Dr. Pamela Steinke
I really believe that faculty create the culture of the institution. In fact, I meet with every finalist, faculty finalists. I meet individually for every faculty position because it’s so important to kind of hear why the faculty are coming here, what they’re expecting, who they are, because they do impact the culture of the entire university. And so this divide between administration and faculty, it just doesn’t seem like it’s going to lead us anywhere. So the more that we can work together, the more that we can help faculty in their administrative capacities, the better, I think, for the whole institution.
Joe Gottlieb
That’s Pamela Steinke, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of South Carolina Upstate. stressing the importance of investing in faculty so that they can more effectively contribute to institutional administration, and in the process, unify rather than divide institutional culture. We discussed several different types of investments and their impacts on Upstate’s academic program review and broader transformation efforts. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb
Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new whys, the new whats, and the new hows 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, 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. Pamela Steinke, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Pam, welcome to Transformed.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. What do you want to talk about?
Joe Gottlieb
Well, I’m glad you asked, Pam. I want to talk about your thoughts on investing in faculty to embrace transformation. But first, I’d love for you to give us a little bit about your background and your personal journey, how you got connected into the work that you do in higher ed.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Sure, I’d be happy to. Well, after I finished my doctorate in psychology at UC Davis, I secured a tenure track position at Central College in Iowa, where I stayed and earned tenure and promotion. I think like many faculty in my first couple of years, I was really focused on improving my teaching because I realized that in graduate school, I did not learn how to teach. I recognized what’s the service component of your job. And so I started chairing committees and I directed a program. And I really saw the potential for that work to not only help the quality of the institution, but also student success. Well, meanwhile, while I was there, my husband earned his degree and was offered a job that we really couldn’t pass up. What I didn’t realize at the time when he accepted that job is it meant that we would be moving about every five years. So I realized quickly that I couldn’t remain in a faculty role. And so I pursued administrative roles in assessment and accreditation. And In those roles, I also became a peer evaluator for accreditation. When we were in the South, I was with SacCOC. When we were in the North, I was with HLC. And my work in accreditation taught me some really important lessons, I think, that most faculty don’t get, given my experience. First, I realized that how important it was to have everybody on the same page working together for quality standards and how much that could transform an institution. I mean, that really is the work of accreditation, but it’s amazing how much can get done when you get everybody on that page, same page. I think it also helped me to understand the priorities and perspectives of different divisions. When you’re in academic affairs, you tend to think that that is the whole of the institution is academic affairs. And so when you start to see how other divisions function and what’s important to them, you get a broader view of the institution, kind of the view from the balcony. I also, at some point, I realized that my background as a faculty member was actually helping me in these administrative roles and something I don’t think I would have realized. And then finally, it’s really it became apparent that faculty get no training on their administrative role, on the service component. They’re expected to do service. They get training in research in their graduate program. There’s always pretty well staffed teaching and learning centers for them for their teaching. But then when it comes to service, they just get thrown into chair committee or a task force and have no direction whatsoever. And I realized how appreciative, as I worked with faculty, how appreciative they were of my support of them and how much they really valued getting mentored by administrators. I remember at one institution, they actually wrote me into the faculty manual to be on that committee as an administrator. So I saw that faculty really wanted that direction, but just weren’t getting it. Eventually, my husband did leave that company. He got a job in South Carolina and later retired, but that’s what led me to apply and get the job at USC Upstate. First, I became vice provost and then provost, and I’ve been here a little over seven years.
Joe Gottlieb
Well, thank you so much for sharing that background. It speaks to not only your flexibility and adaptability that grew out of some of the changes in your your life trajectory but the recognition of certain areas that you need where you needed to grow but then ultimately observed that weren’t being always offered to to folks that or being thrust into situations where it might be valuable it’s a great context for us to begin this conversation So I want to begin the conversation by talking a bit about what’s going on at Upstate. So going back to the beginning, what drivers and related conditions have compelled USC Upstate to transform its academic affairs? Because that’s really the broad context that we’re going to begin this conversation from within and work from there.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Well, I think… There’s a tremendous amount of transformation in the region. The upstate region of South Carolina is one of the fastest growing regions in the entire country. And while there’s other colleges here, we’re the only regional comprehensive university. And so our mission is to try and meet that workforce need. So with new industry coming in and constant change, there’s a lot that we feel we’re responsible for in terms of meeting that workforce need. But at the same time, we were impacted by the pandemic like many institutions. And overall, we dropped about 20% from highest to lowest enrollment. So we were strapped financially. So at the same time that we’re trying to transform the institution and transform our academic programs to better meet workforce needs, We also have less money, less resources to do so. So we never had program cuts, and that was really positive. We never considered them. Instead, what we did is a program review process. And we didn’t, no faculty were let go against their will. We did two rounds of voluntary separation programs. We had some one-time money from the pandemic that helped us with that, but they weren’t let go against their will. And what we did with open faculty positions that we did have funding for is we centralized those so that if they came from a program in which they were losing enrollment, we could put them in an area in which was really needed because the enrollment was growing. So we always just kept a focus on market needs and the career readiness of our students. I think that has become really important. In fact, it’s our quality enhancement plan for our accreditation. And we also prioritize experiential learning as well.
Joe Gottlieb
Thank you. So that sets a good context for some of the drivers, the conditions, what was going on. And so as you entered this effort to transform academic program review, how did you change your approach in response to these conditions? You know, what did you apply in that circumstance that you think is worth pointing out?
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Well, I mentioned the academic program review process. So, I think that was one thing that was really successful. And this was a process that programs went through that had low enrollment or had seen a decrease in enrollment. And what we did, there was an administrative process as well in which administrative units were asked to increase their efficiency or effectiveness. So it wasn’t just academic programs. But for the academic programs that were struggling, we asked them to reimagine how they could change to better meet workforce needs, better meet student needs. And we did this by having the programs answer questions, respond to data, but it was a faculty committee that looked at these responses and made recommendations. So the faculty made recommendations to the programs as to what they should do. And I think that those recommendations, well, one thing is that sometimes they were stronger than what an administrator would have recommended. So faculty took this seriously, the faculty on the committee. And then also, I think the program faculty heard it much better when having it come from faculty. So in most cases, Most programs have done that. We’ve done two rounds. We’re doing another round this year. And most programs have done that have done a really good job of changing. Now there have been some that have had difficulties and it’s, it’s mostly because they have difficulties communicating within their program itself. So it, the communication to actually reimagine the program was made even more difficult, but it’s not that we, came along and said, okay, if you can’t decide this, you’re going to be out. Instead, what the chancellor has done with one program, he actually hired a facilitator to help the program to reimagine their program. So I think that has been really beneficial and faculty see that. But, you know, all of this, the academic program review has been, not been in isolation. It’s really part of a bigger effort led by the chancellor and by Academic Affairs Together. I mean, I think we’ve always been on the same page. We recognize that upstate plays an important role in increasing the social and economic mobility of the region. And people who come to work at upstate, they come for that reason. You know, they’re committed to the mission. So it’s kind of reminding them of that mission, making sure that what they’re doing is aligned with that mission it’s and it’s a constant reminder it’s not just for faculty that it’s a reminder sometimes you know faculty you know people pick on faculty as you know they don’t realize why we’re here but it’s it’s true of administrators as well everybody needs a reminder but because they come here for that reason it’s not that hard to get them back on the same page and and so in Academic affairs, I think, as I said, most faculty want to teach our students. Our students might be first generation, low income, and the faculty have come from that background and they really want to be here to teach our students. So some of the things we’ve done is we’ve tried to identify policies that are roadblocks to students, especially transfer policies. policies, for example, that can easily add credits to a transfer student. We really prioritize student success initiatives and help faculty to work holistically with with the students. Now, if you just said to faculty, spend more time with students, work more holistically with them, and you didn’t give them any support in doing that, I don’t think that would be that successful. But we were fortunate because we had a Title III grant and a Spartanburg Academic Movement grant that allowed us to do some initiatives to really help both faculty and students together. So, for example, we partnered with ACUE to provide support high-quality professional development on best practices for faculty. We’ve worked to centralize advising, which will be more successful for students, but also frees faculty up to do more mentoring, things like career preparation or experiential learning, undergraduate research. And we’ve also supplemented with life coaches for those students who really have more needs than an advisor or faculty can provide. meet. Another thing we’ve done is we changed the schedule to increase Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday classes because students, many of our students work outside the institution. They often work too many hours. And so that kind of flexibility and that schedule has really helped them. It also has helped us to offer more professional development for faculty on Fridays. So I think it’s been a win for everybody. And we now have a new strategic plan, greater 2030. And so by 2030, all of our programs need to have experiential learning, market relevant certifications, external advisory boards, and to prepare their students for careers in which they know they’ll be working with AI. So as you know, We’ve continued to work in these areas. We try and develop new programs that respond to the market needs, such as we have a new industrial engineering. It’s kind of part of our mission as a regional comprehensive.
Joe Gottlieb
I want to double click on at least one part of that, and that is when you were Leaving it up to the faculty to come up with, you know, how to reimagine a program. I’ve seen that before. And frankly, I believe it’s a best practice as long as it’s done in combination with some of the necessary guardrails that you have to accomplish goals, right? You have to, and that’s, you know, I’ve also heard of inserting facilitators where they may be needed to get people through obstacles that might be communication related it might be you know heck it could be fear it could be politics they’re all kinds of things that could be encountered but it sounds like you had a reasonably positive experience overall and that most of the groups were able to naturally take to that kind of work and and see the opportunity um perhaps benefiting from the the sort of the either they was they were already aware of your willingness to avoid involuntary terminations and things like that, but that probably created a safe enough space where they engaged. I’m just curious to understand, that can be an unpredictable thing, right? To leave it up to the people closest to the details, but it also unlocks two things, in my opinion, and I want to get you to react to this. One is creative thinking that is close to the details. And like you said, some of the best ideas came out from that layer. That’s typical. But then two, a level of vesting in the outcome and support because they were asked. You dignified them with inclusion in the process and that was worth something. Did you experience both of those or any combination?
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Yeah, I mean, I think the faculty on the committee were very much invested in the process. They put in lots of hours, they took it very seriously. And I think that they saw the importance of the whole process to the institution. And I think that that helped tremendously, that helped them to see why we were doing this and that it was necessary as they looked around and saw other universities in which they were just cutting programs. I think that helped for them to take it seriously. Yeah, and we did also have support in the committee from an administrator. Our vice provost was in to serve as a facilitator with the committee. And I think that that really helped because she could provide data or context or anything else that they needed in doing that work. So I think that that was also really important.
Joe Gottlieb
We’ll be right back.
Emily Rudin
Hi, I’m Emily Rudin, Chief Client Officer at Higher Digital and proud sponsor of the TRANSFORMED podcast. Higher Digital is a full-service, product-agnostic consulting company providing strategic, functional, and technical expertise to help colleges and universities navigate digital transformation successfully. We believe true transformation isn’t about forcing change. It’s about unlocking the potential already within your institution. Our expert teams specialize in creating tailored solutions for your unique challenges, enabling meaningful and measurable progress. Higher education is evolving faster than ever. How is your institution adapting? Let’s start the conversation today. Visit higher.digital to learn more.
Joe Gottlieb
And now, back to our program. Transformation never works without adequate sensitivity to and alignment with organizational culture. But it’s also true that you can model good behaviors to give culture a boost. So my question is, what behaviors have you tried to model and develop within USC Upstate?
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Well, I think that both the Chancellor and I try to model behaviors. One, transparency, providing as much information to faculty as we can. The chancellor holds town halls in which he presents budget information to faculty and staff. He also presents budget information to faculty senate. He’s invited the faculty chair to participate in cabinet. I think both of us also try and show authentic listening of faculty. We recognize that it’s not always a easy role and there are obstacles and you need to listen to what those obstacles are and really listen if you wanna actually move them. So for example, there was a noise issue in the labs and the chancellor and I both toured the labs with the faculty to actually hear and experience the noise issue so that we could help move it along and get it resolved. Of course, we both, I think, model care for students. At the same time, so caring for students and upholding policies, fair policies, because sometimes faculty here caring for students is just kind of like lowering standards, you know, just let them get by. And neither, you know, we try and clearly state that’s not what we’re talking about. So, for example, high DFW courses, you know, Those are difficult. You can’t, you can’t in good conscience, continue to have students enter courses in which, you know, at the onset, 70% aren’t going to get through, you know, so we need to address that kind of issue, but we do it with supports. The kind of supports I, I talked about earlier, you know, example is A&P. That’s like a bottleneck for nursing. And we hired a faculty member whose specific whose specific role was student success in A&P and um and so doing those kinds of things
Joe Gottlieb
What’s A&P? I probably should know.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Sorry, anatomy and physiology.
Joe Gottlieb
I was an engineer so maybe…
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Right.
Joe Gottlieb
Noted.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Yeah, I think respect and support for faculty governance is another one. We work with the faculty chair. We meet regularly with the chair. We meet together with the chair. I meet with the chair. We attend Senate. We both attend Senate. I also attend Academic Affairs Committee because it’s such a crucial committee organization. And then I also drop in on other committees, depending on if there’s issues that they might need support with. So like general education or graduate committee or assessment committee, if it seems like they might need more support. I think also maybe celebrating successes and progress of faculty. We’ve added awards to our beyond the teaching research and service awards. We’ve added a greater reaching greater heights awards for faculty. The chancellor has a glass wing butterfly award that he when he sees somebody who’s just lifting more than, you know, than than you would expect them to. He goes and gives them this award. And so I think that that’s important, too. The salary is always a big issue with faculty. So we did put in policy that we would do a CUPA review every five years so that we would look at their salary and make sure that was in line with other faculty salaries. I think those are the main things. Yeah, those are great examples of
Joe Gottlieb
some of those culture boosts that can be really, really important. We may want to come back to it after this next question. But remind me, if you think of it, to touch on this notion of respecting faculty governance and pushing forward with transformation. Because sometimes those things can… And you’ve already alluded to some of the push-pull that exists there and how you’ve lubricated that with some investments. But we may want to come back to that. But to make sure we set the stage, right? So let’s talk about… about one of these important forces. Faculty are central to higher ed’s primary value proposition. Teaching and learning is what higher ed’s all about, right? And it’s dangerous to generalize, but sometimes faculty like to play the victim in the transformation game. How have you combined the modeling of cultural behaviors that we just discussed with investments in faculty and how has that investment posture translated to an improved atmosphere of collaboration within academic affairs and even beyond with the administration?
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Well, I think for my own experience, it became clear that it’s really important to give faculty professional development, mentorship, support. for their administrative roles. It’s not right to just have it like a token that, and you do this service, like you just have to sit through this committee and then you wonder why faculty aren’t engaged in that committee because they don’t really understand how to use this committee to really make an impact. So some things we’ve done, we’ve partnered with ASCU for chair leadership. So where they actually came on campus and did a leadership workshop for our chairs and continued with virtual meetings. And that was so successful that we then followed with the Academic Leadership Development Institute for faculty. So these are faculty are not chairs, but may have some administrative role and are interested in leadership roles. So we had a similar institute for them. And when we’ve had open positions or we’ve even created positions, we’ve created a number of directorship positions that have been faculty positions. Now, many of these could have been administrative staff positions, but we made them all faculty positions. So we have directors… faculty as directors of graduate studies, continuing education, process improvement, neurodiversity, global education, our teaching and learning center, research. So I think those directorships have been really important. And in those roles, faculty may teach some, but they also have this administrative responsibility. And that gives us an opportunity to kind of mentor them through these roles. You know, A while back, I read The Fall of Faculty. It’s The Fall of Faculty, The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters by Benjamin Ginsberg. And it really stuck with me. Now, it’s a little extreme. I was even working in some of the offices that he said were not necessary. But the heart of the argument is, it really, really stuck with me because this idea that we can create a higher ed institution in which faculty are not involved in the administration of it, it seems to lose something in higher ed. It seems to lose a cohesion, a grounding of what higher ed is all about. And so, because I really believe that faculty create the culture of the institution. In fact, I I meet with every faculty finalist. I meet individually for every faculty position because it’s so important to kind of hear why the faculty are coming here, what they’re expecting, who they are, because they do impact the culture of the entire university. And so this divide between administration and faculty It just doesn’t seem like it’s going to lead us anywhere. So the more that we can work together, the more that we can help faculty in their administrative capacities, the better, I think, for the whole institution.
Joe Gottlieb
Well, I’m glad you mentioned The Fall of Faculty by Benjamin Ginsberg. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this other book that recently came out. It’s… The University Unfettered by Ian McNeely. And it is a very interesting new point of view on the same matter and goes through one particular university’s evolution through a lot of the forces and changes that have been prevailing upon institutions and have forced some of this this administration growth, right, for the professionally managed institution, which is, he talks about, well, what’s driving that? It’s some of its lack of funding. Some of it’s the need to actually learn how to compete for students and actually serve students in ways that we hadn’t thought about or weren’t necessary as much before. Anyway, it’s a very interesting additional perspective. And in fact, I’m reading it right now, and it’s pretty fascinating. And I would point out that while I think you had a very fair description of what resonated for you about fall of faculty, I think the university unfettered is an attempt to bring a little bit more data to that discussion, a little bit less extreme opinion, and an attempt at a critical but newly informed view via another set of circumstances that, that this author pulls together. So it’s, it’s something worth checking out. But it, yeah, it sounds great. It raises something that’s so important, which is either extreme is terrible. I said before, faculty represent the value proposition of higher ed. They cannot be excluded from the way higher, any institution is managed. It just, they can’t be like it. It’s, it’s, it’s, patently fundamental, if you ask me. And so finding that balance point where enabling faculty with effectively run institutions is obviously what to pursue. And it has complexities and challenges, but anyway. So I want to now talk about you’ve seen an increase. So you went through this transformation. You’ve seen an increase in enrollments and the addition of new programs, including engineering and graduate programs. I’d love for you to discuss some of the recent recognitions and grants received by USC Upstate and how these achievements reflect the institution’s progress and future direction.
Dr. Pamela Steinke
Sure. Let’s see, some recent grants we’ve received. We received a Mellon for $3.9 million for internships in the humanities. Bedford Fall Foundation, 2 million for nursing scholarships. Those are the most recent. I think one of the recognitions recently that we’re really proud of is that we were recognized as one of three baccalaureate granting institutions nationwide in the post-secondary success recognition program. And it was based upon data on access, success, and post-college outcomes. So I think that was really significant. In the new Carnegie classifications, we’ve been classified as research college and university professional focused baccalaureate, which I think speaks to the regional comprehensive mission. We’re also higher access, medium earnings, which speaks to the social mobility. In the great colleges to work for, we were recognized in 2024 in three categories, confidence and senior leadership, shared governance, and faculty experience. Wow. And I think those are relevant to our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb
Very.
Dr. Pamela Steinke:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, that’s exciting. And kudos to you for those accomplishments based upon the work that you’ve done. So let’s bring it to a close. What three takeaways can we offer our listeners on the topic of investing in faculty to embrace transformation?
Dr. Pamela Steinke:
Well, I would say one, I would intentionally work to get both faculty and administrators on the same page about the mission of the university. I think Two, I would engage in a transparent view of academic programs with faculty. And I think three, invest in the development of faculty administrative skills. I mean, faculty have incredible talent and administrative capacity, but they need the support in order to develop in these areas.
Joe Gottlieb:
Great summary. Pam, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. Pamela Steinke:
Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our audience 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:
Hey, listeners of TRANSFORMED. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you were 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 at higher.digital or joe at 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.