September 1, 2026 · Episode 327
Diversifying Revenue Without Diluting Mission: Inside Rollins College's Innovation Triangle
32 Min · By Dr. Drumm McNaughton
How Rollins College built a $200M non-tuition revenue portfolio, including a hotel that funds scholarships, without diluting its academic mission.
Private colleges under enrollment pressure get told to diversify revenue. The venture that follows usually either fails to earn or drags the institution away from the academic identity families were paying for, and the college ends up with a side business it has to keep defending to its own faculty.Rollins College spent more than a decade and $200 million building a three-part portfolio it calls the Innovation Triangle, and the three parts run on deliberately different economics.
A boutique inn that doubles as a rotating contemporary art collection had sent $10.8 million to student scholarships as of early 2026. An art museum moving off campus into the community charges no admission and is designed to draw no institutional funds. An executive education institute, seeded with a $10 million commitment and opening its first programs this fall, will serve executives from the military, NGOs, corporations, and nonprofits.
Declaring the museum a non-earner before it opened is what lets the other two face an honest financial test.
In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Brooke Barnett, president of Rollins College and previously provost at Butler University. The conversation covers how a tuition-dependent private structures a diversified budget model, how it separates the assets meant to earn from the assets meant to serve, and how it is adapting curriculum to AI without conceding the ground that makes the degree worth buying.
Quick Overview
- One of the three Innovation Triangle assets is deliberately not a revenue generator, and naming that before launch is what keeps the other two honest
- The inn’s scholarship flow has a written endpoint: 25 years, or a $50 million endowment principal, whichever comes later
- Declining full-pay enrollment and rising financial need are separate problems, and the instruments that address them are not interchangeable
- The adult learning and graduate business positions now being credited as diversification were built over 80 years
- The executive institute is built on AI readiness informed by the liberal arts, drawing on what the college already teaches
- Rollins treats technophilia and technophobia as the same failure, and protects cognitive struggle as the thing AI must not absorb
Willingness to Pay and Ability to Pay Are Not the Same Problem
Barnett separates two pressures that budget conversations routinely merge. Fewer full-pay students is a willingness problem: those families have the resources and are choosing to spend them differently. The demographic cliff creates something else, fewer students overall and more of them arriving with higher financial need. Barnett describes the student that produces, the one who says the education is completely worth it but cannot make the math work without help.
On an enrollment report the two failures look identical, and the instruments that address them are not interchangeable. Endowment answers the second. Non-tuition revenue answers neither directly; it buys the institution enough solvency to work on both.
A Hotel Built to Fund Scholarships
The Alfond Inn is a boutique hotel in Winter Park. It also hangs a contemporary art collection donated by two alumni patrons over the past fifteen years, rotated quarterly so returning guests see familiar pieces alongside new ones. All net proceeds go to student scholarships, amounting to $10.8 million for the Alfond Scholars program as of early 2026. Net operating income flows to the fund for the inn’s first 25 years, or until the endowment principal reaches $50 million, whichever comes later.
Barnett captures the structure with a line she offers guests. Depending on which kind of person you are, it is an art museum that has sleeping rooms, or a boutique hotel that has art. Both readings are correct, which is why nobody at Rollins has to reconcile the asset with the mission. A guest paying for a room funds financial aid and sleeps inside an academic collection.
Other commercial real estate contributes alongside the inn. Barnett does not oversell the position: Rollins would benefit from more offsetting non-tuition revenue, but it does not rely solely on tuition, and she names that as a real advantage in the current market.
Not Every Asset Is Supposed to Earn
When McNaughton asked whether all three pieces were alternative revenue sources, Barnett corrected him. Two of the three are.
The Rollins Museum of Art, moving off campus to a site across from the inn, aims to operate without drawing institutional funds. Patrons of the arts who are not traditional alumni constituents have supported the new location and the endowment being raised for it, and tourist tax dollars helped build the facility. Admission is free. Barnett calls it a gift to the community and an academic art museum benefiting students, and Rollins does not claim it generates revenue.
Saying that in advance is what lets the earning assets be judged on their numbers instead of on a case made after the fact, and it belongs in strategic planning rather than in a defense mounted once a venture underperforms.
Selling What the College Already Teaches
The Rick Goings Institute for Management and Executive Leadership tests the thesis hardest. It will run executive education across sectors, bringing military, NGO, corporate, and nonprofit participants into what Barnett describes as almost Davos-like experiences in Winter Park, with a high-end business consultancy attached. First programs launch in the fall, seeded by a $10 million commitment from the Rick and Susan Goings Foundation.
Barnett describes the subject matter as AI readiness and executive-level skills informed by the liberal arts, which she says taps into the ethos of Rollins itself. That is what keeps the institute from reading as a business bolted onto a college. Barnett describes it and the inn the same way: they build reputation and resources at once, which puts them closer to academic realignment than to opening a business line.
Diversification Takes Decades and Cannot Answer a Bad Year
The timeline is the uncomfortable part. Rollins has 80 years of adult learning focus, a comparably long history in graduate business, and accelerated master’s pathways including the Rollins MBA that have been in place long enough to build a reputation.
Barnett is blunt about what that means now. Plenty of institutions are discovering the adult learner market and treating it as a growth opportunity; sitting in a different position, as a college that thought about it decades ago, changes the terms. She is clear that Rollins did not lock in an approach and leave it alone. But the credibility and the operating infrastructure did not get built in a budget cycle, and the Innovation Triangle itself took more than a decade of planning.
Decisions made by prior administrations produce the revenue Rollins collects today. That makes diversification a risk management question as much as a growth one. A college that starts building when it needs the money has already started too late.
Technophilia and Technophobia Are the Same Failure
Rollins traces its academic identity to the liberal arts conference John Dewey came to lead in 1931, as the institution moved from a classical tradition toward what it now calls the pragmatic liberal arts. The current expression is The Gateway, which combines high-impact educational practices with that tradition and refuses the dichotomy between preparing for a career and preparing for the good life.
The same method now governs how Rollins handles AI. Rather than importing a policy, the college applied its own pedagogy to the technology question. Barnett says Rollins refuses to fall prey to technophilia or technophobia and treats them as the same kind of failure. The questions she puts first are what the technology does well, what it does not do well, what it could do better, and what the institution is unwilling to give up to machines.
Her last question has a pedagogical answer. Part of the struggle is the learning. Students need to work problems themselves because the difficulty builds the neural pathways, and handing the difficulty to a machine forfeits what the course exists to produce.
Barnett is unsparing about what AI handles well: pattern recognition, some forms of prediction, analysis. What it demands in return are savvy validators, people who know it is not getting things exactly right and who can ask the right questions and build the right prompts to use it effectively.
Rollins has answered operationally rather than rhetorically. Graduate business faculty spent a summer rebuilding curricular and pedagogical approaches around AI, and the College of Liberal Arts launched an AI certificate.
The Assets That Do Not Appear on the Financial Statements
Barnett’s second takeaway asks presidents to identify their most important institutional assets and protect them, and at Rollins several of those are cultural rather than financial. Fred Rogers is an alumnus, and the plaque on campus reading Life is for service is operationalized rather than commemorated: incoming undergraduates go into the community and serve before attending a single class, working with roughly 40 central Florida organizations, with Bonner Scholars, Greek philanthropy, and internships all running through the same relationships. Barnett places graduate career success inside that frame rather than against it.
Her resource discipline comes from the same instinct. The sector has talked forever about doing more with less, and it does not work. You have to do less with less, which means knowing exactly what matters most.
Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
The following reflect Dr. Barnett’s recommendations to presidents and boards.
- Focus capacity, attention, and financial resources on the people the institution exists to serve. That means the students and the colleagues who serve them. Barnett’s first instruction is to audit whether time, attention, and money are actually concentrated on what drives their success, because the people drive everything downstream of that.
- Know which institutional assets are genuinely yours, then protect and cultivate them. A changing market rewards clarity about identity more than breadth of offering. The assets worth defending are not always the ones on the financial statements, and institutions that cannot name theirs will dilute them while chasing enrollment. That work sits with leadership capacity, not with marketing.
- Make the math work to animate the aspirations. Strategy without financial resources is a statement of preference. Barnett rejects the doing-more-with-less framing outright and replaces it with doing less with less, which requires the discipline to choose and the willingness to stop doing things that no longer matter most.
About Our Guest
Brooke Barnett is the 16th president of Rollins College. She has served in a number of higher education roles including Executive Vice President, Provost, and Dean at Butler University, and Associate Provost at Elon University. Barnett began her career as a journalist and media producer. She later earned her PhD and became a tenured full professor teaching courses in media law and ethics, visual communication, and documentary film. An award-winning educator and widely published scholar, she has authored or co-authored six books and more than 40 articles in academic journals and mass media. She is a nationally recognized voice in higher education and has served on numerous boards and councils, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Higher Education Resource Services, and the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness at the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. She holds a BA from Georgetown College and MA and PhD from Indiana University.
Connect with Dr. Brooke Barnett on LinkedIn→
About the Host
Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of both U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton’s approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission.
Connect with Drumm McNaughton on LinkedIn→
Read the Podcast Transcript →
Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 327 – with Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Brooke Barnett
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.
[00:00:31] Meet Brooke Barnett
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.
My guest today is Brooke Barnett, president of Rollins College. Brooke’s had a very interesting career. Prior to coming to Rollins, she was provost and dean at Butler University, faculty at Elon University, and before that, she was a journalist and news director for WTIU News. Rollins is known for innovation, and Brooke brings a unique view on the importance of a liberal education, including the importance of innovation.
She’s working closely with the academic leaders to adapt Rollins’ curriculum to AI and to prepare for career and life successes. She joins me today to talk about how Rollins innovating its business model and its academic offerings to ensure the core tenets of a liberal arts education, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and civic responsibility are infused throughout its curriculum Brooke, welcome to the program.
Brooke Barnett: Thank you so much for having me.
Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure.
[00:01:32] First Year as President
Drumm McNaughton: You’re new to the program. You’re new to Rollins. You just started there.
Brooke Barnett: Yes, I just passed the one-year mark.
Drumm McNaughton: Wow. Wow. What’s that first year been like?
Brooke Barnett: It’s been really wonderful. People always ask me what was surprising and really so far we’ve had good surprises. We thought things would be, really warm and welcoming, and they’ve just exceeded those expectations. And we knew some things that were special about the college, but, to be here, you really just grow in affection for the place, and that definitely has happened for us.
The volume is always a moment for a new college president. You think you know what that’s gonna be like, and then you’re living it and you think, “Oh my goodness.” But it’s been really energizing and exciting, but not a lot of time for yourself.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, well, that’s generally what I hear from all presidents, including those that have been in the job for a while.
Brooke Barnett: Yeah. Well there’s a bit of a mass exodus right now of, retiring presidents and some stepping down, willingly and unwillingly. And [00:02:31] so, there is some lesson to be learned from the veteran presidents who figure out how to take care of their health and find the right balance and just figure out how to maintain this job.
So you can’t sprint a marathon, and we all know it, but first-year presidents sure try.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. Well, speaking of sprinting marathons, the men’s marathon had its first sub two-hour thing. That’s pretty, in my book, that’s a sprint.
Brooke Barnett: Hmm. Absolutely. I’m impressed by anybody who’s running a marathon, period. I do a little bit of what I call moving forward in a running-like fashion, and I’m just impressed the whole time that I’m doing it that no one is chasing me, and I’m willingly doing this. I am not a runner, but I do try to… it’s an efficient way to get a workout.
Drumm McNaughton: I hear you.
[00:03:15] From Kentucky to Journalism
Drumm McNaughton: So do me a favor, tell our listeners a little bit about your background. When I was hearing it last week when we chatted, I was fascinated.
Brooke Barnett: Oh, well now that’s a big setup. I don’t know that I can live into that but I’ll try. So I—
Drumm McNaughton: You’re president, you can do anything. Jump tall buildings in a single bound, et cetera.
Brooke Barnett: I always begin with my beginning, but don’t worry, I won’t tell my life in chronological order. But I grew up in a rural area in Kentucky. The bookmobile visited my house. That’s its indication. If people say they’re from a small town or a rural area, I always say, “Did the library come to you?”
Because that’s an indication, I think if you are or not. I went to a public school in a town of about 6,000 people, about 15 or 20 minutes, away from where I grew up. In a deeply religious community. My family really did not entertain outside of family or church events. So we went to church three times a week like clockwork, and that rural and religious and Kentucky background, I think forms a lot about who I am.
I was a curious child. I was the kid nobody wanted in Sunday school because I asked a million questions about everything, and I turned that nosiness or curiosity, depending on the valence you wanna add to it, into a career as a journalist. And I did love being a journalist, and I loved the idea of amplifying stories that sometimes didn’t get amplification, and I loved the human experience of relationships and getting to know people.
I was a documentary filmmaker and that, manifested in a similar way. And so I, as a leader, ask a lot of questions. That’s kinda my way of understanding and figuring things out. I moved from journalism into an academic career, kinda a little bit by chance. But I was teaching… I was the news director of a public television station that was housed on a college campus, Indiana University Bloomington’s campus, about 45,000 students, real college town, and I started teaching in the journalism school, as part of that role, and loved the teaching.
And then I started doing scholarship with a couple of the faculty members and graduate students and really fell in love with the scholarship. But the Knight Foundation at the time had a scholarship for working journalists to bring them into the academy to earn PhDs to become journalism educators. I thought, “Well, I’ll just take [00:05:31] my chances and see if I get that.” I did, and then I moved into the doctoral program, became a faculty member, and kinda moved into an academic career.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. Well, that, that certainly explains quite a bit about who you are, especially the curiosity, taking that into communications, journalism. We could do a whole podcast on that and following your passion.
[00:05:55] Trust and Liberal Arts
Brooke Barnett: Well, and it’s interesting, I think, because right now this is bouncing back a little, but when you look at the distrust in institutions that’s happening at the moment across the country, um, and you’re seeing a distrust in all institutions. But for a while, the two kind of that were at the focal point were journalism or the media and higher education.
My lifeblood has been those two areas that are facing some pretty low public trust moments. Now, higher ed’s bouncing back a little right now, and that’s a good thing to see. I think they’re both two things that are crucial to a democracy and are crucial to the, flourishing of societies as well as individuals within societies. And so I do see them as, as both, in many ways, as a calling.
Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm. And your quote that you sent little while ago, “Liberal arts are as relevant now as they have ever been, but we’ve lost the public relations side of that,” spoken like a true journalist, and you’re absolutely right.
Brooke Barnett: Well, I do think we’ll see a renaissance of the liberal arts in this moment of seismic shift around AI, and happy to talk about that at some point if you would like. But there is a moment where we, and we are in that moment, when we are thinking very carefully and critically about what makes us human and the, need for durable and adaptable skills with such massive and quick-paced, unprecedented quick-paced change in technology.
Those ongoing durable skills and transfer knowledge are gonna be just incredibly important.
Drumm McNaughton: And the ability to think critically, I think, is something that’s gonna be even more important going forward in the AI era.
Brooke Barnett: Judgment, wisdom. There are things that AI does really well, pattern recognition, some forms of prediction, analyzing, but you need savvy validators. We know it is not getting it exactly right, so you’ve gotta have some savvy validators, you’ve gotta be able to ask the right questions and prompts, even of AI, to use it effectively. And then there are just a whole lot of parts of the human experience that AI cannot replicate, and that are gonna be important for, the good life.
Drumm McNaughton: Very much so.
[00:07:59] Innovation in Rollins DNA
Drumm McNaughton: And which kind of brings us to our topic for today, innovation. And Rollins is really known for their innovative curriculum and what they’ve done for innovation. Tell me a little bit about that, please.
Brooke Barnett: Sure. So, I guess I’ll begin at least with the founding of Rollins. So we’re the first college in Florida. We’re only 1885, so when you think about colleges and universities that were founded before the Union we aren’t one of those just ’cause Florida’s a relatively new state when you think about it in that way in terms of where we were having educational opportunities.
Some folks from New England, Congregationalists who had formed lots of other colleges came down as far as Winter Park, Florida, where we’re located, because that’s how far the train took you. And so it’s this kind of a little bit of a … Winter Park, where we’re located, is also a little interesting because it’s kind of like New England in the South.
Our first couple of graduates were women. Those were people who had frankly the privilege and opportunity to not have to be working in the citrus fields and would have had the educational background and the classical tradition to be able to do the classical curriculum that was offered at the time. And so I think about that as from the beginning, we were thinking in an interesting and innovative way about being the first, but then kind of living into that with a whole series of other things.
John Dewey came to lead a conference, kind of our liberal arts conference in 1931, and really talked about the innovative things that were happening as we were moving and evolving from a classical liberal arts tradition into more of a [00:09:31] pragmatic liberal arts tradition, which has been really our DNA ever since, thinking really carefully about what do the liberal arts mean today and how that was so important.
And we also did some other kind of interesting things like we built an incredible chapel during the Depression. That’s not what people were necessarily doing, but that was one of our presidents who just could think in big ways beyond the moment, which is so important.
We’ve had 80 years of adult learning focus at Rollins. Lots people are thinking about adult learners now, and we’ve been doing that for decades. Same thing for graduate business. So we’re a traditional residential liberal arts and then expanded from that. More than 50 years of a child development center on campus, which is a learning lab and a true community asset. I think those are some of the kinds of DNA moves I would think about when I think about Rollins trying to think very carefully about meeting the moment now and into the future.
[00:10:20] Gateway and Pragmatic Liberal Arts
Brooke Barnett: And for us today, that really looks like grappling very seriously with AI and the durable liberal arts skills in something we call The Gateway, which is the combining of high impact educational [00:10:31] practices and pragmatic liberal arts.
And I think that’s that really dynamic combination to say we w- we refuse the false dichotomy between preparing for a career and preparing for the good life or preparing for a career in a vocational narrow way versus preparing for a career in a thinking about the durable skills that will translate for decades of a career in the world of work.
So I’m really proud of that work and that means right now that our faculty are very much engaged in thinking about preparing students for meaningful careers, but also engaged community life and civic life and appreciation for art and music and culture. We see those as part and parcel.
Drumm McNaughton: And as they should be. I know with my own degree, and my listeners have heard me say this many times, I was a physics major at the Naval Academy, but we took quite a number of liberal arts classes required. English, English literature. I remember Literature in the Sea, [00:11:31] Hemingway’s books, some of those. Even Chaucer in his age, read in the original Middle English.
Brooke Barnett: Oh. So my husband and I both studied literature in college, but we remember high school English where, “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.” That was the beginning of Old English that we both memorized in high school and still remember.
Drumm McNaughton: Same way. Same way. “And perced every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour”
Brooke Barnett: Oh my gosh, yours is much better than mine. We’ll have to cut mine, so, um… No, you should shine. I’m proud of you. I’m impressed.
Drumm McNaughton: Well, I’m wrapping up my career at this point, getting very close to that, that big R word, which I’m looking forward to very much.
Rollins has done some interesting thing with innovation. You’ve got multiple areas. You’ve diversified revenue [00:12:31] streams. You’ve got your innovation triangle, your pedagogical innovations. Let’s talk a little bit about that because that goes right to the DNA of who Rollins is.
Brooke Barnett: Yeah, I’m happy to.
[00:12:43] Innovation Triangle Story
Brooke Barnett: I’ll begin, if you don’t mind, just with a small story that tells the first part of. We’ve just started something called the Innovation Triangle. It has three pieces to it. One of those pieces is the art museum that currently resides in our campus that will now be moved into the community of Winter Park.
But thinking about Rollins history with art, our art collection’s more than 100 years old. We had a former president and alum who was an art history major and very serious about the collection, collecting of art, and saved basically the, as the largest Tiffany glass collection in the world because of his art preservation efforts that became a museum that is on the other end of Park Avenue from our campus in Winter Park.
But it’s kind of a fun story that gets a little bit to innovation and maybe whimsy at Rollins, but then moves [00:13:31] to the innovation triangle. He brought to campus two 18th century statues, a cat and a fox, that long lived on our campus, and the cat was stolen at times. These are really heavy concrete statues, and we don’t know what happened to the cat.
Some think that the cat is in Lake Virginia, which is right on our campus here.
Drumm McNaughton: The dog got it.
Brooke Barnett: I know. He took the fox for safekeeping into his home, and then had it at home for, like, 15 years, and then one spring brought it out, put it in the middle of Mills Lawn, and declared Fox Day, a day too beautiful to hold class, and we’ve done it ever since.
We had a little reprieve during the Vietnam War era for about seven years. But otherwise, Fox Day is an annual tradition, and the president determines, wheels out this beautiful statue and says it’s Fox Day, and nobody knows when it’s gonna be. Literally across the campus there’s, so it’s this greatly held secret, but I love a place that takes seriously taking a break, and a little whimsy, and a little fun.
Right now with that, connect that to the art museum and Innovation Triangle, our art museum collection has, lots and [00:14:31] lots of attributes, but in the past 15 years, we have two patrons of the arts who are alums and have been incredible benefactors who have donated a contemporary art collection they have been collecting along the way.
And that art collection, we change it quarterly, is in the Alfond Inn. The Alfonds are the benefactors, and the Alfond Family Foundation supported the initial creation of the inn, and it’s a living art museum. So quarterly, we change out that art. You can come back and see old favorites, but also new pieces, and it’s a boutique inn, and it’s a wonderful place to stay.
And it’s incredible business model because all net proceeds from the inn go to student scholarships. So you can stay in this incredible place that is an art museum, living art museum, and you’re benefiting students. So people say, depending on if you’re an art person or not, it is an art museum that has sleeping rooms, or if you’re a hotel person, it’s a boutique hotel that has art, so you can decide which one you are. That’s one piece of the Triangle.
The art museum from campus will move to a new location right across from the inn, which will be [00:15:31] the second piece. And the third piece is the Rick Goings Institute, which will be executive education across sectors. So, military, NGOs, corporates, non-profits, coming and doing really high level, almost Davos-like experiences in Winter Park and at the center and with each other and learning, and then also a high-end business consultancy as well. So really thinking about AI readiness and executive level skills that are all informed by the liberal arts. So it really taps into also the ethos of Rollins. And I’ll say a couple of notes on the Rick Goings Institute just for-
Drumm McNaughton: Before you there.
Brooke Barnett: Yeah.
[00:16:08] Diversifying Revenue Streams
Drumm McNaughton: These are all alternative revenue sources so that you’re not totally dependent on enrollment, correct?
Brooke Barnett: Well, two of the three are. So the Rollins Museum of Art is– the goal for the Rollins Museum of Art is not to be using institutional funds. So it is an alternative revenue source in the sense that we have donors that are not necessarily related to Rollins [00:16:31] otherwise, but patrons of the arts who have been impressively helping support the museum, the new location and endowment we’re raising for the museum.
But the museum is free. We did benefit from some tourist tax dollar, um, funds to build the new facility, and we’re building out an endowment now. But it’s really not a revenue generator for the college. It is a gift to the community. It’s an academic art museum where we’re benefiting our students from it.
But the other two are alternative revenue sources. They’re about reputation building, but also about resource building. And so they will be bringing, and do, the Inn already does, and the Rick Goings Institute will bring significant resources to the college overall to support its main mission. So yes, these are diversified revenue stream plays that are also reputation building.
Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm. And it’s a little bit outside of the mainstream what you’re doing, which to me makes it very innovative, especially if you’re able to bring in the revenues that you expect for this.[00:17:31]
Brooke Barnett: Absolutely. And Rollins does have a little bit of a benefit in tradition in that anyhow we also have other commercial real estate that brings additional revenue to the college, and those are important parts of our budget model. So we, many institutions are really worried. A- and by the way, we are also focused heavily on stewarding these resources the best we can but we’re not an institution that solely relies on tuition revenue, and that is a great benefit.
Could we have more offsetting non-tuition revenue streams? Yes, that would be good. Um, but with the Inn, our other commercial real estate, and increasingly, and soon to be with the Rick Goings Institute, that gives us a pretty diversified portfolio.
Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm. And in today’s day and age, that is so critical, especially for private institutions.
Brooke Barnett: Well, it’s hard.
[00:18:20] Demographics and Endowment
Brooke Barnett: We have, right now, as a private institution, like other private institutions, we are contending with both ability to pay and willingness to pay for a really [00:18:31] amazing experience of high value. But that is part of the conversation when you’re looking at a real decrease in full-pay students, that’s about willingness to pay. Those are families that have the ability and are choosing to think about their resources differently, and that affects a private higher education market. And increasingly, with the demographic cliff, there are fewer students, but it’s also a shift. More of those students will have higher financial needs.
And so then you’re in the world of ability to pay, where you have students who say, “This is 100% worth it and valuable. I just can’t make the math work, and I’m gonna need the help to do so.” So institutions are thinking carefully about endowment raising for those purposes. Endowment gets a bad rap in this moment but endowment is not some s- weird slush fund people are doing whatever they want to with.
Endowment is really, at most institutions, heavily tied to supporting students and their ability to be at the institution and to provide a high-quality experience for them.
Drumm McNaughton: And [00:19:31] help me out. You’re both graduate and undergraduate students or primarily undergrad?
Brooke Barnett: Well, we are primarily undergraduate. We are both graduate and undergraduate. We’re about 2,400 undergrad and about 600 graduate students.
Drumm McNaughton: Okay. And how is this demographic shift affecting you? We’re seeing more and more students going to graduate studies versus the undergraduate.
Brooke Barnett: Yeah. Say that again. More and more students going to graduate studies?
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, we’re seeing more students in graduate studies now than we are in undergraduate. Not numbers-wise, but there’s a shift going on in that way.
Brooke Barnett: Well, I mean, that’s again where we’re happy to have that diversified portfolio, and we didn’t just start doing it. So a lot of institutions are like, “Let’s think about adult learners.” Huge adult learning market. Well, it’s kind of nice to be an institution that thought about it decades ago. That didn’t mean we locked in 80 years ago and haven’t changed it.
We’ve had some pretty big changes to how we are meeting the market for adult learners, but that’s work we’ve been doing a while. [00:20:31] So we’re not new to the graduate space or the adult learning space, which has been very beneficial. We’ve built up a nice reputation in both.
Drumm McNaughton: And that’s just another example of the innovative nature of Rollins.
Brooke Barnett: I think so. We have had accelerated master’s pathways for a long time, which is another thing I think people are moving into. And so we have that with the Rollins MBA, but a number of other master’s graduate programs that we have. And so I think we have been trying to think about attending to a market that is interested in a shorter period of time for earning two degrees, an undergraduate and a graduate degree, and I think we’ve been effectively serving that market for a long time.
[00:21:12] Pedagogy and AI Approach
Drumm McNaughton: And your innovations don’t stay just with revenue and your, the Innovation Triangle. Your faculty are doing a lot of innovations, especially in pedagogy.
Brooke Barnett: Yeah, when I think about that, I think about the– I mentioned the pragmatic liberal arts and, the John Dewey conference in [00:21:31] 1931. About every decade we have… John Dewey hasn’t come to all of them but we’ve really seriously thought about the liberal arts in three ways. So we think about it in terms of the core curriculum for our undergraduate students shared across all students.
Whether you’re studying physics or literature, you’re all taking this core curriculum. And there’s choices among it. It’s not lockstep. But everyone’s benefiting from that layer of liberal arts no matter what you study at Rollins and we have that infused in what we do in the graduate level as well.
The second piece of that is the liberal arts majors, right? We offer a wide portfolio of liberal arts majors for students who want to go deeply into the liberal arts. In addition to that core curriculum, they have that opportunity. And then the third is the pedagogical approach, the way we think about liberal arts as a pedagogical approach in how we teach no matter what you’re studying.
We’ve been using that pedagogical approach in thinking about AI ourselves. So we’ve been thinking about AI and using the tools of the liberal [00:22:31] arts as an institution to ask really good questions about AI. Like we’re not gonna fall prey to technophilia or technophobia, either one. We’re gonna think really seriously and carefully about what does this technology do well, what does it not do well, what could it do better and, what are we wanting to not give up to machines, frankly, in how we think about learning because part of the struggle is the learning.
And so we want people to be struggling with doing some things and not having a machine do them for them because they need to learn how to do those things, and they need to create neural pathways in doing them. So I’m really proud of how we think about that as the way we make decisions and grapple with ideas and issues as a faculty and as the staff who are delivering on the student experience as well.
So I think those are some examples of how we think about the applied liberal arts. The gateway I already mentioned is thinking about the high impact practices. Your listeners already know this, but these are the things we’ve studied that are most beneficial for student learning and development. How do we make sure that that’s a [00:23:31] reality embedded in the experience for our students here?
And so yeah, those are some of the things that come to mind when I think about the curriculum, so what we teach, but also the pedagogy, how we teach it.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. That’s a great explanation. And what it did, it brought to mind something I hadn’t thought about for years. Being a physics major, multiple problem sets, et cetera, figuring out E is equal to MC squared, all those other things. Well, many times have a problem that really couldn’t understand what it was they were trying to get at, but you knew what the answer needed to be, so you’d end up working with what units it was in, what are you trying to do, and work through it using critical thinking to be able to come to the answer. That’s one of the skills that tech folks need to have, but it’s something liberal arts need to have as well, that ability to analyze and think critically.
[00:24:27] Service and Kindness Culture
Brooke Barnett: Yeah, and can I add a little maybe more habit of mind part [00:24:31] of this, or even ethos that I also think’s important? And it really comes down to kind of thinking about character and values. And so we in higher ed a lot about the value of what we do, but we also wanna talk about values. And so I’ll give two examples of this that I think are also kind of part of how we think about Rollins, the culture.
One is that Mr. Rogers is an alumnus of Rollins College, and we are very proud of his legacy, his work, but really the ethos of the dignity and worth of all learners. That child development center is just infused with that, thinking about kindness, and thinking about service. And so on campus we have a plaque that says, “Life is for service.”
And Fred Rogers had a image of that in his wallet his whole entire life. Like, he really ca- he, that was how he thought about life in such an important way. And we do that now, by our students, our undergraduate students, when they arrive in the fall, before they go into the class, before they do anything academic, they go into the community and serve.[00:25:31]
And it’s an important tradition that we have here, and an important part of what we do. And that’s with 40 different institutions, organizations in central Florida that we have deep relationships with. So it’s not a one-off. The students start and begin with that, but then we have Bonner Scholars who have four-year relationships with these organizations.
We have fraternities and sororities that have these organizations as part of their philanthropic focus. We have student organizations that have deep relationships, students who do internships there. So that sense of service and obligation is just deep into what we do. We have an Act of Kindness Day, which is an ethos I think that is so important to think about, that we really focus on how kindness matters, and how that’s part of the Rollins education. So I just wanted to name a couple of those, ’cause I think they create important habits of mind that we want our students to be alums taking into the world, and to think about, how can I be of service to others? What is my purpose and meaning I’m gonna have connected to being in service to others? And then just the [00:26:31] tremendous benefits of kindness.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. You mean it’s not all about money?
Brooke Barnett: Well, you know what? Our students are actually quite successful, and we’re proud of that. They have great outcomes, and they do have wonderful careers, and we see those wonderful careers as part of what I already mentioned, is just the notion of the good life. And of course, you wanna support yourself, and you wanna feel like you don’t have, scarcity.
But we know from the happiness research that there is a mark where your needs are met, and your happiness does not correspond above that mark. People who are living in scarcity and don’t have their needs meet, there’s a deep correlation with happiness and wealth or lack of wealth. But we also understand once you’re having those needs meet, that relationship is just not as clear as we might assume that it would be.
So we do love the idea of, and people should, our students becoming graduates who can support themselves financially. And some of them are investing heavily in creating businesses and jobs for others and contributing broadly in society through civic and other community engagements and through [00:27:31] their businesses and through their wealth generation, all of those things.
Drumm McNaughton: Those are all such critical things. And I love that quote from Mr. Rogers, “Life is about service.” That is so spot on. And the civic education, the internships, the, the students working with those 40 different entities throughout the Orlando area where you are, so important so that students not only gain the skills outside of the classroom that they need, but they also learn to give of themselves, which frankly, life is all about service.
Brooke Barnett: Mm-hmm.
Touché
Drumm McNaughton: —This has been a wonderful conversation.
Brooke Barnett: I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully other people will find some things interesting, but this has been really fun.
Drumm McNaughton: I think so as well, and I’m sure they will.
[00:28:20] Three Takeaways for Leaders
Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, three takeaways for presidents and boards.
Brooke Barnett: I would say focus on the people, so the students you’re serving and the colleagues who serve them, and just make sure that your [00:28:31] capacity, time, attention, financial resources are focused on what matters most for their success. That would be my first.
Understand what your most important institutional assets are and work to protect and cultivate them. So have a really good sense about who you are and how you try to keep doing that the best you can in a really changing market and moment in higher ed.
And then consider how you make the math work to animate your aspirations, because you’ve gotta have financial resources to do the work well. So really try to get careful on that. And I think we’ve talked forever about, more with less, and it just doesn’t work. You have to do less with less. So you have to focus and be diligent on doing what matters most.
Drumm McNaughton: And that goes right back to your second one is know who you are, what’s important.
Brooke Barnett: So the people drive everything. Know who you are and what’s important, and then focus as carefully as you can on doing it really well.
Drumm McNaughton: Excellent.
[00:29:23] Whats Next at Rollins
Drumm McNaughton: What’s next for you? What’s next for Rollins?
Brooke Barnett: Oh, well, the AI moment’s interesting. Our graduate business faculty just spent the summer really [00:29:31] transforming their curricular and pedagogical approaches relative to AI, and we just launched a new College of Liberal Arts AI certificate. We completed some faculty and staff housing, so we have 30 units of colleagues that will be able to move into faculty and staff housing. We already had some on campus. Winter Park is amazing, but an expensive place to live, so that can be a challenge.
We’re opening a new residence hall. We’re gonna be having the first programs for the Rick Goings Institute, which is gonna be wonderful. Those start in the fall. And we continue to refine what we do with the pragmatic liberal arts. So all summer, our faculty are honing how they teach and what they teach, again, meeting this moment and moments into the future, which is exciting.
And the last thing I’ll say is we’ve been working with NetView, which is a national organization that’s part of the Council of Independent Colleges, and really helping our students think about how they discern their vocations and think about lives of meaning and purpose so they can be part of creating good in the world.
This is work we’ve done forever, but we’re excited to be partnered up with others doing it, ’cause we do take that part of our mission so seriously, and we’re very proud [00:30:31] that we help young people find their path.
Drumm McNaughton: Those are fabulous. I wish you guys all the best. Brooke, thank you for being on the show. I’ve so much enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to the next time our paths cross.
Brooke Barnett: I sure hope they do soon, and thank you so much for having me.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. Have a great one.
Brooke Barnett: Take care.
[00:30:51] Closing Thanks and Farewell
Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today, and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Brooke Barnett. Brooke, thanks for being on the show. I love hearing all the great things that you’re doing at Rollins, and I wish you all the best going forward.
To my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. See you next week.
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