Kristan Cilente Skendall:  MSL really started as a leadership study in student affairs. Yeah. And very focused on operationalizing the social change model and thinking about data around student leadership. And it’s still. Is that and it is now so much more in thinking about both has instrument has expanded beyond the measures of the social change model and evolved with the field of leadership, education and human development and beyond student affairs as well.

And thinking about the impact on young people and their learning environments is so exciting to reflect back on and think about.

Heather Shea: Welcome to Student Affairs Now, the Online Learning Community for Student Affairs Educators. I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today we are celebrating 20 years of the multi-institutional study of leadership or MSLA project that has transformed how we understand leadership, social responsibility, and student development.

What started as a bold idea, the University of Maryland has grown into a global movement shaping how educators and researchers think about leadership across higher education, nonprofits, and even secondary schools. In this episode, we’re gonna look back at where it all began, explore what we’ve learned over the past two decades, and talk about how the Center for Expanding Leadership and Opportunity or CO is carrying that work forward into the next generation of leadership education.

Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to higher education and student affairs. For the past five years, we have been creating space for meaningful conversations that inform, inspire, and affirm the work of educators everywhere.

We are so grateful to our listeners, guests, collaborators, who have helped this community grow and evolve, and we hope you find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We drop new episodes every Wednesday, and you can find us@studentaffairsnow.com, on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This episode is sponsored by the Center for Expanding Leadership and Opportunity, or CO Research demonstrates that high impact developmental opportunities and learning experiences can change the trajectory of a person’s life. CLO is a nonprofit committed to a world where these types of opportunities and experiences.

Are distributed as equally as the abundance of talent in our communities. As I mentioned, I’m your host for today’s episode, Heather Shea. My pronouns are she, her and hers, and I am broadcasting from the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabe three fires, Confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa of Ottawa, peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University, where I work.

I am so excited for this conversation. I am thrilled to welcome to Lifelong Friends to the podcast. So I’ll do a quick bio and then we’ll jump into the conversation. Dr. John Dugan has spent 20 years working as at the intersections of research program design, equity, and human development. John serves as the chief research and development officer and co-founder of the Center for Expanding Leadership and Opportunity.

And he previously served as the Executive Director of Youth Leadership Programs at the Aspen Institute co-founded and is the principal investigator of the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership and reached the rank of full professor in the Higher Education program at Loyola University Chicago. John is also the author of More than 60 publications, and his research is cited by over 8,500 scholars.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University and holds a master’s and doctoral degree in counseling and personnel services from the University of Maryland College Park. John, it is so great to see you. Welcome to the podcast.

John P. Dugan: I think that bio automatically confirms that I am an unapologetic nerd.

That’s all that says.

Heather Shea: I’m like you’re also not old. So I don’t know how you’ve done all of that at work in the last little bit of time, so I love it.

John P. Dugan: I’m old. I’m old now.

Heather Shea: All of our gray hairs, we’ll attest to this, right?

John P. Dugan: Listen, I have it in my beard.

Heather Shea: I love it. Welcome John, and welcome Dr. Kristen Sante, Kendall.

Kristen is so good to see you as well. Kristen serves as the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of the Center for Expanding Leadership and Opportunity, or CLO. She also holds an appointment as an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Maryland, and as an adjunct at Georgetown University, teaching in higher education and student affairs graduate prep programs with more than 20 years of experience in higher education.

Dr. Scandal received her BA from the university, or sorry, from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: The first university though

Heather Shea: it Oh, yes. And her MA degree from the University of Arizona, which is where our paths crossed. And then her PhD, of course, from the University of Maryland. Dr. Skal has advanced leadership education through work with the University of Maryland, the National Clearinghouse of Leadership Programs, A CPA, college Student Educators International, and the US Department of Education.

Her research and teaching focus is on college student leadership, community service, and impact assessment. Welcome Kristin.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Thank you Heather. And none of that bio would’ve been possible without you as a graduate supervisor of mine at the University of Arizona and someone who has been so special in introducing me to John and so many others.

Heather Shea: Our like roots go deep, right? And I could tell the story about how when I was a Master’s student, I tried to recruit John to do his master’s at Colorado State. And had that not happen, I might not have known John Dugan.

John P. Dugan: Listen, you were like the best buddy ever, and I had the best time ever.

I think I made the right choice because we still have this great relationship. But you made it to be a very hard choice.

Heather Shea: I was like, John, how could you go for, I

John P. Dugan: remember agonizing about that.

Heather Shea: You were, you went where you were supposed to go. ’cause otherwise the MSL might not be here. Fair. And I think, as we both as all three of us have talked over the years and seen how all of this work has evolved like I remember when this was taking shape 20 years ago.

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years also. It’s wild. It is absolutely wild. I’m really curious, looking back what stands out to you most about those early conversations and what you, at that point in time hope to accomplish? So take it away. I’ll let you just chat No direction to any one person.

Just Yeah, start there.

John P. Dugan: I think one of the things that, like when we tell the story of MSL, it’s far broader than any one person or any one institution. So we often start with Maryland, and Maryland was definitely a hub, but this was a hub and spoke community Collective action research project.

Like when we started, it was really only because Tracy Tyree had created this beautiful way to begin measuring the social change model. You had Susan Comas doing this incredible work. And then when I was at University of Nevada Las Vegas, initially after my master’s, I showed up on my first day and they were like, surprise, we reorg and now you’re in charge of leadership Campuswide.

We’d love for you to do an assessment. And I was like, oh my God, I got a C in stats class. Do they know that? And I’m like, thank God I know people who got A’s who can help coach me up. And it was all birthed there. And then we went back to Maryland and some of the questions we were asking at the time really then became about far more than just a singular study.

But how do you actually shape a field and what does it. Look to do that. And I give so much credit, I think we all do to Susan Cuomo as in all of the work she’s done in this field. But the thing that I think sometimes slips by that people don’t realize is when we started that first MSL research team, she did two things that at the time we’re radically different.

First she said, we’re gonna try to measure and conduct research in a values aligned way with the model we’re studying. So what does it mean to hold fidelity to the actual things you’re studying? And try to live into that even in places where the field hasn’t gotten there yet. And I think that has been part of the ethos all along.

And the second was she saw shared knowledge and co-creation as the catalyst for innovation. And so instead of saying, yes, we’re gonna have a research team with a bunch of doc students, it was, let’s bring in. Professionals from around campus, from around the community. Let’s bring in students, let’s bring in master students.

We had first year master students conducting consulting calls and doing statistics with schools. There was this undeniable belief that when people were like, you can’t do that research doesn’t happen productively in those ways. There was just an undeniable belief that it could, and that shared like sense of co-ownership and we’re building together is more than we could have ever hoped to accomplish because it, that’s the relational glue that started to, I think, carry the research far beyond, a paper and into actual impact and change on campuses.

Change in students’ experiences.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: And Heather, I as I said, you were really a catalyst to this work without even knowing, because without having met you and connected with John at ECPA we may not have reconnected in the way that we did. So thank you for creating this. We always remember

John P. Dugan: that you introduced us.

Now, what I did not find out until years later that Kristen didn’t like me when we first met,

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I did not have a good first impression of John Dugan at his first A CPA after finishing his master’s.

And people are complicated alone. Yeah. So I did not stop that from staying open to who you might be after.

That’s right. That’s that. And then obviously

Heather Shea: now you are like co-founders of this massive organization. It’s got, yeah.

John P. Dugan: And we don’t get along still. We still just don’t, do not like each

Kristan Cilente Skendall: other. There was one summer in, at Maryland where we were living together and sharing an office and working on MSL together.

Because of how spaces were working and all of those pieces. Yeah. So we still about that. Yes. That’s

Heather Shea: great. Oh my gosh, that’s so fun. All of these things evolve over time, and I love how as you all reflect on this, how it began and how it’s become really this global movement.

Kristen, maybe you could talk a little bit about what are the places and spaces where it started in student affairs, in leadership education. And then what is most surprising to you about where it has evolved to?

Kristan Cilente Skendall: It’s interesting thinking back, John and I were just laughing about this earlier.

MSL really started as a leadership study in student affairs. Yeah. And very focused on operationalizing the social change model and thinking about data around student leadership. And it’s still. Is that and it is now so much more in thinking about both has instrument has expanded beyond the measures of the social change model and evolved with the field of leadership, education and human development and beyond student affairs as well.

And thinking about the impact on young people and their learning environments is so exciting to reflect back on and think about. Heather, I still remember my first A CPA. You said you should go to this pre-con on assessment and you and our other colleague went to a really fun pre-con on renewal and learning.

But at the time like assessment was still relatively new for student affairs, using data and practice was still relatively new. And now fast forward, it is an integral part of the work at all levels of the organization. I also think what’s really exciting, and I don’t know if it’s surprising, but to see the application of the MSL beyond research in evaluation and assessment, we have something called the index at CO, which is an opportunity for organizations and individuals to do a snapshot into their leadership capacities and reflect on their leadership journeys and apply that beyond leadership in their work.

Outside of that. And then in terms of travel, the MSL has been adapted for youth in 23 countries and sectors outside of student affairs as well. And, especially now in, in a student affairs adjacent space often. Reminded of we don’t give ourselves enough credit in student affairs at the many skills and lessons and ways of learning that we have.

And the way that applies so broadly within student affairs and outside of student affairs. And having the opportunity to see the MSL also translate across disciplines and sectors is exciting, I think more than surprising.

Heather Shea: That is awesome. And I know, given the ways in which our careers have evolved and changed over time, right?

There are some constant constants, right? Like we work in organizations that require leaders and leadership in order to function. And there also seems to be some really interesting kind of evolutions in that space as far as how effective leadership is defined. And so it’s really fascinating, I think.

To hear you talk a little bit about where it began and now where it’s gone. I’m gonna transition to now hearing a little bit more about slo, but John, you were gonna say something? Go ahead.

John P. Dugan: I was just gonna say that if you asked us 20 years ago whether we’d still be doing this study 20 years later, we would’ve been like, wait, what?

That’s like what Marcia Baxter, Magda does. She follows people for 20 years, right? Like the idea that we would still be able to find value and continue and have a community of people who are using the data and that research is alive. Who would’ve thought that? Not me. And so that’s the piece that I think is the humble reminder that something so small can start, but when it starts with many people invested, it can have durability, it can span time and space, and you can still find innovation in it.

You can leverage it in new, different ways.

Heather Shea: So cool. That’s so cool. And now the latest evolution, and I think I’d love to hear you talk a bit about the Center for Expanding Leadership and Opportunity, because it really is this like much broader perspective on where leadership happens. And it also is continuing the evolution, right?

Bridging theory, practice research. So Kristen or John, I don’t whoever wants to start with this. Like how did this, how did the experience working with the MSL end up shaping the creation of your organization today?

John P. Dugan: That is a great question and I think some of it is grounded in when you develop something of value.

How do you continue to evolve it so it’s not static, that it is evergreen, it’s changing and growing, adapting to the world. And have you created something that has some sense of object permanence? And I think some of this story starts with what was the core question that MSL back in the day? And we were just like at the time do we know what works?

Like how are we defining leadership? Are students learning from the programs and interventions that they attend? And those core questions were really about what are the powerful pedagogies? How do we accelerate learning? If I’m being totally honest, there was a point when I was at Loyola as a tenured faculty member working in administration for our program where I wondered have we tapped it out.

What was interesting was I realized I had reached my threshold of what I wanted a data mind, but there were so many schools using it still, and there were so many people finding value. And the running joke that we’ve had is that MSL has solved dissertation and thesis problems for 20 years, like literally the number of dissertations and thesis.

If we could make that journey any easier for anyone, we are happy to do it.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Mine included

John P. Dugan: so many of us. And still today people are, and I think what’s interesting is those core questions are no longer the driving factors. So a huge part of it for me was going to Aspen Institute and talk about transferability of skills.

Like wow. I went there and thought, great, I’m gonna do some research here. I want to get reattached to practice. I felt too distanced and like maybe here I am teaching leadership, student development theory, equity and justice in classrooms where I haven’t had to actually do the work on the ground anymore.

Yeah. So going back, it was really for the intersection of that research and practice and to remind myself of the work. What I didn’t expect was for folks at Aspen and across sectors beyond student affairs to immediately see the value of measurement. Yeah. And immediately understand that. It’s not just about shaping collagen practice and creating knowledge for knowledge sakes, but it’s really about leveraging this in a way that we can narrate, narrate, and validate the importance of this work across sectors, across demographics, across geographies and disciplines.

And I think that led to a new core set of questions, which was how do you take intellectual property and this massive data set that you’ve generated, make it as accessible as possible, and then leverage MSL as an engine to transfer and redistribute multiple forms of capital, cultural, financial, social.

And I think that’s never something I would’ve conceived of. Like I think, all of us were entrepreneurial as we thought about how to launch this back in the day. We’re not, Kristen and I are not business people, we’re not nonprofit people. The coaching we got from Aspen was invaluable. The linkages and the ability to connect in bridge in a way that I don’t I will just admit I was not prepared for into secondary education to understand other sectors like nonprofit has been a gift.

And so like when I think about what does it mean to do the work early on that work was really just about publishing articles. Now it’s about how do we, for the many of us generate as much access to resources as possible. And I think the thing that gets so exciting about CO is because it was incubated at Aspen, it gives us a platform to then say, there’s a story to tell here about something that emerged outta student affairs that has.

Benefit for all of higher ed, benefit for secondary ed. And it’s shared benefit. It’s not benefit for a school that participates, right? It’s the co-creation of knowledge. Yes. It’s using these data to demonstrate probably a person, a student is fundamentally different as a result of our educational investments in them.

And then how do we support people to do that work every day. And that’s the part I didn’t expect, Heather. It was wow. It goes from being in MSL to mine it for questions and knowledge to how do we make it as expansive as possible and how do we tell a story so that people wanna invest in higher education?

How do we co-create those stories so that more investment can happen at a time when it’s so desperately needed for the work that we’re doing every day?

Kristan Cilente Skendall: And I think what’s also really a wonderful opportunity that MSL provides at CLO is to take the great research. Translate that, not just into practice, but into public impact.

And so I think, for so long, being driven by tenure goals, it’s need as many publications as possible. Yeah. To, in the high impact factor spaces. And frankly, as a practitioner, I wasn’t reading those papers to put them into practice. And so now we found ourselves out. You mean you didn’t

John P. Dugan: wanna read a 20 page method section?

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I did not. Me

John P. Dugan: either. Me either.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I skipped right over that to just the tables. But now at this nexus of space, we have the opportunity to make the data more usable for folks. So in the new iteration of the MSL and it’s rebirth, not only will you get back all your raw data for people like us who like to dig into a spreadsheet.

Yeah. But now there’s a. Tape dashboards, dynamic dashboards so that folks don’t have to have gotten an A, B, or C in stats to make meaning of those data, but to be able to have snapshots to support the practice that they’re doing, as John said, to improve the value add of the work of student affairs and higher education, not just on campus, but in our communities to continue to build that civic trust and wellbeing of our communities.

Heather Shea: Yeah, that is awesome. And I, yeah, I was unaware of all the ways that it’s changed and grown over the years. So I think that is a really exciting kind of additional piece. So we’re gonna link a whole bunch of stuff in our show notes today. So folks are like, I need to catch up on this instrument as well as on what CILO is doing.

I think that’ll be fantastic.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: And there’s lots of methods sections, Heather read of methods you can read, lots of methods, can

Heather Shea: read some of those. 500 dissertations or whatever.

John P. Dugan: My favorite was always trying to write a method section without plagiarizing yourself. Because you’ve written the same method section 400 times.

Heather Shea: Yes. So challenging after being on several different studies where there’s you’re using the same data across. It’s like, how do you talk about this? Yeah. I’m gonna shift us a little bit because I think the way that we think about leadership is this kind of, what is a philosophy of what leadership development is.

And I’m gonna add a personal piece to this really quickly because my son is a senior in high school and he just finished submitting his college application essays and one school. Asked him to talk about leadership.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Okay. And

Heather Shea: what has he learned about leadership as a student in high school? And he and I had this incredibly generative conversation about leadership, not as positional or individual relational, and about working together for the common good and doing that work.

And so I know that this, this has been ingrained in me because of the work that you all have done and the text that we’ve all taught in Yeah. In our various leadership courses. But I don’t know that it’s necessarily still. The top of mind. Leadership is still couched around this competitive individualistic piece.

So I would love to hear maybe, John, you start talk about how the MSL has has embraced this and you all have been the ones who are pushing the field to think about leadership as more than just individualistic. What does this look like in these new spaces within secondary schools and within young people like my son who I’m like, you’ve done all of this work together.

It’s not necessarily about you. Dylan doing all the amazing things.

John P. Dugan: And still is about him doing those amazing things. It’s about that agency to get out there and do something and to do it in community. And I do think Heather, I don’t know if I got dinged for this, but I ha it, it generated some interesting feedback and I really appreciated it.

In my leadership theory book, I refuse to give a definition of leadership. For me, I said leadership is the sense that we make of it. And so we all come at that sense making process from a different lens. Some are a function of developmentally where are we in our developmental journey, in our relationship with authority, our relationship with power, our relationship with what it means to be in relationship to other people in shared work, and all of those variations then change how we’re making meaning.

Like how I make meaning of what leadership is today is completely different than five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And I think that’s the exciting part. I would say that one of the things that. Maybe I’ll share this through a story. Okay. So when I was a doctoral student, I went into for a meeting with a senior administrator in student affairs who I adored very much respected for some advice.

We were in the process of launching MSL and the person said to me, the way you are approaching leadership seems like you’re talking about capacities. You’re talking about people’s motivation, their relationships, confidence, efficacy, all these things. Are you saying that leadership development is basically just human development?

And I was like, yes. And there was this terrible silence where, your advisor is not sure if you’re gonna make it. Oh God, I should not have said that.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

John P. Dugan: But I do believe that at that, at the core, this function of leadership isn’t a function of position. It’s a function of. All of the myriad of talents that we have and how we build them and then leverage them collectively.

And I do think, especially in the United States, we have this insanely rabid individualism that tears at and creates a need to separate leader from leadership authority and power from influence. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to people and how we relate to one another and our core abilities to do which we know we can grow over time when we invest in them.

And so for me, it has been a journey to become more comfortable with a allowing leadership to be diffuse and defined. Hyper locally at the community level, at the organization level. And it’s also okay for us to see developmental trajectories of how leadership unfolds. So I would just share that I love the question and I feel like the piece about this is that if we can continue to adapt how we understand leadership will always be a function of our social systems.

So imagine just alone coming out of COVID and a pandemic in all of the things happening in the world in the last, let’s say five years. There is no way that we can’t have a conversation about leadership and have it be fundamentally different than five years ago. And so that means it has to be something we continue to work at it.

It can’t just be a byproduct of the college education, a byproduct of attending a training. It has to be purposely cultivated. I don’t know if I answered your question, but I definitely got overly theoretical, so I’ve

Heather Shea: I love that. I love it. Kristen, what would you add?

Kristan Cilente Skendall: My wheels are turning and thinking about the question in lots of different ways, but also in my sort of parent hat, I have a fourth grader and am very involved in the school community, and I think I have purposely used the language of leadership when I’m interacting with the middle school kids and the elementary school kids. So if I’m chaperoning a field trip and someone is, caring for other people in the group, I tell them, you’re doing a really great job. Thank you for caring for others what wonderful leadership skills. So trying to infuse that early and often has been helpful.

My son and his friend were talking about what their parents did and my son was like, my mom leads leadership. And I was like, I’m not sure that’s what I do. But it was a funny thing for him to hear. And so for me, I think leadership can happen at the individual level. There’s positions and opportunities where people are forced to lead, and there’s all these other parts of leadership that even come in positional pa opportunities that we don’t often talk about.

Difficult decisions making challenging moments and thinking about not just at the individual level, but the, as the social change model outlines the group and the community level. And again thinking about Susan and staying connected with her now over these years, she came and did a, a guest zoom to my class that I taught in the spring, which was really fun and she provided n New to me insight at that time.

Sort of this reminder that the social change model isn’t just about an individual getting the skills to work in a group or work in a community, but how can we imagine leadership as happening at these three levels? And I think that for me is something that I’m really proud to be part of at CILO with the MSL and the index in the 32 leadership capacities that we espouse range from collaboration to social perspective, taking to emotional self-regulation, and all of these are components of leadership and something that is important for all of us to remember individually and collectively.

John P. Dugan: I’d also throw in a, oh, go ahead Heather. No,

Heather Shea: go ahead. Go. No, you go. I was

John P. Dugan: gonna say, I would say let’s have a point of hope too, like that it’s evolving is necessarily good because we’re evolving now. The trajectory of that matters. And one of the things that I appreciate so much is with the, with CL, we have been able to really think about this far more broadly.

So in some ways you can think of MSL as an engine, and now we have folks who are using these data for all sorts of different topics. You have Chris Ria studying mean the needs of rural students. You have folks studying human basic needs and student basic needs. The ways that people have understood a broadening concept of leadership have allowed us to attach it to things like civics, attach it to service, attach it to equity, justice, all of these different topics in a way that I think reduces boundaries because it’s all human capacity building.

Heather Shea: It really truly is. And I think the insight that I’m hearing from both of you is the ways that this both is evolving as perennial, but then is built around these really kind of core ideas. I am really curious too, just about all of the people who have been connected to this movement moment over time.

And you both have been mentors, you’ve collaborated with, all of the people who wrote dissertations, but also this like much wider group of scholars who are now leading their own initiatives. Kristen, what does that feel like to know that you had a role in this like larger leadership community?

You are leading leadership. I like the way you said that,

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I think I have always felt a calling to be part of something larger than myself. And so it’s so humbling to hear you say that, to think about all the little small things that I feel like I did because they were, what you do as a contributing person have been able to add up and influence others and there are so many.

People who came before me to thank for that. And then those who continue to work with me, with us with MSL, it’s really inspiring to think about the impact of a collective group of people and what happens when people can come together to create social impact, to benefit the common good. And so I feel this invisible thread that connects me to folks that I know and folks that I don’t know.

As we were compiling some resources for the show notes, I was really excited to see there’s names that I know on this list of co-authors with folks and people that I haven’t met yet that I’m excited to get to know and to see their work evolve. And John, as you, you were talking earlier about Susan and Sandy Aston presentation many years ago, and I was thinking about something similar in.

The way that, you know, what Sandy Astin initially wrote, how Susan interpreted that and applied it, and now how I have taken what I learned from Susan and applied it in different ways. And to think about that continued evolution of this work is something that is I don’t take that responsibility lightly in engaging in the work.

John P. Dugan: I think there is something that is so powerful, like we measure this concept of generativity purpose beyond self. What does it mean to leave a legacy, to contribute beyond your own immediate needs to make a difference? And the levels and layers of people who have tapped in and out of MSL over time used it for a particular project, came back to it advocating to be clear, there is no way that MSL would exist today if mostly entry level coordinators.

When we were entry level coordinators and said, let’s do this study. And nobody’s president was gonna take our phone calls. They thought we were cute and adorable and had some audacious ideas, but it was truly a network of young professionals through A CPA, NASPA and CLP, all these associations who said, yes, I’ll do this ’cause I know I need it.

I’m not necessarily sure how to justify it up, but we’ll make it work. And then as we did that together, not independently, that ripple, that effect begins to take shape. And there is nothing more beautiful for me. And I get a little emotional thinking about this when you’ve been in relationship with people.

It’s not just about mentoring. Like it’s about being mentored so we can still do these jobs so that we can still learn and grow. And the gift that young people one of the things that we do at SLO that I’m a bear, as we didn’t do sooner, is that we now integrate participants and students into all of the work that we do.

So to be at a table with young people watching them come alive, who never thought they could do research, who never understood data, who never thought that this mattered or someone cared about them, having that at the table and say, can I have my data back? ’cause I think I know how to interpret it better than you.

Or maybe together we could interpret it differently. Oh and the gift of feedback. Kristen talks about that all the time. It’s really precious when you have been in relationship with people for years and they’re like, John. Okay. Again, disagreeing with you on this. I think you’re going in totally the wrong direction and you start to see the world through a different lens and the research through a different lens.

So for me, I get all sappy about this. Because I think of that connective tissue that Kristen talked about, and we wouldn’t be in our seats if it weren’t for all of these people who advocated for us. And can we do as much or even begin to repay that debt? I think about both personhood and institutional organizational hood in this concept of mentoring, because it’s not just one-on-one individuals, it’s also organizations that took us under their wings.

If you went back to UNLB, there were folks there today that would probably be like, whew. We remember when he was here. He was a lot, right? But they nurtured a young professional who had. A lot of questions and maybe too many questions. And then you see that legacy of people who turned over. We lost Ryan Satterwhite this last year, which is devastating.

So many people in the leadership student affairs, higher ed community, were close with him. He built on that position at UNLV into this beautiful impact center. And then you have Stina Odegaard, who was a grad student with me who was working with him. And you see those legacies start to build and you know that we are in good hands, we’re in good hands, like we are building our collective hands to be okay and to do this work with a sense of purpose beyond self.

I know it’s sappy. I just, it’s the part that for me, is the most important. It’s going back to what Susan said, if we can’t live these values that we’re studying and we’re not gonna always get it right, but if we can try to get it right and be fully present with one another. That is the best path we have to actually having the ability to affect students’, experiences our lives community.

Heather Shea: Yeah. And Kristen probably remembers Ryan Satterwhite cross paths with us at Arizona. As an undergrad and Paige, Horon and o others, who have taken and expanded. And this is where the the generativity and connectedness is really key. John, if you had to go back and 20 years and tell yourself some, a piece of advice at one of those early MSL planning meetings, what would you say?

John P. Dugan: Pace yourself.

Heather Shea: You don’t have to do it all tomorrow.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I still tell you that now, John, your nervous system. We don’t have to do it all today.

Heather Shea: Some stress is not so good yourself.

John P. Dugan: I think maybe not advice, but a reflection. Okay, so I’m a total RuPaul Fanatic, I’m sorry. I grew up in, at UNLV in my first position out of like my master’s program. The drag scene there was amazing half the queens who were on the show where like performing live every night. And I do think there is something true about like, how the heck are you gonna help someone else if you can’t help yourself?

And so I share that because I think. At the onset, we knew we had this group of people who were all gonna work together on this. And it made it okay to take risk. It made it okay to say, we don’t know, but we’ll figure it out together. And the one piece of advice I would give is when I was at U-N-L-V-I, I think it was in a CP or NASPA conference.

And it was for folks who were in their first three to five years and they wanted to be scholar practitioners, so working in administration, but we wanted to contribute to the field. And we did these small groups. And the two presenters were very esteemed scholars, very respectful, wonderful human beings.

They were like, what kind of impact do you want to have? And I’m like, wouldn’t it be awesome if one day, like we could write a theory or we could actually change the way people think about this? And they were like, hold your horses. You’re like two years out of your master’s program. That doesn’t happen for most people.

And I remember being a little disillusioned and oh, like I have to wait my turn. I have to pay your dues. Go through. Yes. Pay. And some of that is very true. Some of it is jumping through hoops to get a degree, get an advanced degree, earn the social capital to do these things. But my reflection is, thank goodness, I was surrounded by people who would not lean into that and instead leaned into a healthy disregard for them possible and said, let’s just do it.

Let’s not wait for permission. Back at UNLV, we formed this like underground dorky, like scholar practitioner network. We had an actual Greek letter name for it. It was like change agents anonymous. It was like tie Alpha. And we would meet like once a month just to talk about how we could try and move the organization in different ways.

Yeah. And so I know that for many people. Maybe listening or watching right now, you may think I need an invitation. You don’t just do a fine connection with people and do, because I feel if I had taken advice or the story most often told from people, we may not be in this conversation today.

Yeah. And so I just hope people understand yes, this is a grand scale of something that we’ve done. It didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen with 1, 2, 3, 5 people. It’s hundreds of people and that only happens through relationship.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: It. I’ve been thinking a lot now about knowing we were having this conversation about.

25 years ago, Heather, when we first met in early in my career and first meeting John, and I remember, and something I appreciate about young people and try and remember now that I’m not as young as I used to be is like when you don’t know what you don’t know, it often invites opportunities for learning that wouldn’t have come otherwise.

And I remember coming from the University of Arizona where there was a huge team working on leadership education. And I got to my first job at Georgetown and I was the one person. Doing leadership for the whole campus. And I thought, I don’t know how to do this by myself. And so I thought, oh, we’ll make a regional network of people.

So I just went and found who’s the person at Maryland, who’s the person at Howard, who’s the, so I said, I’m just gonna send out an invitation. Host like a meeting, I’ll get some snacks and we can all talk about what is that we’re doing. And so we had this network. It wasn’t sponsored by anyone. It didn’t cost really a lot of money.

But through that’s how I met Craig Slack and connected with folks at the University of Maryland that those opportunities and early connections created a foundation that I still rely on today of how do we connect with others to collectively accomplish our shared goals.

Heather Shea: That is really powerful.

And I, I do really value the idea that you have to start from where you are, and the idea, and I think it’s also easy in retrospect to say that, right? Versus being the new professional who is feeling imposter is. And in that moment of I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers.

You don’t have to have all the answers. I still have

Kristan Cilente Skendall: imposter as imposter syndrome.

John P. Dugan: I have two answers. Yeah. That’s it after all these years, just two.

Heather Shea: And I think that, we’re humanizing that process though too, right? And saying that you just. Wade in, right?

Don’t second guess the things that are gonna come out of your mouth. Sometimes if we’re self-censoring, we’re the only ones who are losing and the world is losing your voice. I know that this study will be around for years and years maybe. Another two decades, another 20 years.

Maybe another 50 years. So

John P. Dugan: will we be around

Heather Shea: the question is,

John P. Dugan: I, some may be around, but Kristen and I, yeah

Heather Shea: I,

John P. Dugan: we be at the Student Affairs Retirement Village.

Heather Shea: Yes, we do. We’ll call it the Susan Cove retirement ho area and at Yes, exactly. Amazing. Amazing. I’ve often thought about, this is a total aside, I’ve often thought about how we should buy tiny houses for our emeritus faculty and give them a little spot in the parking lot outside of the academic building so we could go visit them and hear their wisdom and stuff.

So that’ll be what it’s like. Maybe we’ll all have tiny houses

John P. Dugan: tiny houses all around our campuses.

Heather Shea: And you think about like, when they vacate their offices, there’s so much stuff, right? And there’s so many, there’s so much knowledge there. And I think as we think to the future, it’s like, how do we keep this going?

And how do we, continue to teach about the evolution? Kristen think forward to us, with us about the next 20 years. What do you hope both the MSL and CO continue to teach us about the relationship between leadership, justice, human development, and what do you think some of the themes or questions are that will define the next, future?

The future? Kristens and Johns of the world’s research especially as we are in the midst of a very rapidly changing social and educational landscape.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I have to sometimes default to Professor Dugan. I feel like he is the best equipped to answer this question.

Heather Shea: What do you

John P. Dugan: think, Todd? Stop it because like I would give some so Heather, here’s the thing.

Like I make things overly complex and then Kristen and our colleague Sydnee have to come in and be like, that’s not complex for complexity sakes. That’s just overly complicated. I think you would be just fine.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: I would bet. Professor Dugan, this is a good question for you.

John P. Dugan: Okay, so like I feel like we get these questions a lot.

All of us. Yeah.

Heather Shea: Where do we go? What do we see in the

John P. Dugan: future? Part of it. Yes, exactly. That’s natural. Like future forecasting is entire like line of scholarship that many people have. I do think we are navigating relatively uncertain times in a long history of uncertain times. And there are novel elements to this and there’s paradigmatic shifts that are insane.

And so I don’t wanna take a pass on the question, but what I would say is what comes next is dependent on three or four major factors. Probably one being, for example, are we gonna continue the model of education we have in the United States today? Yeah. In higher ed and K 12 education. You look at something like the Carnegie Foundation who’s actually trying to break and advocate for a change of the Carnegie Credit Hour because they understand that the model a hundred years ago for education.

Is not well suited for today, but that means massive bureaucratic systems change. So I think depending on how fast some of those changes happen, by institutions that do have power, influence, and authority, it will shape I think technology. We all know what’s happening with ai. There are, I was just on a panel about this.

I think there’s lots of reasons to be hopeful and lots of reasons to be concerned. In one hand it can democratize analyses. If I never have to run a structural equation model again or call Dr. Bank Parker to run it for me because I no longer remember how to do it quickly enough, like it would be a dream.

So imagine democratizing our ability to mine data like MSL to transform it into multiple matrices that are truly intersectional in terms of learner needs that is powerful. Equally as likely right now though, is that those AI systems are filled. Garbage. Garbage in is garbage out. And it can also be used for a vehicle for socialization to things we would never associate with leadership or even democracy.

And so I take a step back and say there are a lot of conditions that are unpredictable right now. So we have to rely on the things that are predictable, which is society needs more leaders in leadership. We need more justice, caring, compassionate, empathetic ways of engaging with one another. We need to find more commonality.

And that’s happening. Like I am incredibly inspired by this rising generation of scholars. They are writing beautifully and ins. Like I could name a ton, but I read a piece by Jordan Harper and I’m like, whoa, why couldn’t I think like this? Like I never thought like this. And that gives me so much hope because.

Yes, Kristen and I are doing this work and we hope MSL is around if and only if it serves the purpose as an engine of opportunity and access and impact. And for me, when that stops is when CO and MSL will stop and something else will emerge in its place. But I do believe we’re on a precipice of so much change that we can barely conceive what the other side looks like.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: See Professor Dugan. No,

Heather Shea: I’m in this back to the future kind of

John P. Dugan: feeling. Yes. We’re

Heather Shea: talking about before we started the call, but I honestly do agree with you that there are so many unknowns and so many factors that, have yet to be determined that Willie will play a huge role as to where we go in the future.

Just looking at academic freedom yes. And the ways in which that’s being discussed. It is a fascinating moment that we’re living in. And I agree with you what we need more than anything. Our leaders who lead with compassion and care and justice and, a trend towards an arc towards justice, right?

A trend towards the common good. So we’re moving towards final comments, not quite there yet, but we’re gonna move towards that direction. I’d love to hear something that you’re proud of, something that you hope for. And just in general, reflect upon this 20 year journey. Kristen, I’m gonna start with you.

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Yeah. The MSL was my first research team. I wasn’t even in grad school yet. I had just started my job at the University of Maryland as a coordinator. And John was like, you took stats in your master’s program. You should be on this research team. Clearly

John P. Dugan: I got a C in stats meeting. The stat you, the stack the deck

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Such I I had no frame of reference for how research teams.

Could be. And so to have that experience be one of co-creation that was intergenerational, that brought together, as John said, multiple perspectives is something that I am really proud to be part of, a legacy of, and something that I think is really actually core to how we operate at CL around this concept of co-creation of we are a function of more than me, and so how do we make sure that multiple perspectives are represented?

And so I hope that continues not only with student affairs or with MSL, but also more broadly in student affairs. Yeah. How can more voices be represented in in creation of innovation? I love that.

John P. Dugan: I’ve probably had too much Catholic education, like 16 years of Catholic education myself, 10 years at a Catholic institution as a professor.

So guilt is something I’m very familiar with. I sit with every day fear, and I think there’s things that I’m proud of and there are fears I have that are tied up in the things I’m proud of. And so I would say, for example, creating metrics that we’ve created, that we’ve evolved, that we know have fidelity and psychometric rigor, and measure accurately across identity groups, across different elements that we would say our core to this work of leadership for Justice is important.

And there is a testing industrial complex. And as people are pushing to move to more competency-based education, which I agree with. How do we ensure that the metrics we use don’t become gatekeepers or ways to classify and segment students in a summative way? How do we keep this as formative as something that is really designed not to tell us who a person is, but to help a person grow?

I think one of the proudest moments wa like ever was the first time we started getting data back the first year of MSL in 2006 and, 600,000 participants over the last 20 years, there has not been a cycle where the same thing that happened in the first cycle hasn’t happened again. And it was students writing after they completed the survey to us and saying, I didn’t even know that these things on campus existed that I could participate in.

I haven’t participated in any of them, but how do I get connected people writing and saying, I don’t know about leadership, but I do service. Service leadership. And so you build this sort of offline relationship with the participants as you see the Hawthorne effect in like actual play. Just the process of being involved in research shapes people like I always like to talk about how we use our work and our research to prime audiences to help get them think.

We were the first, one of the first surveys nationally that asked gender beyond the binary and sexual orientation. Wow. And we had to come up with protocol about how to clean that data because people would manipulate it to create a false narrative. And at the same time, one of the most hopeful things was over a 10 year period we saw the rate at which that falsification happened, drop.

And I’d like to believe that socialization, the more we normalize identities. Value who we all in all of our personhood, the more that we’re able to actually then help people see that for themselves. And if nothing else, the fact that people have participated in this research and got something out of it to me is incredible.

Heather Shea: Wow. That is that is really powerful. And that’s, I think, a really tremendous part of the story that I think maybe isn’t as illuminated sometimes within the larger conversation. All right. Final question. We always end our episodes with the question because this podcast is called student affairs now.

What are you thinking about troubling or pondering now? Christa, do you wanna kick us off?

Kristan Cilente Skendall: Yeah. I think from a student affairs lens, I’m thinking a lot about assessment, evaluation and research. Because that is the class I teach in the fall. And as you said some folks use the podcast in class.

So actually this week we’re talking about assessment as a leadership process, which was a Student Affairs now podcast that I listened to and then am using both the podcast and the reading in class. So I’m thinking about the power of assessment and data to create change and to create opportunities for serving students and serving young people.

And I think as a person, I’m thinking a lot about relationships and community and how am I living the values that we espouse through this work of checking in with others and service in, in spaces where I can create impact in my sphere of influence.

Heather Shea: Thank you, Kristen. John, what about you?

John P. Dugan: I wanna build off what you said, Kristen, because you talked about the power of data and one thing I was not great at was using data to tell stories. And I’ve learned a lot from a whole lot of folks about that, including Kristen over the last several years. So I’ll start with a fact. So this is out of now 20 years of data and 600,000 participants, 23 different countries.

We’re talking largely higher ed, but also nonprofit, K 12, largely secondary. We need to consider the fact that by age 25, only 32% of young people will have had any exposure to leadership development, and that’s broadly defined. A multicultural leadership retreat training as an ra, a course experience, a practicum, only 32%.

Then we go step deeper. We look at, of those programs, of those who actually make it into an experience, only 50 of the percent of those experiences have any demonstrable impact. Some of them actually cause harm. Most of them just have no impact. So what we’re talking about is really generations of young people, generations of students, that at best by age 25, 16% will have had a meaningful leadership development experience.

So what I’m pondering as how is that acceptable if we say this is something we need in society, if we say leadership is human development, it’s about civics, it’s about what every organization should be preparing for far more than just career readiness. Important. Yes. But it’s about something bigger than that.

How do we sit with 16% and say, that’s okay. And so I’m really pondering what’s the collateral damage when people go to programs that do not have impact? Yeah. And they make choices not to. Take more hours at their job, support their family, watch, spend time, and watch their kids like all of the choices that are sacrificed to take a class or be part of an opportunity that has zero effect.

Doesn’t have zero effect. It has collateral damage for people’s trust in the process. And so for me, I’m pondering how do we in this next sort of 10 years shift to this process of scaling accessibility to leadership development and what does it require all of us to do differently that would allow for that?

And I don’t have the answers to it. I know there’s a lot of amazing folks thinking about this, but I hope it’s something we can think about together because collectively we can barter during a period of urgency and opportunity far more than any other place. And so I’m thinking about this as a moment when, just like in the nineties, major foundations came together to fund.

Investment in leadership education writ large, how do we build a next movement that does that so that 16% hits and it does feel unacceptable and we change that number together.

Heather Shea: Yeah, I’m gonna leave it there. I have so many thoughts now in my head, not that I’m now pondering. And I think as a part two to this conversation, particularly about, what is the future of leadership development and how do we democratize that process?

And I’m also a part of our campuses’ general education and institutional learning outcomes work. And I’m like, is there op a missed opportunity there? But it also, should it be. In this curricular space, and how do we bridge that with the co. Anyway I now have lots of things that I’m thinking about pondering, and I’m just so grateful for both of you, for your time today, but also for the decades of friendship and care that you all have shown me.

And I can’t wait to see you in person. And yeah, as we wrap up today’s episode, I’m just so grateful. So thank you both so much.

John P. Dugan: Thank you for making the space. And hey people get tired of me saying this quote, but it’s my favorite. And Heather, I think you know it. Grace Lee Boggs civil rights icon legend.

And to me, like to sum everything we’ve set up her quote, she has a quote where she says, we never know how the small activities of our daily lives will affect the invisible fabric of our connectedness. Make the world a better place. And it’s rarely about critical mass. It’s more often about critical connection.

And I hope that’s what, like the pondering you’re having, the conversation we had today. Anyone listening who’s out there wondering, what do I do? How do I make a difference? We start by finding those critical connections.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, Kristen. Thank you. Great to spend time with you to get today and we will do it again shortly.

Websites: 

Center for Expanding Leadership & Opportunity 

MSL Publications – CELO 

Dr. John Dugan Google Scholar Profile

Dr. Kristan Cilente Skendall Google Scholar Profile

Article citations: 

Dugan, J. P., & Komives, S. R. (2007). Developing leadership capacity in college students: Findings from a national study. National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs. https://expandingleadership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Developing-Leadership-Capacity-in-College-Students-2007.pdf 

Dugan, J.P., Skendall, K.C., & Weatherford II, G. (2024).

Leveraging the Potential of Youth Service: A Call to Action.

The Allstate Foundation and the Center for Expanding Leadership & Opportunity. https://expandingleadership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Leveraging-the-Potential-of-Youth-Service.pdf 

Correia-Harker, B., Soria, K., Johnson, M., VanEnkevort, J. J., & Dugan, J. P. (2024). Comparing College Students’ Capacities for Resiliency Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of College and Character, 25(2), 159–176. https://doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1080/2194587X.2024.2326224 

Adams, J. S., Patterson, S., & Skendall, K. C. (2023). Socially responsible leadership and the social change model. New Directions for Student Leadership, 2023(180), 61–71.

https://doi.org/10.1002/yd.20581

Soria, K. M., & Cole, A. (2023). Leadership Education and First-Generation Students’ Social Capital Development. Journal of First-Generation Student Success, 3(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/26906015.2023.2171823 

Soria, K. M., Weerasekara, N., Hallahan, K., & Moore, M. (2025). The Effects of Participation in Recreational Student Groups, Clubs, or Organizations on Undergraduates’ Leadership Motivation and Efficacy. Recreational Sports Journal, 49(2), 183-196. https://doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1177/15588661251358163 

Soria, K. M. (2023). Community service and undergraduates’ social capital development. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 29(2), 185–206. https://doi.org/10.3998/mjcsl.3643 

Books: 

Dugan, J.P., Skendall, K.C., Patterson, S.E., & Patterson, J.D. (Eds.). (2025). Handbook for Leadership Education and Impact. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-on-leadership-education-and-impact-9781035326211.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqiG8HBr954Qt7LpIwdvte7rYXUUbhLjFyTz41rbe2qhhxZB6Dd 
Dugan, J. P. (2024). Leadership theory: Cultivating critical perspectives (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Leadership+Theory%3A+Cultivating+Critical+Perspectives%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781394152117