Higher Education Strategic Planning That Drives Growth and Faculty Buy-In:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 257 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Andrew Hsu

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 257  – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Andrew Hsu

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Background

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Dr. Andrew Hsu, 23rd, president of the College of Charleston. Andrew took over the presidency in May of 2019, but prior to that he’s had a very long and distinguished career, including provost executive VP for academic affairs at the University of Toledo, Dean of Engineering at San Jose State University, and associate president for research and dean of the graduate school at Wright State University.

That’s not the main reason I wanted Andrew to be on the show. Andrew has a very distinguished career in industry as well. After earning his PhD in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, he worked in industry for 11 years with NASA and Rolls Royce, where he developed a unique industry perspective in leadership skills before joining academia in 1997.

Andrew joins me today to talk about the leadership and change management skills he learned that make him a very effective president. Effective in the way that they’ve started three new schools, and they’ve grown enrollment by 11% since he assumed the presidency in 2019. Very impressive.

Andrew, welcome to the program.

Andrew Hsu: Thank you, Drumm, for having me. It’s an honor to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. It is my honor, sir. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

[00:01:44] Andrew Hsu’s Career Path

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get into that, just a note, I’d love for you to tell the guests who you are and how you came to this place. You’re doing some incredible things there at the College of Charleston. And besides that, having graduated from Georgia Tech, that’s pretty amazing in and of itself.

Andrew Hsu: Thank you. Obviously graduated from Georgia Tech, I must be an engineer, right? So your audience probably have deduced that. So I actually had a somewhat unusual path to a presidency. Initially, when I first got my PhD. From Georgia Tech, I actually went into industry and worked for about 10 years before I realized that there’s a better career in academia. And that’s when I transitioned into full-time teaching after having taught as an adjunct for a couple of years. But one thing led to the other, people saw leadership potential in me I gradually moved up from program director to associate dean to Provost, and now I am finishing up my sixth year, next month, on May 16th, as the 23rd president at the College of Charleston here in Charleston, South Carolina.

Drumm McNaughton: That is an amazing record, especially, transitioning from corporate America as an engineer into higher ed. How did that shape some of views on higher education, its needs, et cetera?

[00:03:22] Industry Perspective on Higher Education

Andrew Hsu: So certainly, having been in industry for 10 years, give me a very different take on what this country needs from higher education. The College of Charleston, of course is, one of the oldest institutions in the country. It prides itself in its liberal arts tradition, and it does have a very strong liberal arts tradition.

But I think for liberal arts faculty and oftentimes they don’t think that university has a role in workforce development and having been drilled into my mind in industry that you really need be prepared to join the workforce after attending college, so I take a somewhat different view of that, of workforce development. And I think maybe that’s where I think I have a different take compared to many of my peers.

Drumm McNaughton: I would say you do, and it’s obviously working. I can remember the time where you would graduate from college. And of course, I jokingly tell people, I didn’t go to college, I had a technical training because I went to the Naval Academy. Having said that, there was always the perspective that someone would go to college and then when they get into the workforce, their initial employer would train them on the skills. And college costs so much nowadays and it really needs that workforce development aspect that you’re talking about.

Andrew Hsu: Indeed. I, I think not only that higher education is so expensive now that both students and parents are looking at what is the return, what’s the, what’s my ROI? But the employers are also looking at, if I hire this particular person, what skills do they bring to this job and how can they contribute, to my business or industry and how can they contribute immediately? And when I talked to industry leaders and at one point, we have a close partnership with BMW here in upstate South Carolina, and their complaint was that the engineering schools in the country produce all these engineers that are well prepared in calculus, partial differential equations, but when you put them on the factory floor they are lost. They don’t know what to do. And, the then CEO at the time said, we spend millions of dollars each year just to train these new engineers”. And so I do think that, with higher education investing so much resources in our students, we need to help them better prepare for their future careers.

Drumm McNaughton: I fully agree, and it’s not just through internships and externships, it’s about tailoring the curriculum so that they get the good fundamental knowledge of being an engineer, whatever your discipline is, as well as understanding how things are done in the real world.

Andrew Hsu: Exactly right. And that is why we put value. As I mentioned, I served as a adjunct professor when I was working for Rolls Royce in Indianapolis. What I found through that experience is that people who work in the real world tend to bring the real world into the classroom. And this is why when I was an engineering dean, in California, we intentionally, bring practicing engineers from Silicon Valley into our classroom and then have them bring their knowledge to our students. And I do think that’s an important aspect of higher ed these days.

Drumm McNaughton: You’re absolutely right. There was one institution that I know of who had some difficulties with recruiting, et cetera. They’ve gone by the wayside, but they used that same model. Their tenured faculty taught the baseline courses and they’d have adjuncts teaching the latest and greatest from Silicon Valley so that there was a good foundational piece as well as understanding what’s actually going on in the Valley at that point. I thought it was a brilliant model.

Andrew Hsu: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:08] Growth and Success at College of Charleston

Andrew Hsu: We have started a new school of engineering here at the College of Charleston, about a year and a half ago, and that’s very much the model that we would like to use here.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, you’ve obviously been doing some things right there at Charleston. Not only have you beat the mean for president’s tenures, but since 2019, you’ve grown over 11%, which is defying all the odds. And from a faculty perspective, you’ve got more full-time than part-time faculty, like three to two ratio. You’re expanding, this is defying logic. How’s this happening?

Andrew Hsu: When I came I was told that the College of Charleston is really a hidden gem. We have some of the best faculty in the country. We are focusing on student success. We just need to, make ourselves not hidden anymore, and that’s probably the biggest thing that I did during my first two years, and the fact that we only grew 11% it’s by design. We could grow, we could have doubled our enrollment if we wanted to, if we had the space. Were downtown Charleston, we’re landlocked, we don’t have the space, but if you look at our application numbers, it went from about 11,000, applicants a year, from about six years ago, to now 32,000 applicants for this fall. Right?

So clearly the secret is out that we are a great institution and we provide some of the best undergraduate educations in the country. And it also is helpful that we’re one of the most beautiful campuses in the country and one of the most beautiful cities in the country. And on top of that, the local economy, the city is booming with high tech industry, as well as manufacturers. In fact we’re the only city in the country that built both airplanes and cars. And we have some of the biggest plants in the country now.

Drumm McNaughton: That is fabulous, and it’s a job waiting, with the expansion of both of those industries, it’s a job waiting to happen for your graduates.

Andrew Hsu: Exactly. And not only the job is waiting, but there’s just plenty of opportunities for students to do summer interns or co-ops, and hands-on learning through visiting industry labs.

[00:10:57] Change Management and Leadership

Drumm McNaughton: I’d like to double back to something that we said a little bit earlier, talking about the change management. With your background in industry, being very different from that of higher ed, how did that factor into your vision and your way of executing change management? Because we all know that, we’ve all been faculty members, we’ve all been able to see the pyramid from that perspective, but trying to get faculty on board to make some of the changes that you have made. How did your industry experience help you with that?

Andrew Hsu: Yeah, actually, I think the only way that it has helped me is that it made me impatient. Which I dunno if it is helpful or hurtful, because, I think it’s not just faculty human by human nature dislike changes.

Drumm McNaughton: Is that really?

Andrew Hsu: I’m sure that’s news to everyone,

Drumm McNaughton: yeah. Really.

Andrew Hsu: And on the university campus it’s even more difficult simply because, faculty have tenure, they feel ownership of the institution, so without faculty buy-in, I think a president can hardly make any meaningful changes. And especially with today’s president’s lasting, five and a half years on the job, on the average, faculty can really wait you out.

 What I have learned from Gordon. 15, 17 years ago, when I was, an AC Fellow at the Ohio State University with Gordon Gee, was that you really need to bring people along with you. So what I did when I first came was we spent an entire year to do a strategic plan, and that is with participation from all faculty, staff, students, alumni, boards, and so forth.

And, we formalized a strategic plan after the first year. And that’s with everybody’s buy in. So that, everybody feels ownership and that really helped, me to convince the community that these changes are necessary. It’s really through these year long discussions on where we want to be in 10 years, 20 years, or 250 years, that have brought the faculty and staff and, our, governing boards along. That we have a plan and these are the changes that we’re gonna make.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, that’s what we call, when I do strategic planning with institutions, that’s what we call building a shared vision. And by doing that, by getting that stakeholder input into the plan, we all know people want input into decisions that are gonna affect them before that decision’s made. So if you build that shared vision, you mitigate resistance to change, which we all know can happen in higher ed.

Andrew Hsu: Exactly. I think, if, majority of the faculty share that vision, you still will have voices that would oppose to it, but you can always point back to the year long discussion and the surveys and why this is the right direction.

Drumm McNaughton: That is so smart. That top down, bottom up approach is so critical, especially in higher ed. But frankly, I think it’s gonna become more important as we move forward in the years, I think, outside of higher ed.

Andrew Hsu: I certainly believe that by human nature, if I think that’s my idea or I have contributed to that idea, then I will do all I can and do my best to help it happen. Right? So I do think you’re exactly right. It’s not just higher education. Any industry, if you can build that kind of consensus, it just makes the carry out of that plan so much easier.

Drumm McNaughton: It is.

[00:15:26] Establishing New Schools and Programs

Drumm McNaughton: Now since you’ve been there, you’ve created three new schools. Your School of Health Sciences, Natural Environmental Sciences, and Engineering, Computing and Mathematics. And you just got a new program approved by your faculty senate.

You’re an engineer by training. You obviously have a process that you follow to build these type of things. Would you be willing to share that with the audience? Because frankly, I’m fascinated how you can apply that engineering mentality to new programs and higher education.

Andrew Hsu: Well, this is an area we made our mistakes and we, corrected it and we found a way to work through the system. When I first came to this campus we realized that, at the time, our health program are combined with education and they, are restricting each other’s development because the way they’re organized and we felt that there’s a need to have an independent school of health sciences. And we just did it by, administrative decree, we said, that there will be a new school of health sciences that’s separate from education.

And I think the decision is right because if you look at our School of Health Sciences now, four years later, it’s doing really well. It’s been innovative. It’s doing a lot of new programs. The latest one was a nursing program that we have developed that is much needed in our workforce, and we have public health administration programs and so forth. But, despite the fact that we still think it’s the right decision, at the time we had an uproar among faculty saying that, “you didn’t go through faculty shared governance, you didn’t consult us, and it’s just not the way to do business on the university campus”. So, I said, “let me review our policy”. And it turns out that everything we did did not violate any policy because there was no policy about how you establish a new school or even a new department, and so forth. So I said, “Well, if you don’t like the way we did it, let’s look at how we should do it”. So we set up a ad hoc committee to review our existing policy and then their charge is to develop a new policy on how new schools, new departments are gonna be formed on this campus.

 We now have a policy, it’s published, and then when I need to separate engineering, I guess the school of sciences gave birth to our engineering program, but after three years, I thought it’d be time to have an independent school of engineering and computing. And we followed the new policy to the letter and we were able to push through the establishment of this new school of engineering. And then of course, the old school of science and engineering became two schools, the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, and the School of Engineering Computing and Mathematics.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I’m suspecting there’s a few more details in there that you could dig down to, but before you get to those, one of the things we advise our clients is developing what we call a RACI model, or it’s commonly known, Responsible, Accountable, Consult, and Inform. It is a decision making tree that helps people understand what their role is, whether it has to do with shared governance, standing up a new school, whatever, the decision and the accountability, it falls on you or the board. Faculty would be consulted prior to, rather than informed after, but even the ultimate accountability for it falls on you. Because faculty, the question I ask them very typically is, “oh, so you want the final say on hiring the provost? Great. Who’s gonna get fired if the provost doesn’t work out”? It usually answers the question.

Andrew Hsu: Yes, you are exactly r ight, Drumm. And in fact, the decision has to be either, here in the president’s office or the provost office, or it has to have board approval. Right? Otherwise a university would be chaotic, if nobody is making a decision or if only faculty committees are making decisions.

Indeed the shared governance, basically, calls for consultation with the faculty before a decision is made. Our policy actually just says exactly that, what you described. We would first consult with the departments being impacted, and then we will consult with a school or schools being impacted. And then we will send out the information or the plant, the entire campus. We would certainly talk to the various faculty senate committees first, and then the committee would give their opinion to the Senate, and then the Senate would then look at the issue and say they support or they object. But nonetheless, the policy does say the final decision is with the board, where the president will make the recommendation to the board, and the board would approve major restructure.

Drumm McNaughton: And that makes perfect sense to me. That’s the way it should be done, whether it be higher education or be an industry as well. A major decision like this falls on the board to make the decision or the CEO or President. But there always can be resistance to change with that. I mean, I know of one institution that we worked with quite a long time ago that the president of the institution decreed, “we will do this without any consultation to faculty”. And when faculty found out about it, they were up in arms.

Andrew Hsu: Indeed, in fact, that’s short of not to the same, severity, but that’s sort of what happened when we started the new School of Health Sciences and that’s what prompted us to establish a formal policy on reorg on our campus.

Drumm McNaughton: Which makes sense. So to get past the resistance to change you, you talked about creating a policy with faculty on how these kind of changes would be made. But when I think about Kotter’s model on leading change, making sure there’s an urgency for change. You saw that. But there’s also, you have to make the argument for change, the innovation, and also to let people know there is good reason to do this. So how do you meet that resistance to change? What do you do?

Andrew Hsu: So I think, the best way to convince people is to have a face-to-face conversation. And throughout the process, I’ll just again use the establishment of the new School of Engineering and Computing as an example. I went out and met with numerous committees, faculty groups, different schools, and certainly the faculty senate and the various senate committees, to talk to them about the rationale behind this and why it made sense for us to do that, and what are the benefits of a new school and what are the drawbacks if we didn’t move forward with a new school, and you really need to convince the majority of the faculty in order for the Senate to at least have a positive response to the proposal.

Even though the policy says that the final decision is with the board with recommendation from the president, but you still would prefer that you get the majority of your faculty behind the initiative. There’s just numerous conversations. Some of them at the individual level, and as you know, Drumm, with your experience in higher education, clearly on any campus, there are faculty members that are more vocal and faculty members that are more influential. Whether it’s in senate or just, in the coffee room.

 One thing that I like to do is just go talk to those faculty members individually. Sometimes I would just knock on the door and show up in their office and then start talking to them about, what I want to do and, what’s their concern and make sure that, even if we disagree, he or she understands why I’m trying to do what I want to do.

Drumm McNaughton: That is so important, that personal touch, because at the end of the day we’re all human beings and we all have feelings. Just for people to feel heard, rather than something being done unilaterally, makes all a difference in the world.

Andrew Hsu: I completely agree.

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s why it’s so important that, at least from my perspective, that when someone moves into a leadership position, whether it be a department chair, a provost, a dean, or a president, that they have some sort of leadership training, and more importantly, the emotional intelligence to be able to deal with change. And when someone disagrees, rather than trying to steamroll ’em to have a honest conversation that, when the strong man of the East and a strong man of the West meet, they can come together and understand each other’s perspective. I think that’s something that you probably excel at.

Andrew Hsu: That’s, something that I do, by nature, but also, I think, the training that I have received, the leadership training that I received, including, serving as an ACE Fellow, with President Gordon Gee, really helped me. By nature, I mean, when I was a kid, I was a very small kid that I can’t force anybody to do anything, except by persuading them, so achieving goals through persuasion became sort of second nature to me. But certainly when, I went through these leadership training programs we talked about various leadership types, or different philosophies of how to exert effective leadership.

I resonated with leadership through influence. I think that just fit my style so much better than some of the other types of leadership styles. And I sort of intentionally do that, when I can talk to someone and help them see, why I want to do something and how this would help not only the institution, but the person that I’m talking to, that’s the best way to, to lead people.

Drumm McNaughton: I fully agree and I wanna call attention to something. You didn’t say, try and convince someone. What you said was, “to share your perspective on it”. We can try and convince people all we want, but if they don’t want to be convinced, we’re not going to. If we can share perspectives, there’s an exchange there, and more likely than not, people are gonna see our perspective. Are they gonna get that way? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it’s that sharing that’s so important.

Andrew Hsu: Indeed. In fact, one of my mentors once said that the reason people see things differently is because they don’t all have the same information. And that really, that concept really stuck with me. And I often think that if we all have exact same information, most often than not, you would come to the same conclusion as to what’s the right thing to do. And that is why the first thing I do, when I go talk to someone, is to share with them what I see as all the facts surrounding the issue.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s that “T word” that so many people don’t like, transparency. It’s so critical.

Andrew Hsu: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, Andrew, this has been a fascinating conversation for me. I thank you for your time. Unfortunately we have run out of time just about, but I want to ask you my standard two questions.

[00:29:16] Three Takeaways for Higher Ed Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: Around change management, what you’ve been able to do there at the College of Charleston and other areas, what are three takeaways that you have for your fellow presidents and boards?

Andrew Hsu: One, you first have to develop that clear vision. And as you put it so well, it has to be a shared vision. Again, if it’s not shared, then it’s gonna be difficult to move forward with it.

And secondly, it’s, developing a leadership team that are like-minded. By like-minded, I don’t mean that they all think alike, but I mean that they all are change agents. And I actually prefer a very diverse, for lack of a better word, leadership team that think differently, but they all are united with the concept that change is needed. And having that leadership team is really important because, it doesn’t matter how good a present one might be. You can’t really do everything by yourself. Without a strong leadership team that are all change agents, you simply won’t be successful.

And the other thing really is visibility and transparency. Be out there, be visible, and talking to people whenever you can, and that is really important. If you are perceived as hiding, especially if you’re perceived as hiding, what you want to do and hiding your purpose, then one will not be able to lead effectively.

Drumm McNaughton: Those are three fabulous takeaways. Thank you.

[00:31:09] Wrapping Up

Drumm McNaughton: What’s next for you? What’s next for the College of Charleston? I mean, you’re on an incredible trajectory.

Andrew Hsu: I think for the College of Charleston, we’re doing several things, but the biggest thing is that our vision to become a national university, we’re well on our way to become a national university. We recently. Implemented three doctoral programs, and within a couple of years, we will be classified as a doctoral-granting institution.

And the other thing that I want to do is, we’re a 250-year-old university and very old campus. I want to really help improve the physical environment of this campus. We invested, literally, $130 million over the last couple of years and will continue to invest hundreds of million dollars to build new residence halls, new academic buildings. And my hope is that when I leave this institution I can point to a series of things, whether it’s hardware or software in the form of new programs that we have achieved here.

Drumm McNaughton: I have no doubt that will happen.

Andrew Hsu: Well, thanks again, Drumm for having me on your program.

Drumm McNaughton: It has been my pleasure, Andrew, thank you for taking the time with us and we wish you all the best going forward.

Andrew Hsu: Thank you. Appreciate that.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a very special thank you to my guest, Dr. Andrew Hsu, president of the College of Charleston. Andrew, thanks for being on the program. I look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk.

To my listeners, thanks again for listening. I look forward to seeing you next week.