How University Leaders Can Transform Institutions with Program Realignment and Scalable Mental Health Services:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 271 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Andy Vaughn

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast  271 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Andy Vaughn

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 Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guest today is Andy Vaughn, president and CEO of Alliant International University in Southern California. I’ve known Andy for 15 years, where prior to his joining Alliant, he was the president and CEO of Trident University. Andy’s been in higher ed a long time. He’s come up on the business side, including VP of marketing, admissions, student services, and other areas that are definitely business side.

One of the things that Alliant specializes in is mental health, and as you know, many students on college campuses these days deal with mental health challenges that impact their livelihood and can negatively affect academic performance. Andy joins us today to talk about what Alliant does and has done about institutional mental health in these times of rapid, monumental change.

Andy, welcome to the program.

Andy Vaughn: It’s great to see you. It’s been a number of years, and we worked together as well for a number of years, but it is wonderful to see you again.

Drumm McNaughton: Likewise.

[00:01:25] Andy’s Background and Career Journey

Drumm McNaughton: Gosh, I’m trying to think back. You were, you left Trident what, in 2015?

Andy Vaughn: Yes. So my 10-year anniversary at Alliant was last month, so it was exactly 10 years ago.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, that was the last time. No, I take it back. We saw each other one more time, when you were getting off an airplane coming back from China at San Diego Airport.

Andy Vaughn: That’s right. I had the rare, nonstop. It was either Japan or China. We had a campus in Tokyo for a while. I bet I was coming back from commencement at our Tokyo campus on that Japan Airlines flight to San Diego.

Drumm McNaughton: I think you’re right because our son had been teaching in, I can’t remember, it was either Taiwan or China, and he flew back through Japan to get home. So that was exactly it.

Andy Vaughn: What a random meeting just at an airport in San Diego of all places.

Drumm McNaughton: It was, and to bump into somebody that you truly respect and had done such a great job at Trident was just the tip of the iceberg for me. Thank you.

Andy Vaughn: Thanks, and likewise. I feel the same about you. It’s great running into you again, andI’m  glad to be on the show today.

[00:02:31] Alliant University’s Focus on Mental Health

Drumm McNaughton: Let’s kick it off because we have a really important topic to talk about today, mental health at colleges and universities. Before we get into that. Give us a little bit about your background. Besides, your time at Trident, I know we’ve crossed a lot of the same paths over the lives of our careers or careers of our lives, whatever it is.

Andy Vaughn: However you wanna say it is fine with me. I get it. Yes, whenever I tell people what I did before, higher education, they say, “You did what?” And whenever people from my prior career hear what I’m doing now, they go, “You’re doing what?” Because they can’t see the parallels. As a young boy, I always wanted to be a broadcaster, either a TV anchor or a radio news person. I majored in journalism at the University of Nebraska, started undergrad in ’87, and was working full-time in radio by ’88. Worked in News Talk Radio and Top 40 Radio Morning show talk shows for eight years. That was my first career, and I really enjoyed it. It was a passion and a love, but by about 1993, this little thing called the Internet came out. And America Online, if you remember, that was just starting to get big, and I thought, uh-oh, this is not good for radio and probably not good for TV eventually either, and newspapers were going to die. You could see that.

And I was probably what, 25, 26 of the time thinking I had a lot of years ahead of me professionally. This is not a long-term commitment for me. I wanna be in a sector that’s going to thrive, and that was not it. So I moved to San Diego from Nebraska. I was in Omaha, Lincoln Radio markets, and got a part-time job at a radio station in San Diego. Went to school full-time, and I was going to be a teacher, a K-12 teacher, and wanted to be a teacher, a principal, maybe a superintendent. going to get my doctorate eventually and do that. And, National University is where I was work, going to school, for a teaching credential and master’s degree in education. And, the director of admissions came up and she said, “Hey, you ever thought about working in higher ed?” And I said, “Nah. Not interested. And she said, “If you work here, your school is free, your tuition’s free”. And I said, I am now interested, and Drumm, story, the only reason I’ve been in higher ed 30 years is because of the free tuition. That is a true story. So I ended up, I thought, “oh, I’ll do this for two years, get the free tuition and go be a teacher in K-12”.

And then about three months into higher ed, I fell in love with what we do. I became so passionate. I thought, “well, you know what, instead of being a teacher. I’ll be on the supply side of the fence and recruit new teachers”, and I just fell in love with that, and that was 30 years ago now. So the rest is history, as they say.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, out of that, and I didn’t know a lot of these things about you. Moving from Nebraska, I’d forgotten you’d been in radio. And as you were talking about it, I said, “well, we’ve got two people who have definite radio voices here, so this is going to be kind of fun”. But the thing that really struck me, and it’s what I observed when we were together at Trident, is that you have a very strategic mind. You think three or four steps ahead, and you’ve done that throughout higher ed. That is such a gift that we could do a full podcast on that alone.

Andy Vaughn: I love that topic. I was blessed to have parents who were wired that way and taught me how to think. My dad was a chief financial officer for a major bank in Omaha, and an executive most of his life, and very much in the business. And he was just always a big picture thinker and always thinking literally 10, 20 years ahead for the family, for his career. And I was just around that all the time. I was just very fortunate. I was lucky to get that.

Drumm McNaughton: My father was the same way. I grew up down in Panama, but he had been a seagoing captain for years, worked at the Boston Navy Yard, and he saw the Boston Navy Yard closing, so he moved everybody down to Panama. So it was something similar to that. Without going into my story, because I don’t want to take a whole lot of time with this, your ability to see strategically has served you in very strong stead throughout your career, which takes us to our topic today.

[00:06:48] Strategic Decisions and Achievements at Alliant

Drumm McNaughton: Alliant University, what are you guys doing about mental health? Little background on Alliant, because I remember Alliant was, pardon the term, a little podunk university in San Diego, and then you’ve taken over and expanded it. We were talking the other day, I didn’t realize this, you’ve got the largest mental health program in the country.

Andy Vaughn: We do now, and we’re very proud of that. So 10 years ago, Alliant was not doing well operationally or financially. Really strong academic university, has been for decades. We just celebrated our 100-year anniversary last year. Been around a long time. Used to be known as USIU or United States International University. We flipped our name about 25 years ago to Alliant or an alliance of schools, and we made some strategic decisions 10 years ago. Our team, with the help of our shareholder and our board, but we decided to teach out our undergraduate programs and just be laser focused on graduate-level programs, most of which lead to licensure.

In that process, we really put our biggest school, the California School of Professional Psychology, up on a pedestal and said, “okay, we’re going to be the best at this”. And instead of being mediocre in a few things, we just thought, “okay, let’s get rid of things. If we’re not the best, we’re not going to do it”.

And we weren’t doing a great job with our undergrad, and I thought, “well, let’s. Revamp”, and the clinical psychology psyched PhD programs have really done well in the last 10 years. We’re now the largest provider of licensed, doctoral psychologists in the entire country. About I think 10 to 12% come from Alliant.

In California, about 40% come from Alliant. So that’s a very dominant market share in mental health. We’re in the top five in the country for marriage, family therapy. We are certainly a big contender in clinical counseling, more individual therapy. And we just launched our MSW Master of Social Work about two years ago. So we’ve got four of the five mental health licensure programs in the country, and by far it’s our biggest school. The other one is the School of Education, top three provider of licensed K-12 teachers in California too. So we’ve really done a lot of focused strategic thinking about, “hey, what can we be best at, and let’s only do that”.

Drumm McNaughton: That is so you and thank you for doing that. because I’ve always had a great respect for Alliant and before that USIU. Thank you.

Andy Vaughn: Yes

Drumm McNaughton: And, CSSP, which also was very good.

Andy Vaughn: Yes, absolutely.

Drumm McNaughton: We’ve seen a lot of changes in higher ed, especially in the last 10 years.

[00:09:20] Challenges and Changes in Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: And guess what? Hold onto your seats, folks, it’s going to get a lot crazier with the new bill that was just passed. All of these challenges have to weigh on people’s mental health. What are you seeing?

Andy Vaughn: A lot of times, people forget about how it weighs on managers, directors, executives, and it really impacts you because you, I think that’s a mistake some executives make too, in the process of major changes. And you are correct. If you thought higher ed has changed a lot in the last 10 years, you’ve not seen anything yet.

The next two years are going to be the most critical two years in higher education history. You’ve got policy and legislation. Now, usually it’s only on the executive branch side, but now you have the legislative branch involved in changing the seminal document, the Higher Education Act of 65. It’s usually untouched. This is unprecedented. They’re not just coming up with regulations that can be rescinded later. They’ve actually changed the language in the foundational document that higher ed follows. And this is big. These are not temporary changes. These are going to be around for a long time, if not permanently. And so one of the things is, look, higher education has been a little stuck in tradition for a long time, and yes, I imagine that, 250 years. Now, many of those predictions are great. Let’s embrace them. But some of those, we’re one of the last sectors left that hasn’t embraced 2025, and some of these are actually all right.

Now, there are a lot of things in the bill that I wouldn’t have done, but there are a lot of things in there too. Not necessarily the bill, but maybe the mindset more or less, of being innovative in higher education and changing some of the structures, whether it’s accreditation or the way we think about how we teach and learn. Look, technology has passed us by, in many cases in the higher ed sector and, and a lot of schools and a lot of companies have done a great job with that, but not everyone has. And I think it’s time we all get together and think about new ways of teaching and learning. And that part is great.

But you are right. There’s going to be a lot of change. And as far as mental health about these changes goes. Let’s face it, change is tough for everybody, especially in higher education. Higher education is the one sector that really resists change, I believe, more than most. And it does impact the mental health of every community member involved at a university or college, including the student body, admissions counselors, student services reps, faculty, staff, everybody. And I think the best thing we can do as leaders to help with that mental health in this time of change is to be fully transparent. I know that’s cliché, okay, everyone says that, but truly tell everyone what’s going on. More importantly, keep them up to date in real time. Here’s the problem, Drumm, is that you pick your favorite website, TV news program, journal, magazine, whatever, and all you get is very top-line information from these sources. The secret of what’s really happening in higher ed cannot even be found in the higher ed publications. They don’t really hit the details you’ve got to read. These legislative changes, regulations. Get out to DC, talk to the lawmakers. We’ve done that. Talk to lobbyists, talk to consultants, talk to people on the ground in DC about where these changes are happening, and really understand the why behind the change and communicate that to your teams.

More importantly, get them involved in what we are going to do in the face of adversity? What are we going to do together? You know, a lot of leaders think, “well, let’s not tell anyone the bad news that’s going to make them scared. They might leave”. And reality is the monster someone creates with no information ,is a lot bigger and scarier than the real monster that exists. If I don’t tell you what’s going on, that monster is eight feet tall and he has a machete. In reality, I tell you what’s going on, and the monster’s 5’11”, he’s got a butter knife, and we can handle that. And let’s conquer that together. And I think to help with mental health, you’ve got to be transparent with your teams, get them involved in the mitigation, and do this together. And I think that’s what’s missing a lot of times.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes we’re seeing more and more institutions providing mental health services. It’s part of most insurance plans right now, but what I’m seeing, and I think you’re seeing the same thing, is you’ve got different generational norms. My generation, baby boomers, I think you’re Gen X or maybe, or, Yes So you know with that, my generation, it was like you don’t talk about mental health. But that’s not the case with millennials, that’s not the case with Gen Z. They will talk about it. Tell me more.

Andy Vaughn: It is getting better and I think you’re seeing in the younger populations, and we have a lot of faculty, alumni, and students that do research on these areas. It’s what we do at Alliant is mental health is our biggest program by far. And what we’re seeing is the younger generations are embracing asking for help better than the older generations.

[00:14:20] Mental Health Awareness and Personal Stories

Andy Vaughn: My dad committed suicide at the age of 61, and it really taught me a lot about life. When that event occurred, it was staggering for me. because here’s a guy that was, one week away from retirement. Financially, professionally, successful, solid marriage, three grandkids, three kids. Full health fine had just had a physical six months prior to this event, and it just, we just were in shock. How could this happen? Mental health is why it happened. And it goes to really some generations, and my dad would be, what, 93, 94 today. So he was a part of a generation that fought in at least one war, if not two,

Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm.

Andy Vaughn: and military for 20 years. And at that time, especially in his generation, asking for help mentally was considered weak. That means you are weak and you can’t handle it. And in reality, what we’ve learned in the last 30 years is that asking for help, mental help, is a strength, and let’s celebrate that. Let’s normalize that, and that is getting better. We have come a long way. We still have a long way to go, and it’s different in every country.

And you’ve traveled the world. I’ve traveled the world. You can see these differences throughout the world about how mental health help exists and how people ask for help. In the US, it’s getting better, but we still have a long way to go, and we must make that normal. Everybody has mental health issues at some point in their life. Everybody. Let’s not hide from that. Let’s make that a thing.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes, no, I fully agree with everything you’ve said there. The older generations, there was that stigma behind that, and younger generations, I mean I’ve had good conversations with a number of faculty members and leaders at higher ed institutions, and students now they’ll come into a faculty member’s office, the faculty member will ask, “how’s it going?” and the student will tell them, to the nth detail, and in some ways it’s overloading faculty. They don’t know what to do about it. There needs to be better training for faculty members on how to deal with these kinds of things.

Student services, the same way. It’s a major issue. It’s not unsolvable, but it is one of those things that it has to be dealt with.

Andy Vaughn: It does, and I think training is the first step. You are correct. How to escalate or when to escalate, because sometimes a student just wants to vent. That’s it. And, Drumm, I’m married to a marriage family therapist, by the way, so mental health is not just my professional career, it is also at home. I’ve been through the process of someone going through a graduate program in mental health licensure, and being married to a marriage family therapist is a very unique thing, by the way, but,

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, yes. It could be good and bad.

Andy Vaughn: Oh, yes, exactly. Basically, I’m in therapy all the time, which is what I’m saying. So I. I

Drumm McNaughton: Yes, we don’t need to go there.

Andy Vaughn: No, we don’t. That’s for a different show, I think.

I think what I’ve learned, though, through my marriage and not just being married to a therapist, but as a human to human now, is that a lot of times my spouse will come to me and say, I want to talk to you about something, but I don’t want you to solve it. I don’t want you to jump into action. Okay? Can I just tell you that ahead of time? And I’ll go, “okay,” and he’ll say, “hey, I don’t want you looking for solutions, making calls and hey, let’s come up with a plan, an action plan,” because that’s what I want to do. He’ll say to me, I just want you to listen and empathize and be there, be present. And I don’t want you to ask a lot of questions. I just want to talk to you, then with you afterwards, and I get that. And I think professionally, we could learn from that experience too. because I think we’ve all had that in our personal relationships where we go into action mode and solving. And you know what? It works. Sometimes that’s not always the right solution. You have to know when to flip that switch for action. But a lot of times a student or a colleague will come to you with challenges, maybe mental health challenges even, and they just want someone to listen and ask follow up questions, and then maybe after they’re done, let it exhaust and then come up with a plan on what to do next.

Especially at work, we tend to go into action mode. We’ve got to solve this. Well, hit pause for a moment, and that’s a big part of it too.

Drumm McNaughton: It reminds me of the Mars and Venus book I read years ago. But at the same time, faculty members, you know, they are problem solvers. They want to do the best that they can for their students. And so when a student presents this and, I had this happen to me just yesterday, something was going on in our church and I happened to be the head of our branch out here in Albuquerque, and something was going on with one of our members, and I called up a friend of mine and said, “Marsha, I just need to vent, listen to me”. And it was like, at the end of the conversation, it’s like, “okay, great. What’s your opinion? How do we handle this?” A two-step process, the venting, and then if the person says, “I would like your help”, then you can spring into action.

Andy Vaughn: Yes, that is accurate. And a lot of times, I think we cut off or cut short step one, we jump into action too soon. You’ve got to let the pressure release completely, and then human beings tend to be uncomfortable with silence, especially if it’s not someone that you know really well, and silence is actually golden.

Letting a few seconds go by with no discussion is a very healthy thing. It lets both sides process, and we tend to wanna fill up every second with some sort of communication. That’s not always necessary. Let them finish. Pause. Really listen to be heard, and take a moment to think about and process it, and I think that’s key.

Drumm McNaughton: I think you’re absolutely right.

[00:20:23] Leadership and Mental Health Strategies

Drumm McNaughton: So you’ve got multiple demographics, stakeholders, at Alliant and most colleges. Do you approach these things from a leadership perspective? Do you approach these different stakeholder groups differently? Or is it, students, obviously, you’ve got to be able to train other students, dorm leaders, student services, et cetera, on how to deal with these things. But there’s also, in the provision of the services, and when to refer someone to actual professional help.

Andy Vaughn: Yes, we have a step-by-step process. We certainly have what a lot of universities have, and that is third-party outside help. We have 800 numbers for students to call for mental health services, a lot of that’s free. We have, for the staff and faculty, of course, part of our benefits, we have mental health packages through our healthcare benefits, but we have a built-in advantage. We’re the largest provider of clinical psychology in the entire country, and so we’ve got a built-in faculty, this is their special, it’s what they do, we have students, this is their passion, we have alumni, thousands of them, that’s what they do. Our students, especially in the school of psychology, have a built-in support system in many cases, where it’s what we do. We have four clinics, they’re called the Alliant Clinics, and at those clinics, we actually offer free and sliding scale services for California residents. Three or four in-person, one-on-one telehealth. And so our senior students. Actually, staff who are under the supervision of our faculty.

So it’s what we do. We tend to have a better situation than most universities for mental health because it’s what we do and it’s what we teach, it’s what we research, it’s what our students are interested in, so that we have a little advantage on that aspect. But I think universities should think about how they provide training for what to do and when, how to escalate, and what kind of backstop do you have for referrals to outside help? We should never put mental health if we’re not licensed and qualified in our own hands. I think everybody has a little bit of therapist inside of them. “Oh, I can help this”. Well leave that to the professionals. Let’s train our teams to escalate to someone that is licensed and has skill in that area because too often mental health is overlooked. Really leave that to the professionals. I think the best thing we can do for training is have an escalation system, what to do when and with who.

Drumm McNaughton: And I’m going to, I’m just going to ask on the, podcast here. You sound like you’ve got a really good model there at Allient. If other university presidents reach out to you, are you happy to share with what you’re doing?

Andy Vaughn: Yes, absolutely. And I think the other thing you bring up a good point is if you’re a business school or an engineering school or something where you’re not teaching mental health programs like Allient is and CSPP. Maybe partner. There’s a school in every community that does psychology and licensure programs, whether it’s master’s degree level or doctoral level.

Find a school, partner with a school in your community. What we find is we always are looking for community members as clients so our students can train and learn under the supervision of our faculty. So you’re getting a high quality service, mental health, it’s either free or sliding scale, most psychology schools have that too. Culinary schools always have their students doing these wonderful meals at half price or whatever. You go to a automotive school, you get your car fixed at half price, whatever. Let’s you know, think about that for mental health too. Most psychology schools are training their students under that supervised faculty with similar services. If you’re a school that doesn’t have that program, maybe contact someone in your local community that does run the program and see if you can do a partnership.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s a great idea. From a leader perspective, you live this stuff all the time, not only from an academic perspective, but from a leadership perspective. How as a leader do you help your staff and your school with the mental health? What are some of the things you do to alleviate that ghost stress that’s there?

Andy Vaughn: From my role, I think communication is most important from the CEO role. I don’t have the wonderful opportunity to see, we have 420 full-time employees and hundreds of adjunct faculty, I don’t get the opportunity to see them all on a regular basis because we’re very spread out. We have eight physical locations.

And a huge online campus where it’s even more spread out working remotely. And I think for me it’s trying to stay in touch. I have a goal of, touching base with about 5% of our, non-executive team members every week. And I keep a mental list of who I can even on Zoom. It’s fine. And I do travel to our locations quite often too, but beyond that, I think it’s important from my role to be very transparent.

We do what’s called a university update four times a year, sometimes more. Right now we’ve been doing them every month with all the changes in ed policy. And I just roll out, “Hey, this is what’s happening. These are all the numbers”. At regular university updates, I share student success stories. We have alumni success. We celebrate our values. We recognize our team members for exemplifying behavior that prop up our values, we celebrate them. Then we go into the financials and we talk about operations, we look at admissions numbers, marketing numbers, we share all of our revenue goals. Our team members have access to a hundred percent of our data. And I always tell them, “Hey, there’s only two things off limits. We’re not going to talk about people’s salaries and we’re not going to talk about legally protected information”. But I do eight sessions a year. It’s called Ask Me Anything. It’s Q and A sessions, and it’s on Zoom, anyone can come staff and faculty, and they can ask me anything and I’ll answer them.

And I think the more you’re accessible and willing to share information, I think that goes a long way for mental health because again, a lot of leaders think sharing bad news makes people worried. In reality, if you’re going through a tough time, whether it’s academically, financially, operational, whatever it is, people are smart, they’re going to figure it out. They know something’s wrong and they’re going to make it worse than it really is. because then the gossip starts. “Oh, do you think it’s bad? Oh, do you think you, you think we’re going to be around, you think it’s going to be layoffs? What’s going on?” These are professional adults. They’re smart people share everything. And timing is key. If you send out a memo saying, ” “hey no more office supplies for the rest of the year”, people go, “oh my gosh, no more office supplies. Oh, we’re in big trouble”. Well, that might not be the case. Tell them the why behind the what, share everything.

But more importantly, bring them into the design of the mitigation plan if something needs work. Work on it together, and then share the plan. How are we going to defeat this challenge? And when you do that. It’s a little counterintuitive because I think a lot of leaders think, oh, I can’t talk about the bad stuff. It’ll scare people away. In reality, people figure it out and they make it a lot worse than it really is. So just share it. And I think that goes a long way in mental health. And I think as executives, that’s our role to do that.

Drumm McNaughton: How many times have we seen votes of no confidence against some of the best institutions in the country, and arguably some of the best leaders in higher ed institutions because they have sugarcoated what’s going on. And then when the real news gets out there, they’ve already lost the trust of people.

Andy Vaughn: People get very angry and upset and they lose confidence in a leader if all of a sudden the bomb drops and it’s been building, someone’s been building that bomb, or the bomb’s been building itself for a number of months or years, and you go, wait a second, what? How did this happen? How did we get to this point?

In reality, when something is not going well in the early stages, it’s the right time to share it, because not only should people know, but they need to help you solve it. You can’t do this by yourself, and I think as leaders, we put mental health pressure on ourselves saying, “oh, I, I can’t show that I’m vulnerable”.

It’s quite the opposite. I think people appreciate when you share you don’t know all the answers. It’s not our job to know all the answers as a leader. It’s our job to figure out how to solve it in a collective manner and to communicate the challenge, the solution, mitigation possibilities, and motivate people to be involved and passionate about solving that challenge together.

It’s not up to us to solve the world’s problems alone. It is our job to activate our collective staff, faculty, whoever, the board, whoever’s involved in your university community, and do this together. It’s our job to motivate that.

Drumm McNaughton: I love the metaphor of the orchestra conductor. He or she is responsible, accountable for the sound that comes out, but they’re not necessarily playing the instruments.

Andy Vaughn: Yes, that’s a good analogy. I like that too. When I tell people where I work that don’t know higher ed all that well. They say, oh, are you a clinical psychologist yourself? I said, no. Gosh, no. I’d be a horrible therapist. No, I’m or psychologist, no, no. But that’s okay. It’s not my job to know the research area, I don’t come from the faculty side I come the operations, marketing, admissions side, and a lot more presidents today do. I said, “that’s not my role. My role is to not understand every last detail of what we teach, but rather to look at the macro level and know enough to be dangerous maybe, but to put us all together and make us one.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly. And to me that is the beauty of shared governance when “effective” is that everyone comes together to solve the institution’s problems and to get a shared vision that’s true to what the mission of the institution is.

Andy Vaughn: That’s right. And look, we’re not perfect at it. We make our mistakes, I make my mistakes, there’s no doubt about that. But I think the key is learning from those and getting better from those. And I think the other thing that helps us with mental health is, and Drumm, you might remember at Trident we did this too, coming up with a codified set of values that you follow. Because so many times organizations say, “oh Yes, we’ve got values”. Does your team really, if I asked 10 of your team members what percent will know what the values are? I guarantee that Alliant 10 outta 10 will know the impact values. They’ll quote them back to you because we talk about it in every meeting. We celebrate it with rewards and recognition for those that demonstrate behavior.

So when you have a codified set of values, this is how it helps mental health, everyone knows how to make decisions at the organization and the expectation level of how we do things. They also know how to behave. When I first got to Alliant, I saw people yelling in meetings. I saw all caps emails. I saw people, put their hand up in frustration. It’s “okay. Okay. One foundational word is respect. That’s the foundation where values are built, and then you come up with either aspirational values, that you don’t have yet that you wanna have or foundational values, these are things we’re already doing, let’s bring them up to a higher level. And we have six values. Three were foundational, three are aspirational. But once you have that in place, you don’t spend all your time getting people to behave a certain way. They just, this is codified set that’s already there and it’s our behaviors that then prop up those values. And that has gone a long way, I think, in mental health for us too.

Drumm McNaughton: You’re absolutely right, and that one on respect is so critical because respect is not only behaviors toward others, it’s behaviors towards yourself.

Andy Vaughn: Correct. It is, look, there’s going to be disagreements. I think every university has a faculty administration tension at some point. It’s just pretty

Drumm McNaughton: really.

Andy Vaughn: Yes Have you ever noticed that?

Drumm McNaughton: I’ve never noticed that.

Andy Vaughn: No. Is that new? And that’s, alright, some tension’s going to exist. I think everyone’s aligned on the mission and what the end result should be. We don’t always agree on how to get there, but one of the things we have to agree on in that middle part is how we behave. We can disagree, but my goodness, everybody, it better be respectful and professional. Can’t be yelling and demeaning and calling people names, making fun of people’s personal attributes. No, no, no, no. That’s not going to work. Unfortunately, we see a lot of that in DC today, and that’s not right. By the way, if we acted at work the way politicians act in 2025, most of us would be fired. That’s not acceptable.

Drumm McNaughton: Very true and all those things add to the mental health of a situation or lack thereof.

Andy Vaughn: Yes Don’t attack someone’s personal traits. Go after the challenge and the idea, but you know, you can do it in a professional way. You can disagree and still be friends or be colleagues and be professional to one another. And that’s really a key in helping mental health too.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes And you’ve seen me in action with this, one of the ground rules is, disagree with the idea, don’t be disagreeable to the person.

Andy Vaughn: That’s right. Yes I saw, I don’t remember which CEO it was and which article it was now it was in one of the business publications, but I saw one CEO say, “you know, one of the best qualities I think in a colleague is reasonableness. Doesn’t mean you have to agree, doesn’t mean you give in. It just being means being reasonable and thoughtful”.

Drumm McNaughton: Very much so.

[00:34:04] Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Drumm McNaughton: Andy, this has been a fabulous conversation. I definitely want you to come back again to let’s do an in-depth on strategy, because I know that is one of your strengths and I’ve admired you for it for a long period of time.

Andy Vaughn: Well Drumm. Thank you for that. I really appreciate the kind words and always a pleasure to talk to you. I’d be happy to come back anytime.

[00:34:23] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: Very good, sir. As we always do, the three takeaways for university presidents and boards. What do they need to be thinking about to make sure their key folks, and everybody at their institution, has good mental health?

Andy Vaughn: Number one, establish a set of codified values. Establish it and normalize it where everybody knows what they are, but more importantly, they know how to behave to prop up those values.

Number two, be transparent with information, good or bad. Share that early. Get people to understand what the challenges, define the monster. Define who the monster is, how big he is, and more importantly, how are you going to defeat him together?

Number three. Involve everybody, and I do mean everybody. When we have a challenge, even the part-time receptionist might come to that meeting because we need everybody on the same page. And with what’s about to happen in higher ed, there’s no room for error in the next couple of years on execution. And the only way you can execute is everybody has that same page of music, including your part-time employees. If everyone has to be involved in that, that’s the only way to execute. That’s what I’d leave you with.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you those are really good. It reminds me of one thing that anybody can develop, well, I shouldn’t say anybody can develop strategy, it takes a special mindset to develop strategy, but when implementing, you always put your best people on the implementation.

Andy Vaughn: Correct. Absolutely. Agreed. Agreed.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s clear from one of my friends from venture capitalists.

Andy Vaughn: And define what the priorities are, because if you don’t people will prioritize on their own and you’ve got to all be on the same top one or two.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly. Andy, what’s next for you? What’s next for Allient?

Andy Vaughn: Well, we just opened our new school of Nursing and Health Sciences at our Phoenix campus. It’s a new location for us in Arizona. We’re expanding into other health sciences programs. Mostly graduate level licensure programs, it’ll match our strategy on the psychology side and mental health licensure. Our school of education continues to grow in California and K-12 teacher training. But those three schools are really driving our success and we’re looking forward to investing more in health sciences programs in the next few years.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. I’m excited to see all the good news coming out of Alliant over the next few years. We will cycle back and do that podcast on strategy. Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been great to catch up with you.

Andy Vaughn: Thank you, Drumm, always a pleasure.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you sir. Take care.

Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest and friend, Andy Vaughn, president and CEO of Alliant International University. Andy, great to catch up with you in a good conversation. I look forward to the next time we get together.

For my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. We look forward to talking with you next week.