Cathy Sandeen (California State University East Bay) on Leading Transformation Through Trust and Clarity

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Cathy Sandeen to discuss the evolving academic portfolio and shifting campus culture toward online and remote learning.

Transcript

Shauna Cox (00:02):

Kathy, welcome back to the Illumination Podcast.

Cathy Sandeen (00:05):

I'm really happy to be here, Shauna. Thank you.

Shauna Cox (00:08):

Absolutely. So we are in a very changing time in not only life, but higher education. Of course, there's a lot of transformation that's required in order to keep pace with a modern learner. So I want to kick off our conversation and first ask, what are some of those bigger cultural or organizational hurdles that senior leaderships is facing when it's trying to lead academic transformation efforts today?

Cathy Sandeen (00:35):

A couple of things come to mind when I think of academic transformation. One of them that many of us are grappling with right now is our academic program portfolio review. So in the past, many universities were considered comprehensive, meaning we offered degree programs in all sorts of areas. Theater, of course, art, music, and then the more professional degrees like nursing, accounting, computer science, that sort of thing. There's really been a shift in demand of our students and their families, and they are gravitating more toward the workforce aligned programs. And that means that many other degree programs are struggling in terms of enrollments. And with all the pressures on us these days, we need to really take a hard look at what we are offering and how demand and workforce is changing that. So that's one thing that we're grappling with. The other is our course modalities at our university, for example, Cal State East Bay, we've always been a commuter university, and we've always served very non-traditional students, hyper non-traditional students, and post pandemic, that means that more and more people are interested in a fully online offering, or at least a portion of their program being remote.

(02:13):

So that really changes the way our physical campus feels in terms of the number of people that are present. And some of our longtime community members, faculty, staff, administrators feel that is diminished. But I am working on helping us understand the culture of today, which is meeting the needs of students. So those are a couple examples of transformations that are many of us in higher education are trying to wrap our hands around today.

Shauna Cox (02:48):

Absolutely. And I want to touch on two points that you mentioned, because you mentioned a lot of the pressures that are natural to this, and I think there's a lot of internal pressures, external pressures, and then as you just now that campus culture, just the culture of the institution, I think it's really hard to have that balancing act and when academic change is impacting everything from that faculty workload all the way to the student experience across that spectrum, how do you bring different campus voices into alignment?

Cathy Sandeen (03:19):

A couple of ways. I am a firm believer in strategic planning, and I don't mean a 500 page document that sits on a shelf. So when I became president of Cal State East Bay, there wasn't a strategic plan in place that was a perfect opportunity for me to start those conversations. It was really a collective effort reflecting who we are, what our values are, what we hope to achieve together. So that is a touchstone and something that I can remind our community, remember we said this is important to us, this is what we're working on now. So that is one, as I say, touchstone for keeping people together and marching in the same direction. But as a leader, it's really incumbent upon us to communicate frequently in different venues, different groups, and in multiple ways. The communication never ends, no matter how much you do. People will say, well, I never heard of that. And we're constantly confronting that, and it's very important to just take a breath, communicate again, create a website that is a hub of information on this particular topic. Those are a couple things that I have found very helpful in bringing people together around change efforts.

Shauna Cox (04:50):

Absolutely. And dovetailing off of the, well, I've never heard of that, but we've always done it this way. And coming back to maybe the idea of a strategic plan, but how do you ensure that innovation in academic processes don't come at the cost of, say, your institutional values or that shared governance?

Cathy Sandeen (05:09):

I would say innovation is part of our DNA and part of our innovation. Yes, there are conservative aspects, more traditional aspects at our university, but if I look at our history and new things, we've tried being on the cutting edge of online education right now, 30% of our enrollments are in fully online programs, and a very high proportion of our faculty have gone through the quality matters training.

(05:39):

And that's something that we started years and years ago. So we always have been innovative on the cutting edge. Right now, we're doing an inventory and an assessment of courses that use completely free online educational resources that really create more affordability for our students. We have a very high percentage of those, of course, ai. How are we preparing our students for a world in which artificial intelligence is going to impact every single career? How do we help them learn how to use it ethically and well and prepare them for the workforce of tomorrow? So we're already doing these things, and I just need to remind our organization, look, we are innovative, we can do new things, and we can do them with a sense of urgency as well.

Shauna Cox (06:34):

Yeah. And speaking with your staff, I think that dovetails beautifully into the next question. What leadership lessons, either in your current position, previous positions, maybe even you've heard it from somebody else, but what leadership lessons have you learned about maintaining that trust and transparency during times of institutional change, higher ed change, and these constantly evolving demands from learners?

Cathy Sandeen (06:59):

I am a big fan of Brene Brown and her work research, evidence-based work on leadership. And my style is pretty direct. I believe in her tenant that to be clear, is to be kind and where some leaders might want to sugarcoat certain messages. For example, if we need to cut expenses at a university to close a deficit gap, we all know that roughly 75% of our expense is in salaries and benefits. So expense reduction very likely will create workforce reductions. Hopefully it's through attrition. Hopefully we can do separation incentive programs and things like that. But I don't sugarcoat when people know fully well what could come down the line. So I think to be clear is to be kind. And I do send out a lot of things in writing. I know emails are kind of falling by the wayside, but it is a way to document a certain issue that we're confronting and what we're planning for the future. So that clarity is something that I model, and I think the leaders that work on our team model that as well.

Shauna Cox (08:35):

I think that's really important. And I am also a huge fan of Brene Brown, so I get really excited when people mention her name. And you kind of expanding on this, you kind of shaped your leadership style. So I want to broaden that out and ask what kind of leadership will higher ed need most as that pace of academic change continues to accelerate?

Cathy Sandeen (08:58):

The qualities of leadership today, I think are courage, boldness, fighting against the tendency in higher education to overanalyze everything, to have 100% certainty before you make a decision and move in a direction. We need to be more bold and work and implement change with a sense of urgency. At the same time being very data informed. We work in organizations where people are highly educated, where they tend to be fact-based, and building on those qualities remains helpful. But also that humanity and understanding that we are organizations built on people and people who are really mission-driven. It's not just a job for most of our employees, whether they be staff, faculty, administrators, they're here because of the mission and respecting that. And so the combination of understanding the problem at hand based on data, being able to describe it using data and being humane in any change effort because it is hard to change the way you've been doing things for many, many years.

Shauna Cox (10:24):

Absolutely. I think higher ed has naturally just been comfortable with the way that things have been going, and the pandemic has clearly showed us that stuff can happen out of the blue and it can turn your whole world upside down, so absolutely. Well, Kathy, those are all the questions I have for you, but is there anything else that you would like to add? Any advice, any where you see higher ed going or anything that I may have missed?

Cathy Sandeen (10:50):

I would like to see us in general as an industry to be a little more creative and bold in our academic program offerings. Now, I know that we talk a lot about stackable credentials and no degree credentials and certificates, and I am a huge proponent of that. In fact, the majority of my career was in the continuing and professional education world. However, even in the more traditional degree granting programs, I would like to see in the us. I know in Canada I see a little more innovation, but right now a bachelor's degree is typically four years, 120 credits. And why is that? Can we do some accelerated bachelor's degrees that are 90 or 95 units that are focusing more on the applied aspect of the education? That's a big shift within a university such as mine, but I think we need to think about that to make it more affordable for our students to help them get into the workforce quicker and to meet those really rapidly changing workforce needs in our region. So a little bit more innovation, or I should say continued innovation on academic program design. I would like to see that.

Shauna Cox (12:21):

Yeah, absolutely. And that whole 90 credit degree is something that I've been slowly hearing from other people. So I'm hoping to see that momentum and see where that goes. Because I think it goes back to the idea of not everything has to be the way it was. We can shift some things. We can kind of transform and adapt the way we adapted something as simple as a car, so why can't we move forward in higher ed with that stuff? Amazing. I think that is a whole other conversation in and of itself. So I will certainly keep in touch with you on that. Kathy, again, thank you so much for your insights. I really do appreciate it.

Cathy Sandeen (12:59):

My pleasure. I always enjoy talking with you. Thank you. Bye.