Keys to Launching New College Programs that Build Enrollment:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 244 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Teri Reed

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast 244 

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

David: 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.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

Today, I get to welcome Dr. Teri Reed, the inaugural director of the University of Oklahoma Polytechnic Institute at OU Tulsa, to the program. Teri is an amazing person. She’s an OU alumna. She’s internationally recognized as a leader in the field of engineering education, and she’s an advocate for research-informed approaches to engineering education administration. She’s made multiple significant contributions to higher education nationally, and today, she joins us to talk about her latest venture, which is the startup of the OU Polytechnic Institute as its inaugural director.

 Teri, welcome to the program.

Teri Reed: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. I’m looking forward to a really good conversation with you today.

[00:01:34] Teri Reed’s Background and Career Journey

Drumm McNaughton: You are the inaugural director of Oklahoma University’s Polytechnic Institute. This is a stand up, and that’s going to be the subject of our conversation today, but please give the listeners some of your background. You’ve got a fascinating background.

Teri Reed: Yes, happy to. This is actually my third tour here at the University of Oklahoma. After high school, I came to the University of Oklahoma from Pennsylvania and received my first degree in petroleum engineering, then went to work in the oil fields and ultimately ended up getting my Ph. D. From Arizona State in industrial engineering, and came back to the university in my first faculty position in the early two thousands.

So I stayed here through tenure and then went off to pursue other new things like being a part of the first in the world department of engineering education at Purdue University. And ultimately I find myself back here at the University of Oklahoma, my alma mater, creating something new for them, as you’ve already mentioned.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, that’s fascinating.

[00:02:51] Passion for Engineering and Building Things

Drumm McNaughton: How did you get your background in starting up things?

Teri Reed: Interestingly, I found myself always doing research in engineering education, and when you do research in engineering education, you find yourself creating new things and working and testing to see if they work and very knowledgeable about the literature, using literature to create things, and so it became my passion. I created new things in my first position at the University of Oklahoma. I designed a building called the Engineering Practice Facility.

Drumm McNaughton: You designed a building.

Teri Reed: Yes, it was focused on the undergraduate experiential learning and still stands today is beautiful, very proud of it. And then I found myself going to Purdue, where I started one of the first engineering education research centers in elementary education. “Inspire” as the inaugural executive director of that.

Also then went to Texas A& M and I got to create a wonderful program that I considered a pathways program. Pathways you’ll notice are a theme through a lot of these new start ups. I created the Texas A& M Engineering Academies 11 two year institutions, that all lead in a wonderful, wide pathway, to Texas A& M College of Engineering. So starting things has become something that I’m pretty passionate about and find a lot of fulfillment in.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I am amazed because most folks don’t get that opportunity throughout your career. And you know, when you say you designed a building there at OU, I would have to say, “wow, that’s amazing”. You’re, you’re not quote an architect per trade. If it’s still standing, that’s really good.

And I’m just kidding. So, having this passion to build things, did that kind of drive you into engineering?

Teri Reed: Honestly, my fourth-grade oil collection drove me into petroleum engineering. I’m an oil field brat and grew up with a family of Oil field people. That really is what drove me into petroleum engineering, an interest in oil and gas and to see how fast I could find it, produce it, and make money back was always a very fun part. So that’s really what enticed me into engineering. I did a lot of work in the garage with my dad as a young woman, and I love tools and tinkering. So that’s the other, probably the other side.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s really neat. I can remember my own life, taking things apart and putting them back together. When I was at the Naval Academy, the Pioneer tape decks, the cassette decks, were the big rage at the time. You know, everybody, you had to get your sophomore stereo, et cetera, and some of the cassette decks would, would fall apart. The design was not great and I would take them apart and fix them. I’d have, anywhere from one or two a week to fix. But, you know, that was kind of my passion for doing it as well.

Teri Reed: Yeah, I think it’s a lot of people’s passion. You either have a role model or you have a love of trying to figure out how things work and why they don’t or do. And I still remember reading like weekly readers and doing the science experiments in my grandparents house, quite honestly, in Duncan, Oklahoma, and always loving trying to figure out why things did work and didn’t work.

So I agree.

[00:06:42] Founding the OU Polytechnic Institute

Drumm McNaughton: So applying this knowledge that you gained as a petroleum engineer and whatnot, what was the impetus behind creating the polytechnic institute there at OU?

Teri Reed: Well, the impetus was our president did a lot of trips. Joe Harris did a lot of trips with, companies and various entities and did a lot of listening around the state with industry. And he was hearing that there was a gap, that we absolutely need a lot of engineers, but we also need this translation position that’s in between perhaps the theoretical side of engineering and the customers. So this is the application. So the vision of the OU Polytechnic was born from that notice of a gap, at least in the state of Oklahoma and the region around us, and from there it became, “what exactly does that mean”? And the polytechnic became their model of what that applied, technical, advanced, high tech areas, really embodies, is the 21st century polytechnic. So the idea came about and May of ’22 it was announced that we would start Polytechnic, and we would start it at OU Tulsa, which is one of multiple campuses that we have at the University of Oklahoma.

Drumm McNaughton: So, you have the idea, your president had the idea wanted to do that, recruited you to come back and do this, I would guess. i’m gonna guess that your industrial engineer came out, you know, like any good project manager, you gotta have a plan. So, you’ve got to have a plan to do it, step by step, but you’ve also got to have the vision and that vision and the mission to do that.

Talk me through that process. What are the priorities? How did you set up the objectives and what are the objectives and the values of the Polytechnic Institute?

Teri Reed: Absolutely, and I think through my years of starting and creating new things always focused on student success. So, whenever getting the opportunity to create a new academic unit where I could again focus on student success, one of my first priorities was that we be a student ready polytechnic. Instead of looking for students who are ready to go to college, we actually want to meet students where they are. It provides for a different vision, a different viewpoint, but that’s our starting point, is if we can be the student ready, Polytechnic that produces industry ready graduates, that means that we’re thinking about how students come in, how to meet students where they are, and take them to where industry needs them by listening to industry and creating that industry ready graduate.

So this was my vision that I started with. And from there, I had to do a lot of building in very specific areas, like hiring faculty. Whenever I started in March of ’23, OU Polytechnic had exactly one person, faculty, staff, students, any category, and that was me. Yes. So, with that vision and with some listening that we did with industry, we went around and listened to industry, we talked about what degrees that we thought were needed, from a market area in not just this region in this multiple state area up in Tulsa, but the whole state of Oklahoma and beyond. Where should we be going?

So cybersecurity, we said we had to make these decisions like cybersecurity, and then we decided on applied artificial intelligence, software development integration. Now we’re currently working on our next degrees, which are digital manufacturing and healthcare information systems.

[00:10:51] Collaborations and Partnerships

Teri Reed: So listening to industry, we also had to go out and listen to other partners, like two year institutions and what types of students they had and the efforts that they were making. How could we partner with them to bring students in as a completion program? Because in Tulsa, we are a completion program, we only offer the junior and senior years only.

So, we took our priorities and then we went out and listened to people, both that would help us in bringing in students, as well as that are hiring and that are looking for these types of qualifications in graduates as well.

Drumm McNaughton: I get it. You’ve got to have your vision; you’ve got to have that. I’m impressed at how much you talk to industry, you met with companies. And the partnerships they’re being able to guide your curriculum, at least the initial curriculum, and the follow-on curriculum I think is, is fabulous. I wish more institutions did that with their programs. One of the things I heard you say, or you just kind of alluded to it, was the partnerships with academic institutions. One of the challenges that many higher ed institutions face is that matriculation from community colleges and from other, four years, into junior or senior years. Did you do anything special with that?

Teri Reed: What we worked on is we worked really closely with our local community partner, which is Tulsa Community College. It’s a very large, the third-largest higher education institution in the state. They are very adept at working to help students make a transition from a two-year degree to a four-year institution as one of their many goals. By listening to them and hearing what they know about their students because they know a lot about their students, and trying to apply that to how we could make this smooth transition and move from one space to another, there’s a lot of language that is in transfer education research, like swirling, and we do things such as intentional swirling, where we know students are going to go back and forth between our institutions. So we very carefully watch the timing of our courses, for example. So, working that closely with a two-year institution and partnering, listening to how they are successful, and making certain that we take that into account and how we plan our follow on is really important.

The other idea is that people need to see their long-term path, right? Their goals. And so we talk to their students early on. We actually, we write op ed pieces together for our local newspaper. We do lots of activities and events together, so people see us working together and that means that we have to align our priorities, we have to remember what motivates each other and we need to meet each other where it matters. So, these are the kinds of partnerships.

This is true also in companies as well and we’re looking for industry to give us this feedback. We’ve got to create the structures that allow for that. We actually, along the industry line, we have already had our first university affiliate as a faculty here on OU Tulsa’s campus. He houses with us; his day job is Google.

He’s extremely relevant to where we’re going. Right? So, partnering, making these critical partnerships, really is the key to a long term success, not just for us as the polytechnic, but probably most importantly for our students. I have another motto that I learned from a prior Dean at the University of Oklahoma, back in my very first faculty appointment, you should always ask yourself, “are you doing what’s right for the students?”, and you ask yourself first that question. If the answer is, “yes”, then you proceed. If “no”, you need to rethink.

Drumm McNaughton: I want to come back to the concept of swirling

Teri Reed: Okay.

Drumm McNaughton: OU is on semesters, correct? Tulsa Community College on semesters as well. Okay. So how would it work if Tulsa was on quarters and OU on semesters, was that a conversation piece or you didn’t have to worry about that?

Teri Reed: We didn’t have to worry about it. Most institutions have left quarters, at least in this area. I don’t know of anyone on the quarter system and in this geographical area.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, the reason I asked that is there are many institutions out there, for example, Franklin University is a degree completion, and they have articulation agreements with over 1200 different community colleges, colleges, universities. They do start at least every quarter, sometimes every month. If my memory serves me, correct. So, trying to get those lined up with students can be challenging.

Teri Reed: Yes. And that’s why the intentional swirling is important is because very seldom do things align. So students can start with us just after they have completed, successfully, 24 credit hours of higher ed. They don’t have to complete their full associate’s degree. That’s where that intentional swirling comes in.

We haven’t done it yet, but we’ve had multiple conversations about teaching on each other’s campuses, for example, so that students don’t have to physically move between locations. We are an in person, hands on, bachelor’s program, our Masters can be, some of them online, but we are 100 percent in person. So, the physical location of students is important as well. But that’s why if you understand what students still need in order to finish that associate of science degree from the two-year institution but continue to progress toward their Bachelor of Science with, no loss of time. Because that’s the other often critical point, especially for transfer students, is that “time to degree” can become just far too expensive. The opportunity costs that students lose in taking too many years to complete a degree can be very high in multiple ways. So, working to reduce that.

Drumm McNaughton: Teri, you’d mentioned a little while ago about a faculty member who worked for Google.

[00:18:07] Innovative Faculty Hiring and Curriculum Development

Drumm McNaughton: I would think that basically having the right kind of faculty at Polytechnic Institute is so critical that people can learn what’s actually going on in industry and be able to take their current education and apply that. So tell me a little bit about what you look for in a faculty and what they do

Teri Reed: One of my favorite things of creating the OU Polytechnic is the faculty that I have been able to hire and that we have here. We went after faculty in a different philosophy. We wanted to create this faculty that was very collaborative, had a focus on this industry, not necessarily that they had a ton of industry experience, but this applied ness and the understanding of what industry, government, where our students would go to work.

So we had 14 positions open initially, right? When you create a whole new academic unit, you got to do some hiring. And we went about it in a way that is a little different than a lot of people, and that is we actually did group interviews. So, with so many positions open, they actually were not really competing with each other and doing this group interview scenario, which persons who’ve been in academia had to pause and think about it for a minute, but everyone told us, which I understand they were looking for a job, so a little biased, but told us how unique the interview was, and that they actually enjoyed their time with us.

So these group interviews included things like, we did an exercise, a group exercise that talked about the dystopian polytechnic in 10 years. What would it look like and then we turned it around and said, what is the utopian view, but we actually had them work together to come up with what that would look like and then do a presentation out to mainly the persons here on this campus that were helping, the interviewing committee.

But we also included in our interviews, like, our marketing personnel, because our faculty are going to have to talk to persons with various levels of understanding. And so we included a lot of the University staff here and other faculty in other areas, because we want them to be collaborative, but we wanted them to be collaborative with each other. So I think we’ve succeeded. We now have 10 faculty and highly collaborative over 200 years of industry experience.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow, that’s fabulous. And kind of reminds me when, when I helped set up shared governance at one institution and I ran the curriculum committee for three and a half years, and if you understand anything about faculty governance, you know, the curriculum committee can be a real, how do you say, interesting place to work.

But what we did was we included finance, we included student success, we included marketing, we included all different departments on the curriculum committee, and when someone brought something to us for a curriculum change or whatnot, it had already been vetted through all the university departments. It made the process so much smoother, and it helped remind people just like you’re doing, it’s all one university, and we have to be able to speak and work with each other in a way that others understand. Good on you.

Teri Reed: Absolutely. I smile because we included all of those people in the interview with our potential faculty as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Mm hmm. So, there’s some other things that we talked about before, you know, your org structure, facilities, things along those lines. Did you go with a traditional org structure, or was it something different?

Teri Reed: In some ways, we’re not traditional in that we are an institute and that brings with it, as director I have associate directors, and those aren’t necessarily typical, but we also tend to, for example, each course that we have built has two owners and the faculty and the two course owners work together.

Typically, only one teaches it each semester, however they tend to share, they alternate, they brainstorm, obviously we’re teaching everything for the first time, so it gives everyone a partnership. The partnerships don’t always stay within a specific area.

At the moment, we have three cybersecurity, we have three software development and integration, we have three applied artificial intelligence faculty. So the. ebb and flow, they don’t necessarily… Are the cyber classes just for cyber, because these areas cross each other? So that’s the other interesting thing is that we’re trying not to make silos where areas stay within themselves, faculties stay within themselves, and You know those students stay within themselves.

So, what that can look like are things like sharing courses and having gone through that group interview, they’ve already, some of them have worked together. We brought faculty in early for some training that we were doing. Like, for example, we had a whole day’s worth of training in senior design and the pedagogy behind senior design. So, we started pulling our faculty together early, very intentionally.

Drumm McNaughton: That is so smart to do. I do org change. I do a lot of org change, and obviously you’ve got people’s mental models, but then you’ve got structures, you’ve got processes, and finally you’ve got the output. Your structures, your org structure, your facilities, all have to be built with collaboration in mind.

Teri Reed: Yes, collaboration, but also because of our polytechnic, this is one thing that’s somewhat unique and is difficult for academia. And when you talk about structures, I think, you just pushed this button in my brain.

Drumm McNaughton: I’m good at pushing buttons.

Teri Reed: The one, unique that is actually raised some eyebrows or brought people, brought some questions is, we have already, we’re teaching our cybersecurity curriculum for the first time started in the fall. We’ve already changed it three times. Two years, we’ve changed it three times. This is because of industry input and working to make certain that what we’re creating in that cybersecurity student is what’s needed. Academic structure isn’t really made for changing your curriculum every year, so I know it’s shocking. I’ve had people come to me and go, “Are you going to do this every year?” And I have told several of them that, “yes, I’m going to review our curriculum every year. And if that leads to change. Then we will be changing our curriculum”. And that is different. We’re publishing changes in our very first semester. We’re reviewing and updating, and we are writing papers about it. Because, for example, this is changing the subject, but hang with me for one minute. We are incorporating industry certifications, embedded within our courses.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s great.

Teri Reed: This is not a brand-new thing, especially overseas, we’ve found more written about it outside of the United States and a little bit written about it within the U. S., from an educational standpoint. But we’re working on what does that mean? Well, one thing that means is that you’ve got to keep up with the certifications. As well as what certifications. We have a list of over 35 certifications that are within our first three areas, and we have to make decisions about incorporating them. See how well they work. Are the students passing the certifications once they complete the class? And then adjusting, that’s just one reason that we would adjust, of course, but it’s a real important reason.

Drumm McNaughton: But also too, it’s not like cyber-crimes are going to stay static over a year. You know, you’ve got to keep things updated and the folks that you have as faculty, that you have advisors, I remember you telling me you had one person who used to work in cyber-crimes for the FBI. And, and so being able to keep up so that you’re graduating, going back to your values, “job ready graduates,” is critical. You’ve got to be able to do that.

Teri Reed: Absolutely. And so, our faculty are going to industry conferences. They’re working with people. Each area has a set of people that tend to cross to because of there’s a lot of cyber and software development integration. AI is highly prevalent in cyber. So, keeping them current is really important, but also listening is another avenue. And then, the third is having those university affiliates that actually are embedded with us and sit in our offices and talk to our students on a regular basis, as well as our faculty.

Drumm McNaughton: This is great.

[00:28:11] Challenges and Future Plans

Drumm McNaughton: We’re getting close to the end of our time. And there’s a couple of questions I’ve got to ask you. I’m just, I gotta have the answer. Gotta have it. Gotta have it. What are the things you’re most proud of with this startup?

Teri Reed: I’m proud of our philosophy that we started with, “being student ready”. I think that is a great philosophy and the way I think a lot of academic units strive for this, but getting to start with it, it creates a different climate, I believe.

I’m proud of the faculty, , every day, one of them does something, or two of them, something happens that I just think, “wow”. These students have no idea how lucky they are to have these faculty. They are just absolutely amazing.

And I have to share that I’m actually very proud of our students. We’re a startup. Right? It’s a risk. All startups come with a lot of risk. So we’ve got students who were willing to risk in this startup. We’re going to continue to have students willing to risk in this startup. And they come in believing where we, of course, listen to our students as well. But our students are absolutely so amazing, so creative, and I think it becomes from, they really, some of it will tell you that are like, “I’m not entrepreneurial”, but they actually have a really great spirit about them as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Those are neat. What would you have done differently?

Teri Reed: I would have liked to have been here from the very beginning. I think I would have liked to have started earlier. And even though I know I was number one, and there were some things already going, I would like to have started earlier. And I would like to come in with a higher, and I don’t, maybe it’s a magic wand, but the idea of a polytechnic as an entity is not the most well-known term.

So working harder to actually market the meaning of a polytechnic so people actually understand what a polytechnic provides in that middle position between theoretical engineering and theoretical sciences and applications and that interpretation, that translation piece. That’s probably the marketing piece is some of the hardest hurdles to come over, and I would like to have maybe started sooner. I like the name, I want to change the name, but I do think that the general public needs to be more aware of what a polytechnic is.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I have a feeling that you’re helping to put that on the map at this point.

Teri Reed: We’re doing our best.

Drumm McNaughton:  Teri, this has been fascinating. I want to thank you so much for taking the time with me today.

[00:31:18] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, we wrap up with our two questions, three takeaways for universities and presidents boards for those folks who want to start something new.

Teri Reed: I think the first takeaway is to listen and to listen broadly and maybe listen to persons or entities that don’t always feel heard.

I think the second is to be bold, and to not be afraid of being something different, that difference creates uniqueness and is often what is needed in many situations.

And I think the third one is to celebrate what a great opportunity we have in this high-tech world and to not be afraid to go ahead and move forward quickly.

[00:32:29] Drumm’s Bonus Takeaway

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. Those are great takeaways. I’m going to add one more into that, is make sure you hire the right people, who have the value system to make changes when they’re needed versus just saying, well, this course is good because I don’t want to have to change it.

So Teri, what’s next for you? What’s next for the OU Polytechnic Institute?

Teri Reed: Well, as since we’ve only just begun our first-class next fall, we start our next two bachelor of science classes and our four master’s degrees. So, we’re really young, in our infancy, and we’re definitely crawling. I’d say we’re starting to learn to walk and ultimately, we need to figure out how to run. I think we’re in the beginning walking stages and I’m looking forward to running.

Drumm McNaughton: Absolutely. Well, I would like to extend an invitation for you to come back in another year. I want to hear how this experiment is going. I have no doubt that you’ll be running by then. So, until next time, thank you so much for being on the show.

Teri Reed: Thank you.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today. And a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Teri Reed. Teri, it was a pleasure having you on the program. I look forward to our talking in a year or so to find out how the Polytechnic Institute is working.

Thanks again for listening, folks. I look forward to talking to you next time.