Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

No new resources was a big piece. And then there was this other little dangling thing out there that said, you have until this date to submit, and if for some reason you cannot write your curriculum together, then I will pick one in the end. And so, you know, you can call that a carrot or a stick <laugh>. But you know, I, I did make clear that they had their autonomy as long as they were able to get it done in time for all of the new majors to be launched with, except nor nursing, of course, that we gave that extra year up front for, you know, this past fall. So, you know, fall 23, every major had to be ready to rock and roll. Everything else was going into Teach out, you know, so you, and you have to picture in year one of Commonwealth, we were writing the curriculum and teaching three different universities curriculum. That’s also a little bit of insanity. <Laugh>. Yeah. A but that was our reality, you know, so we, that’s not sustainable. And so that was the expectation. We, and we, it gave us a year to then be able to start marketing Commonwealth with the new programs, the new vision for each of these colleges, so that you start building that out because we had no brand.

Joe Gottlieb:

That’s Diana Rogers Atkinson, reflecting on the guardrails that she provided to her. Newly formed functional integration teams tasked with merging all academic programs at Bloomsburg, Lockhaven, and Mansfield universities. We talked about those guardrails, along with the empowerment strategies and change management methods that Diana used to orchestrate this merger within the 18 month window that was available to finish the job. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform.

Joe Gottlieb:

Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital. And today I am joined by Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson, former Provost of Commonwealth University, which this story is all about. And now Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, also known as PASSHE. Diana, welcome to TRANSFORMED.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. What do you wanna talk about today?

Joe Gottlieb:

Well, I’m glad you asked. I want to talk about your thoughts on harnessing necessity to mother the reinvention of programs, and that was a tongue twister. But first I’d like you to share a little bit of your background on your personal journey and how you got involved with higher ed.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Well, you know, the, the first thing to realize is I was never meant for higher ed. Not only am I a first generation college student, I’m the first woman in my family to graduate from high school. Wow. I’m, I’m, I’m also the first one to maybe not be having their first born, well, their mamas having their last born about that same early young trajectory that kept most of them from finishing high school. And so you know, I, I was not planned for college. My family did not have resources or money for me to go to college, but I was bound and determined I wanted to be a teacher. And I picked myself up and, and went and got an undergraduate degree at Ball State University and special education. And wow. Did higher ed just show me a whole new world, a whole new life.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And it really changed, obviously, my trajectory, my family’s trajectory. You hear that from anybody who’s a first generation. You know, I have a son now who, who’s also an academic. And that would’ve never happened without that opportunity. Higher ed itself became pretty traditional, you know, I became a teacher just like I was expected to do. And then started grad school. I worked with children who were emotionally disturbed children with very, very severe behavioral disorders, and was a cooperating teacher. The, the program said, Hey, you’ve got something going on. What do you think about being a ta? And, and suddenly now I’ve got a full ride to graduate education, both, you know, finishing at my master’s, and then I ended up doing, not one, but two doctorates. Wow. I don’t advise that for anyone <laugh>, but I had a faculty member who, you know, the population I worked with was served by mental health and by special education.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And, and the two, two areas did not always see eye to eye on how to serve those kids. And, and my goal in life was to try to get them to work to better, to together. And then higher ed took me away, you know, got the research bug, came a prof, and then all pretty much looked like a traditional academic, you know, department chair, you know, program coordinator. Did all of those steps. Ended up being a dean and then provost, and now vice chancellor for a system. So, you know, it’s, it’s been that traditional stair step approach that you would expect from a higher ed leader, but with a background that came from, wow. Boy, I could tell you the mistakes I made <laugh> when I was a young student.

Joe Gottlieb:

Well, I never tire of hearing those stories. They’re so rich. And it, I love hearing the way people articulate the, their connection to higher ed. And I can, I can just sense and feel what we’re about to talk about. A lot of it was only possible because of your determination that was, was forged with that background. So let’s get into it. Love to dive right in here. So let’s set the stage. First of all, Commonwealth University is a brand new university. Start us with that and tell us what’s going on there.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So due to financial issues, three universities, one, three actually over on the west side of the state. And then three in the central to to northeast side of the state, we’re told you need to combine and bring three institutions to one. So Bloomsburg, Lockhaven and and Mansfield were partnered together to create a brand new entity. And, and, you know, when you’re trying to do something like that, you need a new name. And we chose Commonwealth. I think that was my team. We’ve always been big fans of Pinky and the Brain. And what are you gonna do today? Take over the world. So why not have a university named for the state you’re in? You know, we’re a commonwealth. So it tells you kind of the vision. We were thinking, we’re gonna go big. And you know, the financial challenges created.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

We were a unique merger because we have three very different sized institutions that we’re bringing together. Mansfield being very small, rural, remote on the New York border, black Haven sitting pretty much dead center in the state, but in the shadow of Happy Valley. And then Bloomsburg, which was the largest of, of the three that really had the largest program array. And and Bloom, was really brought into this as the stable partner to assist the other two and to really help bring the academic resources to the other two campuses. You know, when you’re dropping enrollments, you start dropping programs because you don’t have enough students. You can only do so many programs with the number of students and the number of faculty you have. So we were seen as the catalyst to help really reinvigorate this new university to, to support learners across a good chunk of the state. Pretty exciting opportunity, actually.

Joe Gottlieb:

That is really exciting. And you touched on many things. I, my background actually is more on the corporate side than the higher ed side. And, and I’ve happened to have some responsibility for mergers and acquisitions in various forms. And so I can relate to both the promise and the challenge of of merging. But this is not about, this is not about my background. Let’s, let’s then sort of, you, you, you had these three coming together. There was, you’ve described it very nicely, so different coming at this from different angles and even different geographies and like you said, different identities. And so what were some of the options that you considered to reach the objective of unifying these three institutions and and how did you decide which, which method to employ?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So, so, you know, there’s the easy way. So we were consulting with Georgia, and Georgia, the state owns the curriculum there, you know, so, so in Georgia, they were basically told, these are the curriculum of your university as, as they did their, their mergers. And, and we don’t have state level curriculum in, in Paci. You know, each each had their own individual academic array, three different psychology programs. And if you took those curriculum maps, aligned them up, you know, side by side, three completely different programs, very different views and philosophies about the outcomes for their programs. And so, you know, if you’re going to do the simple exercise, the biggest one wins. Well, you know, that’s, that’s great. You know, it serves students efficiently because then a majority of the students were already in the largest program. The least number of students are impacted by, by a curriculum change.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And the number of students who need to be brought into that new model are much smaller. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, and so, you know, that would be the, the fastest way we could have had the curriculum done pretty quickly because it was already written and adopted. We already had a student learning outcomes, but that disenfranchised two of the three campuses, no matter what you did, and a majority of that would’ve been Bloom University campus curriculum, because they were the largest, you know, they’re sitting with 8,000 students, you’ve got 3000 in Lockhaven, 1900 over in Mansfield. And, and that was already the narrative that was being spun around the merger, you know, that this was going to be a bloom takeover. Hmm. And, and that didn’t seem like a good way to bring faculty together and keep us, you know, focused on, on the true narrative is we need to serve these students with similar programs as much as humanly possible, because we can’t be running three separate psych programs as one university.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Right. Doesn’t work that way with accreditation <laugh>. So we had to get something together, you know, then I could have said, well, I’m gonna, we’re gonna do some kind of assessment me metric, which one’s best now, you know, there’s a lot of ways that we can assess quality of programs. You know, are they accredited? Who’s the accreditor, you know, in business, are they A, A CSB or another accreditor? There’s all those kind of pieces that you could use to say, based on these metrics, this one’s best. This one’s the one we adopt. Now, again, bloom had the most accredited programs, so I, you see, we’re still kind of running into a similar, similar box that, that could have disenfranchised the other two campuses more. Or we could just totally decide to do something really radical and say, we’re gonna throw all the curriculum out and build it over again.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And that’s what we did. <Laugh>, <laugh>. Now there, there was a method to that madness. And, and you know, the fun part about all of this is we’re starting these conversations on how to start launching new curriculum, which is what we tell the faculty we believe we need to do, rewrite all of the curriculum. We’re still in the last year of covid, you know, so, so we’ve got, you know, at least we know how to use Zoom, thank goodness. ’cause That actually was a blessing for us in the end, because we were all able to start collaborating probably more quickly than if Covid hadn’t happened and, you know, start doing Zoom meetings. But, but we decided we had to put these together and the main reason was we needed a new identity. And it had to be an identity that was shared by all of the faculty.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

When we built out the new college structure, we built out the new department structures, the faculty were across the sites, you know, another possibility we could have said, this campus gets this program, this campus gets that program and this one gets that. You know, and still kept things siloed. That’s not a university I, that just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. I mean, a lot of people assume that’s what we were gonna do. Yeah. We just designated, you know, you get this, health professions goes here, this goes there. That wasn’t gonna work. You know, we had a great PA program in Lockhaven, a really, really strong nursing program at, at Bloom, how do you say health professions goes to one campus or the other. It, it just wasn’t a logistical resource model that we could do. So we said, here’s your new nursing department.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

They had faculty, and actually nursing was real interesting. ’cause They had five sites because we had two satellite sites one way up in Sayer and way out in Clearfield. And so your department now for undergraduate nursing, here you go. They had different accreditors, they had different program models. And you know, as of just last week, every single nursing program is now approved. They got the longest runway simply because their accreditation was the hardest. But we said, every program is going to be built by your, your new colleagues together, one program, and you guys figure it out.

Joe Gottlieb:

Wow. Congratulations on that milestone. That must feel very satisfying because it, that was a, that was a gutsy call. But if I identify what seems to be the principle that you, that moved you was the ability to bring together people that you knew for success we’re gonna have to collaborate in one form or another anyway. And so let them arrive at the best way forward as a newly merged team, in some cases, in, in the nursing case, across five sites, let alone three like institutional organizations, right? Yeah. And so that’s what drove you. Super exciting.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

You know, one of the main issues was, I mean, we had to culture build. We had a different culture in every campus. And, and these colleagues, you know, especially we’ve hired new faculty since we became Commonwealth. They’re hired into a new department that they have to have a shared identity, shared expectations for their colleagues and shared outcomes for their students so that the students’ learning needs are being met. And it doesn’t matter which campus you’re on, you, you can’t have one campus that has this set of opportunities and in a different, in the same program on a different campus, a completely different experience. How do you, how do you explain that to a student that, well, you can get this if you’re there, but if not that, you know, so I mean, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t decide not to launch some programs on sites based on resources.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

But then, you know, that coming in as a student, you know, you get to choose that campus. I mean, we only have one speech language pathology program. The clinic is at Bloom. That’s a bloom only campus offering. Whereas psychology, it is the same model across all three campuses, because that is a truly shared program and shared resources. And, and now students can do undergraduate research with faculty from any of the three campuses. So, you know, really shifting that language. But, but to get there took a lot of work. But it, and it happened in an amazingly short period of time. We had started the work and we created what we called functional integration teams. ’cause Our merger was called an integration in the language of, of Paci. And so we, we did the, did the first round labor. So the deans helped gather the program maps from every program, the program outcomes.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And we created a, a general folder for every single major. And we had them pick members from every campus to then be in these fit teams to then assess where are your curriculums? What do you already see as your shared, shared courses, shared norms, you know, what’s already alike? So what’s your baseline together, what’s, now we get to the fun part, what are your industry needs? You know, so, so how are you going to get external feedback from external partners around where your profession is going? And how can you capitalize on this opportunity to rebuild every single major? And also say it is also industry connected and is where the market is looking at for your program to be right now to serve our students effectively. And, and what other university in the world can say that every single program has been benchmarked in the past two years to industry standards. Commonwealth can do that. It, I don’t think anybody else can say they did that. I also don’t think anybody can say they passed 4,000 pieces of curriculum over a year and a half. You know? So well, those,

Joe Gottlieb:

Those are, the industry alignment comes from employer partners that these functional teams were lining up or reaffirming existing relationships with to, to reaffirm the needs of, of students graduating with these degrees, right? Yep.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Exactly. And, and each program did a little bit differently. I mean, some had, you know, members that, of different organizations that they already maybe had internships with who were, they would go and vet their curriculum. Others had some focus groups, you know, so they were left to, you can decide how you’re going to seek the input. We’re not gonna micromanage that for you, but you need to get the input, make sure you’re up to date with your accreditors. Are there changes coming around around the, the bend? I mean, that was one of the issues in nursing, is the new NCLEX exam was also getting launched as we were writing. So it gave them an opportunity to build it toward the new test at the same time that they would’ve had to change their curriculum anyway. But now we were doing across the scope of all of those five sites. So, so what are these other things you need to be considering that are external to this is how we’ve always done it.

Joe Gottlieb:

Hmm.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And, and the other piece with Commonwealth is we’ve always really believed in applied opportunities, internships, hands-on problem-based learning. And, and so how can, you can continue to expand that, build that in your programs, and then, you know, then you have a timeline to get it done. And the timeline was a year and a half from start to finish, which we met amazingly. I, you know, I could not brag more about those faculty and, and them living up to that,

Joe Gottlieb:

But, so you started with a few things, right? You said you, I think you, you’ve created the functional teams. Was there, did you, was the, there must have been a process to hire to, to, to name leaders of those teams. And how did you, how did you do that while navigating the, the original problem which you had over and over again, which was, well, we, we, we don’t want to alienate one campus versus another. We don’t want this to be a bloom takeover. Right? And so how’d you navigate that particular item?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So, you know, since we built new colleges and new departments, we had brand new elections for department chairs. So the new department chairs were designated as the one held accountable to, to moving things forward and, and getting things done on time. Then they chose to delegate down depending on, you know, the number of majors they needed to write and get, you know, a program coordinator or, or a designated faculty member that they said would be the lead to help spearhead that particular writing group. Every department did it differently. Hmm. And, and again, that was where we kind of got out of the way for them to decide, you know, the humans in the room or the humans in the room, they’re going to have to learn to work together and create their own new cultural norms for, for that process. And some departments were writing bylaws, and they went through a very traditional, and others were very diffuse. Hmm. You know, and, and quite frankly, I, you know, there was no reason not to honor that because they needed to do the work the way it made sense to them. And, you know, the, the way folks work in the arts and how they think is always very different than maybe somebody sitting over in computer science <laugh>. Right. And they’re linear thinking. So

Joe Gottlieb:

It, it’s an amazing study, frankly in this, this blending of approach that allows the right level of delegation coupled with these guardrails. And so another guardrail I know is you, you had some metrics. So you, you, you made the effort to give everyone all the data that you could gather on the combination of programs. And so you had some, some services, I think you, via SharePoint or whatever, you were sharing all that information. You formed the, the teams, they elected chairs, and now they’re grappling with their problem solving each in their own context. But you did, you did declare a timeframe and some metrics, or at least one metric, I think for how to make this solvent.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Yes. So number one was no new resources.

Joe Gottlieb:

Yep.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So, you know, that, that piece, I mean, it, it would’ve been very easy for folks to say, yes to do this. But we and mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And so again, rather than us say, can you resource this across all three programs? Some programs said, all right, we can’t, based on our current resources, bring this to all three sites. So, but this is what we can do here based on the faculty resources we have. This is what we’re going to choose to share via Zoom and do distance ed. We built out some, we connect rooms, which actually allow students to be sitting live on all three on three sites and have one instructor and get information too. So some program said, well, we wanna take advantage of the technology and although maybe all of the main faculty are on, on campus, A, we wanna beam out to the students at B and C because we wanna reach as many students as possible.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So it’s a curricular design for them. And some programs said, you know, we’re gonna scale back, you know, so I, you know, one program said, we really just don’t think we can be a major anymore, and we’re gonna choose to be a minor. And so that, and that was their decision, not mine. I, I admired their, their decision making around that. Because it can be very hard to say, well, this is what we think is going to be best, and this is what’s going to be viable over time. And so no new resources was a big piece. And then there was this other little dangling thing out there that said, you have until this date to submit, and if for some reason you cannot write your curriculum together, then I will pick one in the end. And so, you know, you can call that a carrot or a stick <laugh>.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

But, but you know, I, I did make clear that they had their autonomy as long as they were able to get it done in time for all of the new majors to be launched with, except nor nursing, of course, that we gave that extra year up front for, you know, this past fall. So, you know, fall 23, every major had to be ready to rock and roll. Everything else was going into teach out, you know, so you, and you have to picture in year one of Commonwealth, we were writing the curriculum and teaching three different universities curriculum. That’s also a little bit of insanity. <Laugh>. Yeah. But that was our reality, you know, so we, that’s not sustainable. And so that was the expectation. We, and we, it gave us a year to then be able to start marketing Commonwealth with the new programs, the new vision for each of these colleges so that you start building that out because we had new brand.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Yeah. You know, so year one we’re teaching out the old programs and we are admitting students and, you know, we couldn’t even tell them what all of our majors were going to look like yet. And so, you know, the, the time factor was critical because you have to market a university. Students are, you know, what do they do? They go to the website and they click on and say, I’m looking for computer science, and you, they’re gonna see the Bloom curriculum, or they’re gonna see the curriculum from Lockhaven or Mansfield. How do they know what they’re gonna get?

Joe Gottlieb:

Yeah.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

We have, so that,

Joe Gottlieb:

That recruiting effort’s very interesting. So you probably have a feel for how much of the prior if, and maybe varied for each of the three schools, but there’s a certain regional awareness about each of those schools that may be a LI I’m betting, but you can tell me if I’m wrong, that a lot of your recruiting in the Commonwealth era was doing the best possible job with that recurring organic awareness and saying, Hey, you came to the, you know, Lockhaven website. Did you know Lockhaven is now part of, of, of, of Commonwealth You, and let us show you the great things that this, that Lockhaven has now become a part of And Right. Like, so there’s still brand equity we’re trying to build in a new brand. But is that, is that true? Is that, was that the way you slate it?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

That’s, that was very much what we did. And then trying to show expanded opportunities that were definitely coming, you know, it was, you know, we had an have an endowed college that was at Bloomsburg and business, the resources there, we’re now coming to all of the students in business, you know, so here are new things that you get to do. Yes. You’ll be taught out of your current curriculum of what’s existing. Nothing. You know, there’s no harm there. Trying to explain that to folks is always fun. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then, you know, but here are the other things that, that you’ll also now begin to get to experience either via, you know, a distance at experience when, you know, our, our conferences that we were holding on the Bloom campus around college business or even our other colleges, and then bringing that out and bringing students too. I mean, we had this really neat that, you know, still have, it’s called Zipped Conference every year. And, and a Mansfield student came down for it and got offered a job that day.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Nice. You know, so, so, you know, they were seeing, you know, wow, look at, look at these new opportunities that would’ve not been there for them, you know, the year before. So, you know, it, it, it’s, you know, continues to be an evolution for sure. Yeah. But, you know, I, I’ve never been prouder. The council of trustees wrote a letter accommodation to the faculty for getting that curriculum done in that timeline. I mean, we put resources in place. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, so, you know, God loved the curriculum committee. Not only did they first have to write procedures for a new university for building a brand new curriculum, but they were meeting weekly. And they were at, you know, during the first summer as we were all the new curriculums starting to come through, meaning three days a week, I mean, the amount. And, and we also did make sure that they were compensated for that we’re unionized. You know, I mean, we, we have to follow a union contract while we’re doing this. And each chapter maintains their own separate identity. So actually you’re working with three chapters to make sure that we could build all of this together. But I mean, that curriculum committee for the, that year and a half, I mean, you know, their service to the profession. And then there was that, and, and those people you know, they gave Heart, soul, and everything else to the university while they were reviewing all of that curriculum. Yeah.

Joe Gottlieb:

Sounds like a heroic effort.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

It was, it was. And you know, it was, it was really satisfying that the council of trustees, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen trustees do, you know, a formal accommodation to the faculty. And you know, I was so pleased that they recognized just every, the lift that they had performed and, and how it was unprecedented in higher ed to completely reset a curriculum like that.

Joe Gottlieb:

That’s fantastic. So I know there was another, at least one other key metric that was part of the way that you managed this to the end. So let’s talk about student to program ratio. ’cause I know you accomplished some amazing things there, but I also wanna, I also wanna hear your thoughts on, on that really supplied one of the essential guardrails that kept this thing like, no new resources won, but then what goes beyond that? Well, this student of program ratio, right?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Right. And so, you know, part of PA’s expectations is that each institution needs to maintain a student to faculty ratio. And for Commonwealth, that’s 19.4 <laugh> to one. Okay. You blazen you could, you know, I’m surprised it’s not a tattoo on my arm at this point, <laugh>, you know, but, and to do that is more challenging when you have students on three different campuses taking similar classes, but you have a different concentration. And so, you know, that’s where looking at the resources it takes to run a program, having to really look at what are our class sizes going to be, you know, if you’ve been a a 1900 campus, meaning the number of students you’re used to a lot smaller faculty to class ratios. And, and we had to say, well no, that’s now one section, not two. And, you know, but here’s other opportunities for some new courses for you to teach that help us meet that metric.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

We’ve had faculty move between some of the campuses, you know, so that, you know, we bigger nexus of students on a different campus for a particular program. And, and so moving resources from the human side and asking them to change a campus so that we could meet the students’ needs where they were choosing to attend. And so that metric, you know, was really, it’s, it’s probably the least favorite metric of our faculty to be real honest. But you know, when you have a campus that’s used to never having to teach a large online class where, you know, another campus was used to that that was probably the biggest. And, and will continue to be, I think for quite some time an ongoing focus of the faculty, especially from a union and labor perspective of how do you continue to equalize the faculty load as the student demographics shift between the campuses and different programs and where you need resources at one point in time or another.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And, and how you share the faculty across the different campuses. But I also can say, you know, folks have been willing to say, oh, we need one section of this over on a different campus than what my home campus is. And, you know, we do reimbursement for travel of course, but they’ve, they’ve picked up and said, I’ll offer a section, you know, at Bloom even though I’m from Lock Haven. Hmm. And, but that goes into having to maintain that metric. ’cause That’s a viability metric, right. That the system holds us to and, and the provost are held accountable to on every single university in the system.

Joe Gottlieb:

So did that ratio, I heard, you know, you, you’ve cited several examples there of, of how you grappled with that ratio and accomplished it via some moving of some faculty and some recognition of where students existed, the leverage presented by technology where that could be captured to, to handle the load one way versus another. But was this program overall or did it also apply per campus? Like, so I imagine one of the latitudes in accomplishing the big objective was dealing with the fact that this was gonna be maybe easier to accomplish immediately in this area versus maybe another area, but we’re gonna to collectively we’re gonna hit the number was or, or do I have that wrong? No,

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

It’s, it’s a collective number. You know, what of the long-term goals has been eventually to be able to move that metric also to a college level and what is a reasonable metric for a college recognizing they can’t all be the same. You know, in clinical programs like nursing counseling, they of courses are capped at 12 to one for the clinical. So, you know, that kind of college is going to have a different metric than a college of business that does not have parameters anywhere in their professional run class size. But how can then a dean and then eventually department chairs look at that from the parameter of, here’s the classes we have so that they can then begin to make the decision, this is going to be our large class because we want this to be, be small and we can offset that we’re not there yet.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Because, you know, we baselined our first class last year. But that is a long-term goal is to be able to keep moving that metric down to lower, lower levels of ownership. Right. Because it, it can then actually give a department more flexibility because then they can say, okay, we know overall we’re supposed to be sticking somewhere. Let’s, you know, make up a number 25 to one Yeah. For our department, but we’re gonna make this class over here or 200 section course because we believe it can be taught that way. And that allows us to run this other class for 15 because we believe it really needs to be run that way. And as long as we are sitting at that number, they can gain a lot of autonomy. But, you know, if in, in my guess, getting to that space is probably two to three years away,

Joe Gottlieb:

But just think of

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

With something I was working on at Bloom before the, the pandemic and merger started. And, and it, it’s like, oh, well we’ve gone full circle <laugh>, we’re back at where, where we were beginning.

Joe Gottlieb:

Well, but you know, even that is Lightspeed if you think about it for the top, the, the level of change that we’re talking about. Right. And so, and I think you hit it right on the head, which is that kind of guardrail presented and used in the right way, absolutely unlocks flexibility, right? Like, so, okay, look, you saw for the ratio, and oh by the way, the ratio is getting pushed further down. But at any level, letting the organization to solve for it gives them options to choose that they can own and be very vested in. It can be aligned with the, the, you know, their mini mission of, of how they’re contributing. So I just find that as another great example, example of accomplishing big, big scope change with people enrolled in a way that can get the job done and still meet what were very severe quantitative objectives. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Let’s not, let’s not, you know, make any mistake about it. Right. This was tough.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Yeah. It, it definitely was. And one of the, the campuses had retrenchment on the table, you know, and in the end those folks were recalled because we were able to deploy them. You know, some were invited to please stay, but we’d like you to please stay and, and, and now have your home campus be a different campus. But, but it actually helped solve for some other variables that were happening for one of the, the university’s pre-integration. So, you know, I, I felt, you know, it was painful for that particular campus to, to be going through that, coming into integration. But it, it was good to be able to redeploy those folks through the, through the merger.

Joe Gottlieb:

Right. Okay. So I want to shift the challenges. So there, there were, share some thoughts on some of the challenges you encountered in this, this process and how you navigated them. ’cause I think that’ll add even more texture to the way you’ve talked about the methods that you employed to to, to approach this.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Yeah. So, you know, the union aspect, you know, with our partners in APSCo definitely made it more interesting and, and a challenge. And, and the first challenge simply being, they did not merge into one new chapter at Commonwealth University. We had three chapter presidents and three individual meet and discusses that were used to meeting with three different provosts who, you know now, there, there was one. But having each has a completely different culture. And, and each had a different way of even how they would experience meet and discuss with administration. And, and then you also had the layer of state app stuff who, you know, is, is of course not happy that we’re more merging these three uni, you know, universities and trying to protect their members as well. And, and so, you know, state meet and discuss was highly involved with, with the process they had to approve our curriculum procedures.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

It actually gave us an opportunity where the three chapters and I were all kind of starting to come together at one point because we thought we had come to some agreement on how we wanted the new curriculum committee to work. And, and state would be like, well what, wait, why are you doing that? You know? And so, you know, in some ways it gave us an opportunity to problem solve collectively, but still, you know, trying to work through those, those, you know, pivot points that were pinching for any of the groups, be it a local chapter or state definitely was interesting is the nicest word I can think of. You know, it, it it, it was a very unique challenge. You know, and then, then you just had the department cultures and, and that that was really interesting to, to observe.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

‘Cause We kind of had three different camps. We had the proactive ones who were like, what a great opportunity. Oh, you know, we could do this, we could do that. You know, because we can do this now. You know, we could open this opportunity to our students. And, and, and so they chose to claim this as, Hey, we, we have no choice and we’re going to embrace it and we’ll run with it. And, and, you know, one department was like, yeah, we’re gonna be first. We’re getting all of ours done right away. We wanna be first, you know, I gave them a pizza party at the end. And you’d think because they were first, and you wouldn’t think that a bunch of adult academics would be pleased with pizza, but they were quite pleased that the provost bought them pizza of lunch because they were the first apartment done.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And then you had those who were just like, well, we’ll just take our time and we’ll hope some miracle’s gonna pop in and say, oh, nevermind. Go back to the way it was. You know, so those, the deans had to really keep them moving along and, and nudging and reminding them that that little she will pick in the end. She’s serious. Believe me, trust that. You don’t wanna be there, you know, so yeah. But they weren’t being, you know, like negative that it’s just the, you know, slow boat was the best way to do that in their mind. And then, you know, there were some, some departments where this was just brutally painful, where, where their cultures were so tight to their home campus. And the way it had always been that we did have to hire a mediator to come in and work with some of the departments to help break, you know, break up the logger jam that was happening where, you know, it was more spent on trying to create alliances.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Well, if we can get all the faculty from these two sites to align, then we can overthrow the faculty from the other site to get what we want in the curriculum. And, and, and those were also the departments where I had to kind of interject to and state, clearly these are the parameters that are in place. The parameters will not be changing for you. And I will be picking a program for you, and you’ve got this number of days left. And you’re gonna have to, to come to some hard compromises and none of you will be happy, and you’re going to have to accept that none of you are going to be happy because you don’t want to create this together, but you are a department and you will continue to be a department and you gotta get it done. Yeah. And those got done too.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

But, and fortunately that wasn’t, that wasn’t the largest group. I mean, you know, that was two or three departments, you know, and was a small end in, in terms of, you know, the 89 pro, you know, new majors and programs we were putting out there. But, but you know, it’s always hard when you’re having to get into, into the weeds with people like that to, to deal with the interpersonal rather than, you know, what we’re really here for, which was to get that curriculum done so your students had a curriculum to take that coming fall.

Joe Gottlieb:

Well, needless to say, high EQ was a, an important superpower paired with this structure, right? This, this consistent reinforcement of structure. But even I would, I would, I would hasten to add your, your willingness to feed this with both celebration and, you know, things like the pizza party’s a good example, but also mediation specialists where you saw the need, right? And so I think this just, again, it’s feels like a very, very strong case study in leveraging all the tools of hard, hard change and a portfolio of change that was happening across a portfolio of organizations trying to become one. Fascinating. So let’s let’s do a little victory lap here. How is it going? Gimme some, some nice little nuggets on things that you’ve seen that really excite you about what you’ve been able to create there and what’s your outlook for the future?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Yeah, so one, you know, we can do a system metric, you know, so having two large of an array creates financial strain. And, and right now Commonwealth sits as the, like third lowest in terms of their array. So we built a sustainable level of programs and, and sometimes I’m still shocked that we pulled that off because it’s not like it all came in in one day and we assessed it. You know, you’re having to keep rolling through curriculum over a year and a half trying to manage and look at the resources while it’s all, you know, was a big amoeba, really. And so what we’ve built is, is hopefully going to be fairly sustainable. There’s always gonna be fluctuations, you know, students choose what students choose,

Joe Gottlieb:

But that array metric that pertains to back to the student to program ratio, right? Yep.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And, you know,

Joe Gottlieb:

Third best in the state through this exercise, like you said, not all at once, but ultimately now you, the, the people believed and you now you’re seeing that result. That’s fantastic.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Right? And so, like, on the top of that metric, just to make clear for folks who are like provosts who are going, huh, you know, it, the number of programs that we sit period is linked into that metric by the number of students you serve. And so that, that also fits into that, that ratio metric. And so that’s the piece where we hit a nice number of, based on the number of students we have, we have built the right number of programs for our size.

Joe Gottlieb:

Got it.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

If you look at all the universities nationally that are starting to take programs out of their arrays because they have less students to fuel the programs that they have. Yeah. And so there’s just gonna be losers in that, you know, some of the other successes are some of the beautiful things the faculty built. The visual arts department, not all campuses have the same facility. So as they were building out visual arts, you know, if you want to do you know, tapestry and, and fiber arts, you know, that’s only at Bloom, but, but they built in a residency model where students could choose if they’re in the visual arts to do a summer residency at any of the campuses, which is actually part of the profession. You know, artists apply and go to residencies to, to work on their craft or learn new skills in their craft or, or just work on their, their art.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

And so that’s built into the model and I don’t know anybody who’s doing that. So, you know, they were really creative about thinking, how do we build this program then unlocks opportunities. If a student wants to go into a master’s in art therapy, you really need to have an opportunity to get into, you know, working in a kiln and doing clay and pottery. Well, bloom didn’t have that, but Mansfield does. So, so now you’ve got an opportunity to keep that student one at your campus or your university, give them a chance that summer to work in, in pottery and, and build out for, for that next goal for them. So there was a lot of creativity there. You know, the other piece has been just we’re student. We’ve always been strong in our all three historical universities and undergraduate student research. You know, we’re regional comprehensives undergrads, getting to do research with our faculty has always been part of our fiber. Now they’ve got more opportunities. You know, lock Haven had a nanoscience facility that, you know, blooming and Mansfield didn’t have access to in the past. And now students can do, you know, research in, in a variety of labs. Again, you know, building these in, you know, summer opportunities, you know, so those kind of, of new ways of unlocking potential for students and interaction with faculty. That’s been the, I think, the coolest piece of, of what we’ve accomplished.

Joe Gottlieb:

Awesome. Well, let’s bring this to a real close. This has been a lovely conversation, but what, what are three takeaways we can offer our listeners on this topic of harnessing necessity to mother? The reinvention of programs?

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

So, you know, higher ed can move fast, <laugh>, everybody will tell you, you cannot do anything ever quickly in higher ed. And, and, and I’ll be the first to tell you if you put the right strategy, the right resources and the right metrics in place simultaneously, you can move quite a mountain that nobody would’ve ever thought anyone could do. You know, that higher ed can be flexible. I mean, you got a university, but you know, this past year running four university curriculums at once, teaching out three legacies while also launching a new one. You know, again, I don’t know how many PE have done that, but, but the faculty there rose to that challenge. And you know, I think the other piece is really, you’ve gotta earn your trust, you know, as an administrator. But if you’re collaborative, you try to stay inclusive, yes. You still have to make the hard decisions in the end. And some of them were very, very unpopular that I made, and, and there will be some who will always hate me for those decisions. But, but for the long run, for the students, if you’re transparent, you know your metrics and you share as openly as possible what you can, you can do some pretty amazing work with your faculty.

Joe Gottlieb:

Great summary. Diana, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson:

Hey, it has been an absolutely wonderful opportunity and I really appreciate you asking me to be here.

Joe Gottlieb:

And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.

Joe Gottlieb:

Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, I hope that made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.