Category: Transformation

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Michael Avaltroni, President of Fairleigh Dickinson University and the first FDU graduate to hold the presidency. The conversation centers on FDU’s redefinition of the university around lifelong learning, built on a four-P framework of programs, people, partnerships, and place. Avaltroni shares how the institution won roughly 88 percent faculty endorsement of a significant slate of program discontinuations, how it is reimagining its campuses as intergenerational “impact cities,” and why he believes higher education’s best-case future is a subscription-based model for life in which a student becomes a member and never leaves.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Faculty Buy-In: How FDU earned roughly 88 percent faculty endorsement of program discontinuations through a data-driven, shared governance

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Mike Toguchi, Chief Strategy Officer at Orchestrate, a division of Tectonic, a digital transformation firm that has worked with universities, nonprofits, and foundations including Stanford and UC Davis. The discussion examines why technology projects in higher education succeed or fail based on leadership behavior rather than tooling, and why change management must be treated as a planning discipline rather than a rollout activity if institutions want adoption to hold across faculty, staff, and academic units.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Trust as Infrastructure: Why faculty are trust adverse, not tech adverse, and what that distinction means for project design.

✓ Change Management Placement: Why change management belongs at the front of the project lifecycle,

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with France Hoang, Founder and CEO of BoodleBox, a secure collaborative AI platform for education and work. Their conversation centers on what colleges and universities need to do now that AI can generate summaries, papers, and plausible answers on demand, and why the real issue is no longer access to AI, but whether higher education will redesign learning to build judgment, critical thinking, and real-world decision-making.

The conversation also explores why human expertise still matters, how AI is changing the apprenticeship path for graduates, and what institutional leaders should understand about implementation, advising, and classroom use.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Human-First AI: Why higher education should be human first, not AI first,

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Christine Janssen, founder and CEO of Edstutia, an award-winning immersive learning platform leveraging virtual reality and AI for adult learning. Dr. Janssen, a former clinical associate professor and director of entrepreneurship at Fordham University, brings an entrepreneurial perspective to higher education’s most pressing challenge: how to manage change in an environment where the rate of external disruption far exceeds most institutions’ capacity to adapt. Dr.s McNaughton and Janssen’s discussion explores why traditional change management models need updating, how AI resistance is counterproductive, and why institutions must choose between leading disruption or being displaced by it.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Change Management Evolution: Why Kotter’s model needs agile development principles for today’s volatile

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Drumm speaks welcomes Dr. Lori Varlotta, former president of Hiram College and California Lutheran University and current Distinguished Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Cal Lutheran back to the show. The discussion explores her current research on the “glass cliff” phenomenon in higher education, where women presidents are often appointed during times of institutional crisis. Dr. Varlotta shares insights from her 40-year career and current research interviews with women presidents, revealing strategies for board support, presidential success, and effective institutional turnaround.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Glass Cliff Understanding: Learn how to recognize and prevent situations where new leaders are set up for potential failure during institutional crises.

✓ Board Development: Essential strategies for integrated board and presidential evaluations