCRL. We’ve been around for over 30 years longest standing community college research hub in the country. We look at how students moved in through and out of community colleges to further education or gainful employment. We also housethe Council for the Study of Community Colleges, which is an affiliate council of the American Association of Community Colleges. So I’m Executive Director of that and so, yeah, that’s a couple of my gigs.

Keith Edwards:
A couple of the gigs. I’m tired just listening to all of those different roles. So thank you for taking time to be here, really appreciate that Luoluo, let’s go to you next. Tell us a little bit about you.

Luoluo Hong:
Hi, everyone. So glad to be here and thanks for inviting me to be part of this opportunity to engage in some fierce dialogue. So I am currently serving as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management for the California State University system. We are the largest public four year university, and generally also recognize as serving the most diverse student population in the country. We have over 480,000 students that we serve across 23 campuses of the great state of California and they span Northern most at Humboldt State University and go all the way down to the southern most part of the state at San Diego State University. I’ve been in this role now for just about two years after I spent just over five years serving as the Senior Student Affairs Officer at one of the 23 campuses, San Francisco State University. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. Thank you, T.J., Tell us a little bit about you.

T. J. Logan:
Everybody. Keith, thanks for having me. My name is T.J. Logan. I serve as the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at Temple University here in Philadelphia. In my role, I oversee mainly operational pieces. I’ve got a comprehensive Housing and Residence Life Program. I’ve got student center operations on multiple campuses. I’ve got oversight of our Divisional Finance, Division of Strategic, things like that and, and like Luoluo, really looking forward to a great conversation about this framework.

Keith Edwards:
Well, let’s, let’s stick with you T.J. I shared and we’ll put this short little article in the show notes, but really the article is not that profound. It’s just these three prompts, what should restore to what was, what should evolve and improve a little bit and take a few steps forward and what should completely transform on the other side of this COVID pandemic, which I think we’re learning now is going to sort of be a bell curve or a curve rather than an end, right? This is going to continue on and sort of slow. But what, what have you been thinking about what are you eager to go back to the way things were? What are you looking forward to and what do you hope will go back to the way we had it before.

T. J. Logan:
People know right. Seeing people no, but it, that’s kind of a joke and kind of not. When I, when I think back to the beginning of this pandemic, I think about the things that people were writing, the things that people were talking about. And for me personally, being someone who likes to think a little bit outside the box, I saw it as a great opportunity, right? Let no crisis go wasted. And part of that opportunity was saying, what are we going to learn about? What’s important? What are we going to learn about? What’s important about face to face and community and the traditional college experience. We’re going to pull back the curtain on the finances, higher ed. We’re going to have a more informed consumer than we’ve ever had in our life. And I think we’ve gotten there and on the other end of this, you know, if I were a betting man, I would have said, we probably don’t need some of the same structures in place that we have now, as it relates to the traditional college experience.

T. J. Logan:
And now we’re far enough into this thing. I think we can look at some data. You know, if you look at Strada has done some stuff Ethica, SNR has done some stuff. ACC has done some stuff Brightspot and We Work has done some, Deloitte has done some studies. And you look at the data that we know about thus far. And what we’re learning is that the traditional college experience is pretty darn important. It’s pretty, it was important to students before they got here. Simpson Scarborough told us that, but it’s also important now that they’re taking classes, a majority of which is online or hybrid, and we’re looking at cohorts of students and realizing that a college experience was pretty much as important as student affairs folks always felt that it was, and it’s not anecdotal anymore. We don’t just feel it, we’re seeing it.

T. J. Logan:
And we’re seeing the data in terms of what it means to student success. We’re seeing what it means in terms of, you know, a recent study said one in 10 students reported, they felt as though they were connected to their institution or had a sense of belonging. That’s, that’s huge three out of five students saying that they have housing insecurity or food insecurity. That’s huge. There’ve been these massive impacts on student success. And now we’re not just anecdotally saying it’s important. Now we’re saying, we know it’s important. And how do we restore some of those elements? You know, I always joke, and I say, what portion of tuition pays for Frisbee in the quad? I know that’s an oversimplification, but the end of the day, when you ask students, you know, how does your dollars go in and what are you getting out?

T. J. Logan:
It turns out the experience is pretty darn important, according to what we now know. And so if you were to ask me to sum up what is the thing we need to restore, I really think it’s a college experience. And I say traditional college experience. And I don’t mean that to exclude community colleges or different types of institutions. But I mean, it to say that there’s something about community that we have found to be critically important. And I think it’s important that we find ways to restore that there’s going to be a caveat with that. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

Keith Edwards:
Right. Yeah. And I echo that. I think I’m hearing, not everyone, not just college students, really craving connection and meaning and where they can find that in community and, and the traditional college experience. What about you, Luoluo? What are you looking forward to returning to and restoring the way it was before March 13th?

Luoluo Hong:
So some of us went to working from home later and some, a little bit earlier. So I think I want to echo a lot of what, what T.J. said, and, and perhaps it’s the concept or the promise of what a college experience might be like. I get asked so often, will we ever go back to brick and mortar? Will we ever go back to the campus? Will we, has that become an obsolete concept if you will? And I think I compare it a little bit when we went through the MOOCs scare, right. That there was concerned like, Oh, well, we don’t need to build any more buildings, right. That will save money. We can reduce on deferred maintenance and those kinds of things. And I think the fear was bigger than the reality is that we withstood that we sustain, and we discovered that while MOOCs have a place and can certainly serve certain students in certain settings that fundamentally there is the importance of place in our lives.

Luoluo Hong:
And we know that because I think part of the impacts on mental health as a nation, right, for all from young to, to the oldest of our generations, the fact that we’ve been stuck in place both figuratively and physically, and literally I think has been a stressor for people. So, is there an, an idea of what the higher education experience ought to be that we want to go back to? I do think that that is there. I also think we have to think about it being different and T.J. referenced different institutional types. I also think regardless of the institutional type they’re different students. And so I do think that when you think about higher education, it was designed and conceived at a time where most of the students who now go to college do not get to go to college in the United States.

Luoluo Hong:
So it was created and developed to serve a particular type of student who now increasingly represents the minority of who we serve on many of our campuses. I know that’s true for the California State University. And the irony is Higher Education has remarkable ability to resist change and sustain practices. I was to meet with a group of students, and I said, who came up with that academic regalia from hundreds of years ago? It has not changed despite generations of new students coming through faculty changing, right. Who wears those ropes has changed over time, but that has been an enduring aspect. So I think symbolically or metaphorically that’s really important is that we still deliver instruction, services, the experience and the conceptualization of what that ought to be in many ways, with notable exceptions in pockets of hope, right? And dreaming and imagining that still serves a conception of who our students are that I think needs to be blown up. And I agree the pandemic is an opportunity. It showed us where there are opportunities. If we are willing to look and listen and hear, and engage and respond and go, we didn’t know, I don’t know, what do we do differently? There is security and doing the same over and over. So there’s an opportunity I think, here for us to be shaken and to experience that, that feeling of not being the expert and not having all the answers at this time.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I love that notion about place. And how do we do that when, when people aren’t living on campus or aren’t going to campus, how do we create that sense of place and tie that to what T.J. was talking about community? Yeah. And I, and you’re reminding me of an adage that I got about the traditional nature of higher ed resisting to change with a committee for everything. And I was reminded as an undergrad, that committees are where we take minutes and lose hours for great ideas go to die. Right. Yeah. That’s that notion. So how do we speed up we think and how we change Eboni, how about you, what do you want to, what are you looking to going back to, okay.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Hmm. What am I looking forward to going back to? Well, you know, there’s a lot that I like for us to, to consider restoring but there’s also a lot that I’m not necessarily wanting to go back to. You know, so I think one of the, the lessons learned during this COVID period is that we can be nimble, we can pivot. And, and while, you know, I’ve read that higher ed is slow to change or resist change that there are ways in which, you know, our conventional wisdom about what can be done, how it should be done, has been turned on its head, you know, so I think there’s been a way in which we don’t necessarily need to restore what was the traditional you know, thought about work and the nature of work that work has been redefined.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
So for, you know some positions where, you know, it was a mandate that you literally be at your desk with bated breath, you know, in the office that folks are killing it. Right. They’re being productive, maybe even more productive than they have been with the conventional nine to five. Right. And so I think on the other side of the pandemic, there are ways in which not just students, but you know, employees are gonna want to push back on, you know, make it like it was because, you know, they don’t necessarily want that, that same grind, or they want more flexibility and autonomy with which to still be productive and contribute. But, you know, as I was thinking about the question in terms of higher ed and student affairs and what we need to restore more generally, I would love like, this is like me being like, you know, back down memory lane Monday here, but, you know, I’m an OG can we, can we restore, you know, I don’t know, say like investing in higher ed, like, can we, can we like go back to the time where there was more interest in a federal investment?

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
I think that what has also heightened what we see in the way of a veil being lifted on inequities during COVID-19 has also shown those fractures relative to inequities relative to institutional type, as well as the students, these institutions serve. Right. And so, because there has been a steady disinvestment in higher education, and most notably when there are scarce resources and jockey for position student affairs units are more often you know, puts it a task of having legitimize their existence and being very vulnerable to cuts. And so I like to see some restoration in terms of the, the federal investment and public post-secondary in ways where we then could actually kind of gain some ground on retreating from what has been adverse impacts to access, to affordability, to broaden the participation. We say, as a completion agenda, you know, you invest more in public ed, then maybe you see differences in terms of the collegite experience and the outcomes. And that those outcomes actually might be more equitable, right. Which then could lend themselves to folks having more, you know, educational, economic, and career mobility. But let us restore that.

T. J. Logan:
That’s like the best restoring answer I’ve ever heard is restore funding, because like, it goes back to that thought I had about how we’ve really pulled back the curtain. I was doing a talk for AOA in California, the auxiliary association, a couple of weeks back. And we talked about, about sort of the nature of the fact that we’ve ended up having to build these whole systems on the way that we’ve had to provide funding for higher education internally through auxiliaries and in a world where shoulder to shoulder interaction goes away, where we flip that on its head, that’s broken down immediately. And now, now we’ve got a system on our hands that isn’t tenable, it’s not sustainable. And Eboni that speaks directly to it. So that that’s a phenomenal restore answer. Let’s get some money back into the system.

Luoluo Hong:
No, I agree. Yeah. And Eboni, I just want a second, I think, you know, so this is one of the interesting things now about working in the system office is there is no one campus experience anymore, right? I have 23 different campuses that I get to work with and they each have their own unique personality. But I do think that that was a common struggle that during this time where there were budget impacts, you know, enrollment declined. So then tuition, revenue loss, and then just needing to be fiscally responsible during a time where we anticipated reductions in our state legislature in investments. And I think what was so challenging was trying to be there and be a source of support for our student affairs divisions across the various campuses, because you’re right. There is what I do not want to restore is this existing framework that student affairs is supporting, but secondarily to the broader academic mission, which is so different than a framing of student affairs work.

Luoluo Hong:
And I count enrollment management in that too. Right. Writ large, all the non-instructional. Yeah. We’re supporting the academic mission direct, there’s a direct level, what we do, right. We don’t support the academic affairs division to support that academic mission. I think it’s a slight nuance, but a significant one. And I’m going to say with pride and also with concern, given some of the dis the disinvestment, the divestment right from student affairs is I think in a lot of cases for campuses that had that small proportion that were on campus, right. There were some things that campus has made the decision. Most of the CSU remained virtual room and remote were different. I know there was variation, but for the CSU, that’s what we decided, but there were still pockets of students on campus. And then as we consider any re-densification of the campuses that were lied on the goodwill and support and engagement of student affairs folks, right. Community during this time was sustained by student affairs folks. Right. Yes. The faculty pivoted book let’s do fair. We pivoted to, and that doesn’t get that, that narrative isn’t told as much. And so to disinvest at the same time that I think the salients of what we did and why we do it and how our students needed us at that same period was little bit, not

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
A little bit, there was cognitive dissonance there. So I told him quadruple whatever. Then I’m over here being a Bible head while you’re talking, sitting in a Pew on hallelujah, because so much of it too is, you know, okay. So Keith puts a question, what do you want to restore? But also thinking ahead, right. So it’s almost like not an indoor, but an both when it comes to student affairs, right. We, we know what needs to be restored, but it’s almost as if it hasn’t quite been the case where folks understand that student affairs folks are co-curriculum partners and advancing the academic mission. So that that’s almost like on a getting ahead of us, but it’s not even about restoring, can we just evolve to get some place for that is it is what it is, right. Like, so that is the basis. And if we understand that so much of what gives students a lifeline to persisting and matriculating and getting on the other side of completion, right. For what comes next. And I’m a faculty member. Right. But I understand that, you know they’ve changed the teaching and learning and how we, we assess learning outcomes is not confined to the classroom. Right. Isn’t all of these other kind of holistic and wrap around supports that are getting hammered right now. You know.

Keith Edwards:
You reminded me about three things. I want to mention that we’re going back to you Eboni, about what should evolve and get better, but you mentioned federal support for higher education. I’m also thinking about state, and this is going to be challenging when state coffers are going to be really winding down is the economic hit and tax implications. But for, for decades, we’ve had fewer state institutions and more slightly state funded institutions, right. Just a little bit

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
State located.

Keith Edwards:
And then this notion of, of course, we all believe that that student affairs has a direct connection to the, to the academic mission. But I remember one of Susan Komvies, favorite rants was about student affairs folks put ourselves secondary, and then we blame faculty for it. So how do we take that mantle? How do we not put ourselves in that place and then be frustrated by it? How do we demonstrate and talk about the role that we play? And our last episode was on basic needs. And those folks talking about, we talk about access. So we let all these folks in, but we’re not providing the support to help them be successful. Right. So how do, how do we move past just access and letting more people in who never were allowed to go for so many different reasons, but how do we create that support and the critical role of student we want to shift from now where restore to what will evolve? What, what should keep moving in a better direction? What have we started down the pathway we on to get further down the path? What, what should we get better? I mean, what do you see as something that we really want to be investing in, improving from where we are?

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Yeah. There’s so many areas. And, you know, so the thing about what’s happening right now is you know, with, with COVID again, we’ve all kind of acknowledge how it’s this kind of peel back you know some things right. For some it’s an awakening. Like, you know, I don’t know, maybe they’re like zombified and asleep walking, and didn’t realize that some of the disparities that are out there exist and for others, it is yet you know, the thousand cuts, you know, another reminder that we have had a cluster of crises that have been ongoing and a particular racism, and there are say racial relations or what have you on campus and in society, it is a place where we still seem to get stuck. Right. So when I think about an area where we need to evolve and get better I think it’s, it’s from a place of understanding higher ed as a public.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Good. I think we’ve gotten away from that. I think you know, issues around stability and humanity and civic education and public engagement. You know, how we think about fostering social justice, the degree to which we actually hold ourselves accountable for advancing racial and economic justice. I think that that’s something that higher, it has to evolve because we are, you know, but a microcosm of what’s happening in larger society. And, and while many of the campuses folks are learning remotely working remotely you know, all of this still is this playing out, whether it be online and virtual learning spaces or on campus in person. And so we got to kind of reconcile and evolve where we are. So I think part of where we need to get better is at least some conversations that weren’t happening are happening, but that we got to get better beyond the rhetoric. So right-size and our realities and recognize, and you know, what’s been wrecked for some time.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Thank you, Luoluo. I imagine you want to build on that.

Luoluo Hong:
I do Eboni, I, again, just so much agreement with, with what you observed. I, something you said. Before we got into the section on evolve Keith, I want to piggyback on, and that’s the idea of how to make sure that as student affairs professionals, we don’t engage in our own self-flagellation and I’m going to save, I’m going to say a statement that has both an to it, right. Which is, I do think what has been powerful is this student affairs has shifted over time, what we focus on. Right. So I think we would all agree that the trend towards attending to and acknowledging the salience of mental health and student wellbeing as, as an important concept to attend to, and, and this need to support, I know in the state of California, you know, we have the benefit of legislators who understand it, who were starting to hear that and are looking to make sure that as we look at this next budget, how can we support our universities to address that?

Luoluo Hong:
I do think the advent and rise of basic needs is now a new student affairs area. I mean, let’s just call that out, right? We, our, our, our divisions have grown and there’s this whole new program area that has emerged. And we have professionals now, and it’s becoming an area of specialization and expertise, and it’s a unit in, in our spaces. And so I think these are good things. And the same time I do, I’m not sure that they have also helped us with the narrative of student of favors, right. Because what’s happened is I’ve run into colleagues who hear student affairs, like, Oh yeah, you’re the basic needs people. You’re the mental health people. So there’s a reductionism and an essentially visitation of student affairs to a small part of what it is that we do. And then we don’t have a chance to hear the narrative or show the story about the other things that we’re doing on the other end of Maslow’s hierarchy, right. Or higher up on, on that. And I do think that that is where the promise and potential of student affairs is right. There’s so much that shows like for leadership development, that’s most likely going to come from the co-curricular experience. I also think student affairs has been and will continue to lead the way on diversity, equity, and inclusion. So I do think that one of the ways we have to evolve, I will say this with care and compassion from our, with our four and, and with our colleagues,

Keith Edwards:
I can’t wait.

Luoluo Hong:
I am surprised sometimes at when people are surprised, right. And so our pivot to virtual remote, and I want to be clear that we pivoted is different than that we pivoted effectively. Okay. So that, that, I want to clarify that there’s a distinction. And I want us to think about how we talk about what we did. We talk about. We success, we successfully pivoted because we pivoted, right? Like, like pivoting is the outcome itself. So I think that was a hard lift. I’m not going to deny that. And then what was hopeful was the acknowledgement that we’re having learning loss and that learning loss is impacting students by their identity, by their background, by their prior experiences, et cetera, both in the educational system and just in our own colleges and campuses and universities. But I do think sometimes there was this sort of like inequity started the day we went to online, right.

Luoluo Hong:
With the pandemic and, and not as much. Yeah. I have students who have asked, they’re concerned, will you close the food pantries after the pandemic. Right. And I need to reiterate, we started opening food pantry just before the pandemic. So it’s not all about the pandemic. So I think one of the things we need to evolve is how we think about and talk about diversity equity inclusion. And I will, to this day, continue to observe that we talk equity inclusion, but we still do diversity. So let me unpack. So diversity to me is a state of demography, right? Who is here, who is not here, we get some of these And some of those.

Luoluo Hong:
It’s representation. Right. And I think that’s important. It is a necessary and starting condition for inclusion and equity work. But the challenge is so much of our solution seeking. When we talk about restore, I don’t want to restore diversity equity, inclusion, agendas. That really are just about diversity. We got to expand. Okay so I do think diversity is important. You got to ask who’s here. Who’s not. And then you got to dis-aggregate that, right? So for example, among faculty are full professors who are tenured, who are they? And are they different than assistant professors? And same thing, students who’s in STEM. Who’s not in STEM who made it through the first year, but to move to inclusion is harder because we don’t know. Right. We all know what it feels like to be excluded, but that’s different just because you eliminate exclusion doesn’t mean magically everyone’s included.

Luoluo Hong:
So we have to do more of the work of inclusion, right? What does that look like in the classroom, in the workplace, in our communities, in our spaces and job placement. And then if we do it well, diversity plus the inclusion work inclusion is purposeful work that needs to be sustained. Then you’ll have equity. Those are the outcomes. And the impacts that we want that signal that a community or society is truly embracing the whole right. Of, of its communities. So I think that’s what we, I definitely see evolution needs to happen there, a change in what we do and what we say.

Keith Edwards:
Great. Thank you. Thank you, T.J.. What do you see as some things that we can improve?

T. J. Logan:
Yeah. So when I think about, first of all, everything that’s been said, it really gets your wheels turning. You know, when Luoluo said the pivoting, it’s almost like our, bragging about the pivot, the pivot being the thing is the definition of the problem. Right? I remember early on, on Twitter talking about, you know, some of the long-term things that I hoped would change in higher education. And I got some feedback from somebody who says, yeah, but look at how we pivot it. Is it well, yeah, but that was reactive, not proactive. You wait, we waited collectively as an industry to our back was against the wall and we were forced to do it. There’s a massive difference between being a survivalist and an opportunist. And I think that we have an opportunity to be a little bit better than that, to be a little bit further ahead than that, as with relationship to how we serve students, this all makes me think your earlier comment about systems and about how the, who these systems were built for.

T. J. Logan:
And it reminds me of Kathy Davidson’s book the new education that really eloquently spells out sort of the history of higher education and the structures that are in place and who they’re in place for and who they’re not in place for. And at the end of the day, that they really haven’t changed for a long, long time. My worst nightmare from an evolution perspective is that people are going to see and recognize, you know, I said earlier, I want to go back to community. I think it’s really important. I think a college experience is important, but I said there was a caveat. And that caveat is that my biggest fear is people are going to see the data. They’re going to say, yes, it’s important. I told you, so let’s go back to what we were. And we’re going to wake up on the campus of late 21, maybe 22, but with the problems of campus 2030, cause we’ve been sleeping for a long, long time.

T. J. Logan:
As we’re sitting here, not evolving generation Z came along, they’re not at the doorstep anymore. They’re in the house. And gen Z is a different animal that I don’t know that we ever evolved to serve. They’re the most diverse student population in the history of our country. Yet we have a broadly not diverse faculty as an example. They are a values-driven population. Yet, we are not making in our communications and our public stances values driven decisions. If you look at higher education compared to things like Nike and Ben and Jerry’s, we were behind the eight ball on values, driven decisions and statements. It’s crazy.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
It is right. And so, and we don’t back them up with disposition and action.

T. J. Logan:
I hope that will evolve into more of a values based organizations, whatever those values may be and that we don’t just talk them. We walk them and, and, and we live those things. I hope that, that we become more relevant for generation Z, particularly. I hope that we evolve to be better at serving workplace readiness and certifications. And in order to do that, I hope that we do some of the things that should have happened structurally a long time ago. And we go back to structure, particularly financial structure. And it’s that we break down some of the silos in higher education within specific institution. I think the siloing is absolutely crushing the way that we serve our students and it crushes it in terms of bureaucracy. It crushes it in terms of service, it crushed it in terms of cost. It’s a, it’s a massive issue for us. So earlier somebody said restoring to what was before. I hope not. I hope we’re restoring to what is needed and, and let’s take the pieces we need, but, but let’s stop being a ship on the ocean that takes us 10 miles to take a right. And, and let’s take this pivot and really take this opportunity to be nimble and shift. This could be a Renaissance in higher education. If we treat it the right way, it’s a liminal time in our history.

Keith Edwards:
You reminded me T.J., that there’s so many, there’s so many students who this doesn’t work for. Right. And we’ve pointed to them around mental health, around access, around learning around broadband, around so many different things. And there are, there are some that this is the best, right? This is really working for them,

Luoluo Hong:
Right.

Keith Edwards:
They don’t want to go back. And whether it’s a faculty and staff who love working for home, a lot of people hate it. Can’t wait to go back. Some of us love it, and this is great for some students being able to have the flexibility and online and synchronous and asynchronous. And for some, some students that to not have the pressure of the social interaction. And where do I sit in the dining hall is a relief. Right? Right. So how do we take, go back to, for the students who want to go back to what it was? Cause it really worked for them do that for those who this works for, how do we both? And I think that’s something that I’m eager to see us figure out to both and, and to get away from the binary thinking, which bell hooks reminds us all this dominator thinking.

T. J. Logan:
So, and by the way, students have been learning virtually on our campuses for a long time. Now I remember doing

Keith Edwards:
Community colleges, right?

T. J. Logan:
We’ve been having conversations and talks a decade ago, and you talked about MOOCs and the fear, right? And I think that’s the definition of the problem. We’re always motivated by fear, never by opportunity. And the fear was I’ve got to protect what is sacred to me. I’ve got to protect the traditional experience or whatever it is. The reality was that students were online taking classes from our residence halls 10 years ago, lots and lots and lots of them. And, and we’re, where are we acknowledging that, recognizing that and move to moving toward a better way to serve them? No, and, and we better wake up on the other side of this, doing that.

Keith Edwards:
Well, we got to get to the juicy part, what should completely transformed? What could be completely shifted? What’s the completely new mindset, paradigm, new way of doing business. And maybe it’s something that we have pivoted to since early March or maybe it’s something we’re not even doing now that you see on the horizon for us. So with this one, Luoluo, let’s begin with you, what do you want to see really completely transformed?

Luoluo Hong:
So I’m going to say that, I feel like there’s a bit of honesty that I want to offer here, which is, I think this is the hardest question. And I think the reality is it should be the hardest question because the nature of transformation is that we have to draw on innovation, imagination, get, you know, not just say out of the box thinking, but actually engage that. And that requires the opportunity to reflect, right. I think that’s why it’s hard to be strategic oftentimes in the settings, in which we work, because if you’re running a gazillion miles a minute and you know, we sort of have the academic year defines, right. How we think of initiatives, right. It must be, get in August and end roughly in May. And then we kind of go away for a couple months and come back rinse and repeat it’s like none of the previous year happened.

Luoluo Hong:
Right? So there’s some structural things about higher ed that make frankly, I think transformational thinking and solution exploration, let alone implementation. And then most importantly, the sustaining that needs to be done to ensure delivery is hard. So I’m going to be honest and own that this has been harder. Like this was the question that stumped me more because I’m not sure I have had enough space to get out of this reactive crisis. Oh my gosh, every week there’s a new thing to solve a space and mode of operation, but I’ll maybe offer to T.J. point. Some of the things that are ahead in the future that we will need to respond to if, and in our transformation efforts. And I do say if, because I’m not sure that given the other opportunities and shifts in our student demographics and our reality that we necessarily did the transformation, we probably should have done, you know, at each of those requisite periods, but the enrollment cliff is coming.

Luoluo Hong:
It got pushed off a little bit because we had a higher than expected, a better than expected high school graduation rates. So the pipeline is going to decline, but the decline got pushed out. And so for those of you who don’t have a enrollment management experience, it’s referring to the fact that all of the projections for us as United States is that by 2025 across the country, we will have a stop right in the number of high school, new high school graduates that number increasing, it will then level off and then decline and the projections through 2037 show that declined out through that period. So that’s one thing. So, well, by virtue of the fact that high school graduates, which comprise the majority of first-time freshmen cohorts they will decline campuses will have to, in order to sustain fiscally and operationally look to other students.

Luoluo Hong:
And so I still think to T.J., point is that there’s been this student who’s been there, that we could have served and needed to be served and has tried to be served, but because we haven’t fully embraced them. And that’s the potential graduate, right? Students who graduated from high school, but haven’t gotten a college degree in California. What we’re finding is half of those potential graduates already have some college. So there’s aspiration there. There’s already something about those students. So I think the changing demographics of those students are a potential match for what we learned from the pandemic about how we ought to deliver. So now it’s going to be, how do we deliver across the continuum of students and not always think about the experience from this smaller group of cohort of students? I think the increasing diversity, right? So California is different.

Luoluo Hong:
We’re on the leading edge of the changing face, literally the Browning of America we’re on the leading edge. So for the, for the U.S. As a whole whites comprise 51% of the population high school graduates as of 2019, by 2037, then they will definitely be the notable minority. So that significant shift in race and ethnicity with Asian-Americans Pacific Islanders in Latin X leading the way will also require that. And then third trend, the widening wealth gap and income gap will also change how, and the ways in which we will serve that increasing group of students, who, for whom the stakes of not going to college or even higher, we must provide access right to two year and for your experiences to have a chance to address social mobility so that we can create those opportunities to close that gap.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Your, your earlier comments about how hard transformation is reminded me of emergent strategy and adrienne marie brown’s brilliant book, but we can’t move towards something that we can’t imagine. So how do we imagine this unknown thing that we don’t have right. To, to evolve some things we can see, like we’re on the path, we need to go further, but to completely transform you know, she pulls from a lot of science fiction to imagine what could be and how do we imagine things that aren’t here and then work toward them that I think is really challenging work. Eboni, what are you hoping will completely be up ended here and completely transformed?

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Yeah. You know, I think that the piece about, you know, how we have the dwindling numbers of high school, you know, with no lag time in between going from high school to college is a reality and how we have to transform that. I think that there’s a couple of different things. So when we look at community college enrollments, particularly during this pandemic you know, conventional wisdom suggested that, you know, when there’s a downturn in the economy increased joblessness, we usually see an uptick, right. So like businesses good for high red when they’re you know, some economic walls generally speaking, but that’s not this right. And so we’ve seen those, the clients and what has really kept community colleges you know, kind of up to date in terms of not hemorrhaging as much are high school students.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Right. Ironically, so I think while there still you know a dwindling and, and kind of evening off that there’s still opportunities to think about doing things differently or transforming accelerated pathways for those that are high school students. Because right now, roughly about a third of folks enrolled in community colleges during, over right now are actually dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment students. And so the high school students are actually helping financially keeps us with stability our two year. So I think the other part in terms of the opportunity where you know, the whole bit about we need new markets or new students, there’s been a perennial problem in terms of barriers to completion. And we need to have some aims for improvement for adult learners. So by adult learners, I mean, like that 25 to 64 year old.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Right. And I think when we consider that nearly half of all undergraduates are in community colleges, that’s two out of five, every person that has a baccalaureate degree has completed significant credit hours at a community college. I think part of the transformation needed was for us to redefine student success, whereby community colleges are playing a huge role in the trajectory of students post-secondary careers as well as their completion, but they show up as attrition and they’re not getting credit for having you know, play it again, like I said, a very significant role. So when you consider that learning this ubiquitous, when you consider the adult learner and think about how we can revisit and transform you know credit for prior learning you know, military service Prudential’s as you go stackable instrumentalism in terms of post-secondary pathways. I think the transformation has to come in a formable remodel in that way, where we can align you know, more fully you know, an approvement model to get there for more completion, because what loan’s talking about is this neglect that majority of folks that have some college and no degree, or folks that are adult learners and have had no post-secondary you know, education opportunity whatsoever.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
So I think that there’s some opportunities to transform there.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. So great opportunities. And I love this notion of if we can just keep the students who we already have, then the incoming pipeline is you know, a little that, that can really help with that. T.J., what are you

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
From financial aid, right? Because if we have new kinds of students, the old way of thinking about financial aid is not going to work, we have to think more broadly. And I think the private sector has to bear a greater share and yes, federal state fund needs to be restored and scaled up. And I think community colleges, I’m just saying, we got to rethink how we fund our students to go/

Keith Edwards:
Well, we we’re, we’re gonna refund how we institutions and we’re going to refund students both in there. Right? Yeah. T.J., what are you eager to see transform?

T. J. Logan:
You know, I’d build on a couple of things that we just heard. I think one is when Luoluo talked about the students that we serve and who are those folks for me, the way I’ve talked about that is in terms of differentiation that for a long, long time, it felt as though huge swats of higher education was a big bell curve targeting one big type of student. That is one demographic that is one socioeconomic status. That is one everything. And so that’s how you end up with, you know, every institution having the same systemic issues and every institution having a college of education, as example, our college of nursing is a it’s, why are we not differentiating to serve the students that need to be served? And so I think that there’s an opportunity to do that and stop aiming at the middle a little bit. I think people are going to have to, to move out toward the tail end of that bell curve to be successful.

T. J. Logan:
I think the other thing I would focus on or that I’ve seen a lot of being an operations person is the nature of work and Eboni sort of nodded toward this a little bit earlier right now, you know, the adage that I’ve shared with folks is under, under the old rules. If I wanted to hire somebody, I had to find the best person I could, who was willing to drive to North Philadelphia. And that that’s different than saying find the best person you can. And I think that the rules around work if we haven’t learned from this shame on us, if we haven’t learned from this as an opportunity to go out and say, well, now why can’t the best person that serves my students live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the value added of, of giving people flexibility in their life and, and an understanding of sense of place where they’re at and things like that.

T. J. Logan:
I think that added value is tremendous, but we’re going to have to stretch ourselves. And the way that I’ve always summed that up is that higher education is a rules based work environment. If we shift to a results based work environment, we can do those things, but that’s really, really hard. We can’t be timecard Hawks. We can’t be your, your most successful time is this to this. We can’t be West coast, East coast. We have to be results-based work organizations. And if we are, I think we’ll do a much better job of putting the best talent in the best seats to serve our students in the best ways

Luoluo Hong:
T.J., that is wow. But you know what, that also made me think about is. I think that’s an area of transformation is how do we hire like you, what you, what you catalyzed for me was just about, including what are the right minimum qualifications, right? So I think somewhere earlier, I think Eboni, you may have mentioned this, but we have to diversify who we hire. That’s got to happen across the faculty across all fields, right? And it’s gotta be across the staff at all levels entry level to the top levels of management. But what just continues to fascinate me is we have the same position descriptions, but the same minimum qualifications, we have the same old-fashioned age, old time proven ideas of who should be provost and who should be a vice president be president, right? That that’s real key. That top most leadership position I’m on another national board.

Luoluo Hong:
That’s trying to get parody for women and women of color at the CEO position for institutions of higher education. So our goal was parody, right? Women are 50%, actually a little more than 50% in higher education enrollment. So we’re hoping that presidents ought to be represented. And we have stalled on that goal. And you add the pandemic and the financial implications of that women are dropping out at higher rates for higher education in all areas. And I think are waiting now or deferring, or now just dismissing the opportunity to advance because of the additional challenges they’ve had to take on, which is life and living, and family and children and parents running and having to take care. And so what’s happening is we’ve stalled. And so despite goals of diversifying our campus leadership and our campus, faculty and staff, I think we’re going to retrench and that’s the very place we need to transform. So we need to rethink, I love what you said about making sure that we’re results oriented. It’s easier to count the things we can measure, right. So I can count like to evidence, well, I can count that you were in the office harder for me to assess the productivity,

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Right? Because you can’t see behind, a screen and, you know, right there on campus and get, you know, very little done compared to someone, as T.J. said, in a different time zone who might be working, what is our third shift. Right. But where they are but are, you know, delivering the results. And so it gets back to what you vote for just saying, for me, it’s around the issue of mobility, right? And so are we going to be able to come on other side, come out on the other side of this, nimble enough to be sharper with respect to talent management and succession planning to build and capacity, and then thinking about how we can scale and have sustainability in the areas where we have talent, but maybe that talent isn’t local and to T.J. who would provide the kind of organizational development and not do transactional HR for transformational HR, Atlanta somewhere.

Keith Edwards:
Or wants to live at the cabin on the Lake. That’s it right.

Luoluo Hong:
High speed internet, right.

Keith Edwards:
T.J., let’s just get a last little bit here. And then we’re going to move to closing thought.

T. J. Logan:
What I was going to say is, I think the big challenge is when people talk about things like this being results-based and we boot around these ideas, everybody gets really excited about it. And they’re like, yes, we can do four, 10 hour work days. We can do remote. We can do this. And the thing I would caution folks when they think about innovation is not to get hung up on artifacts of innovation. That’s something Clayton Christianson talks about this a lot. Those are artifacts of innovation. A culture of innovation has to exist for those artifacts to be successful. And that feeds up to the archetype of the college leader at the end of the day, are we going to put cultures in place where, where if we engage outside talent and that are able to be mobile and things like that, that they can be successful. That’s about a culture of innovation. We can put the process in place. All we want it’s not going to matter if we don’t move the needle on our culture.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, we’re, we’re running out of time it’s a quote from Hamilton which I knew we would, there’s so many good ideas here, but we call this podcast Student Affairs Now, and I want to ask each of you what are you thinking? What are you troubling? What are you pondering now? And we mean this generally, like in your work, or maybe just at the end of this conversation, and I’ll just, I’ll go first. The rules is what I’m sticking with, whether it’s HR rules or work rules or enrollment rules, or how we do business or all of those things, how do we break more of these rules or not even break them, get rid of them so that we can be more innovative. But let’s maybe start with we’ll go to T.J. Luoluo, and then Eboni. What are you pondering thinking about troubling now, T.J.?

T. J. Logan:
Sure. I’ve been thinking an awful lot in this conversation, reinforced it about that idea of survivalist and opportunist. Brandon Busteed said to me once that there will be two kinds of leaders on the other side of this survivalist and opportunitist. And the only thing I can think of is imagine an institution that has the resources to be a survivalist, meaning they could just keep moving along, but choose to be opportunists and the opportunity they have to build that moat and separate themselves, and really be an innovator in higher education. There’s something exciting about that. So that’s where my head’s been. And again, it’s been reinforced in that and I love that bit about rules as well. And I feel like I’ve been in church for the last hour. I’ve loved every minute.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you, Luoluo. What about you? What are you thinking pondering or troubling now?

Luoluo Hong:
You know, I think also the, the idea of roles I would agree with you, and I would say legalities, I can’t do that. There’s legal risk. And it’s like, there’s a time to incur risk. It is now let’s take strategic risk right now, right. For the sake of a greater good. So I think what I’m thinking about, and it’s funny that we started off talking about systems. So, so I will be true to myself is the profound, ongoing acknowledgement of the interrelated nature of the pandemics we are in, right? That the pandemic is not just a pandemic that has, there’s no one pan experience right around the pandemic. It has been differential. And I, when people ask me how I’m doing, I literally go, I am, well, I remained employed and I have the privilege to work from home. And I have health insurance.

Luoluo Hong:
If I do get sick, I will get the treatments that I need to, and hopefully minimize the bill. Okay. So, but you get my point is that, that I have just always tried to embrace and acknowledge that grace from which I do have, and at the same time acknowledge where there isn’t. But, but my point is more about that. And so the pandemic has emphasized inequity. The financial impacts of the pandemic were also differential, right? We have a CAE recovery, we got rich folks got richer and more people enter the ranks of the poor. And if you were already there and you got more poor because the so-called rules that we develop to buffer you from that they’re going to come due. Right. Because we could not imagine a new way to address rent. We just deferred when you paid it. Right. Because we can’t think about how it might look like, right.

Luoluo Hong:
If we actually said, you just fundamentally can’t pay it. How do we deal with rent in an, in a different way? And then the third piece, which feels like this separate hang up is the issues of, of racism, white supremacy, xenophobia, which have always been there, but just got exacerbated over the last five years because of the mission, right? They’re all interrelated and you cannot fix one without the other. The pandemic is hard for us to address because we haven’t addressed the root cause of an equity of racial, inequity of income inequity. So that’s where I am is what is higher education’s role in addressing the root cause of all three? And I do think, in fact, we hear now schools are going to open up an equitably. And again, I’m surprised by what people are surprised by, Oh, your schools with more white students and higher income. They’re going to open first, duh, no surprise. That’s just a symptom of what’s coming up. That’s not a new problem, right. That’s not a new reality. So that is where my head is.

Keith Edwards:
Great. Thank you. Eboni, what is on your mind now.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Well, you dog gone telepathic or with us, you know, out here , and like, yeah, it’s winning because that’s what my husband too, it really has. I think I’ve been, and I actually would, I would dare say a five, right? We got a leadership crisis. We got a racial crisis. We got a health crisis. We have a climate crisis, we have economic crisis. Right. We, we have a cluster of crises. And you know, much of it, as you already mentioned is you know, these things are inextricably linked. They are not siloed from one another. I think for some, it appears as if they’re a distinct right. Loosely, coupled at best, but that’s not the case. And for me it really is about kind of a through line of how race doesn’t mitigate, but exacerbates all of them.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher:
Right. Because racism has been a pandemic, it’s like the original sin. Right. and so how do you, how do you get to a place? And we, in the last few weeks, particularly since January 6th and the insurrection of this, you know, let’s, let’s just all get along. We need healing and healing, right? Absent of accountability culpability. But I think that, you know, I think where my head is and where we still need to go in terms of transformation is to retire this whole notion of all lives matter approaches or a rising tide lifts all boats because there has been pervasive, disparate treatment and you know, consequently inequitable outcomes. And so we, we need to get to a place where we actually recognize the hurt and harm that has been very pervasive and prevailing and basically trumping what is justice and healing and actual equity. Yeah.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you. Thank you. That’s a powerful note to, to end us on. I wish we had more time but thanks to each of you for being great guests today. Thanks for helping us all think and rethink and giving us even more to think about really appreciate each of you. Yeah. To our listeners, where you can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to Student Affairs Now newsletter browse the archives of studentaffairsnow.com. Thanks to our sponsors today, LeaderShape and Anthology, (formerly Campus Labs). And please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe share on social or leaving five star review. It really helps this conversation like this reach more folks and another free professional development opportunity for us to continue to learn and grow again. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today. And for everyone who’s watching and listening, please make it a great week. Thank you all.