When most of us think of disruption in our institutions, we think of turnover, upheaval, cuts, a future state in which change to the status quo has the potential to negatively impact the team. Our guest this week has a different perspective.
191: Plymouth State President Donald Birx Faces Transformation Head-on in Clusters
190: Breaking the Curse of the Self-Delusion with Bentley's Gloria Larson
189: Preparing Grads for the World Beyond the Walls with Bentley President Gloria Larson
Bentley University President Gloria Larson returns to Navigating Change this week to share the story of her new book, Prepared U: How Innovative Colleges Drive Student Success. The book tells the story of our changing marketplace and asks some hard questions for institutions. At its core, how well are we pivoting to provide an education that meets the needs of a new kind of student, one who is prepared to enter the world with skills and sensibilities to engage in the global marketplace? And what does this mean for a new kind of teaching we need to embrace to meet this emerging student?
“How you go to college is more important than where you go to school,” says President Larson. “Employers want both hit-the-ground-running skill sets and very strong lifelong-learning capabilities.” In the book — and her work at Bentley University — Larson demonstrates the changes required for institutions to deliver both the hard skills and soft, and help cultivate graduates ready for the challenges ahead.
Links & Notes
188: Building Your Culture from the Bottom Up — The Operations Review
This week on the show, Howard Teibel leads us through a conversation about building this new muscle. You’ll have a better understanding of what it means to engage your community, what it means to work through problems collaboratively, and how to send the message throughout the enterprise that you truly care about what they believe are the most important issues you face together.
187: Developing the Skills of the Life-long Learner with Grant Lichtman
181: Breaking Down Barriers with University of La Verne President Devorah Lieberman
178: Gates Foundation’s Daniel Greenstein on Equity, Sustainability, and the Road to Opportunity
Dr. Daniel Greenstein serves as director of Education, Postsecondary Success in the United States Program, for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In our conversation this week, Dr. Greenstein takes us on a journey of student success, and presents powerful factors in sustainable financial success of our institutions. This is a conversation about innovation, disruption, and engaging in an effort to take on bold ideas in support of our own future as educators.
171: Looking to the Business Model for True Innovation
170: Next Gen Learners? Educators Must Adapt says Futurist Elliott Masie
“The biggest mistake we make is that we think the best subject matter experts will be the best teachers,” says our guest, Elliott Masie. He’s head of the Masie Center, a think tank focused on how organizations can support learning and knowledge in the workforce and he leads the Learning Consortium of over 200 global organizations cooperating on the evolution of learning strategies. This is how our conversation begins today, but certainly not where it ends.
168: Finding Inspiration on the Outside — Bringing Innovation to Higher Ed
You never know where good ideas are going to come from. We take it as axiomatic that inspiration comes from synchronicity, and too often we leave it at that, relegating the best ideas to the whimsy of luck.
This week on the show we’re challenging this commonly held wisdom thanks to our work with key partner, University of Colorado, in developing a process to cultivate synchronicity, to bring the right people together, and drive a change in culture that celebrates the incubation of great ideas.
167: Fixing the Cracks in the Academic Business Model with Bill Massy
Howard Teibel recently sat down with noted educator and prolific writer Dr. Bill Massy talk about our changing perception of universities as complex human systems. The advanced modeling work that Dr. Massy has created over his distinguished career has helped institutions around the world to better understand pedagogical performance improvement and the relationship of that work to administration and leadership through sound operational models.
157: Meet the dean of University of Colorado's first new college in 53 years
Dr. Lori Bergen is founding dean of the College of Media, Communication and Information at University of Colorado. A veteran journalist turned academic, she’s president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and serves on the national advisory board of the Poynter Institute. Prior to CU, she served as dean of the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University.
Dr. Bergen joins us this week to share the story of University of Colorado’s new college, one of program change, discontinuation, merger, and the challenges that come of progress at a time of concern in our field. CU’s CMCI is truly a story of innovation and growth in higher education and serves as a terrific role model.
Links & Notes
152: New America’s Amy Laitinen on Higher Ed Advocacy, Policy, and the Most Important Constituent
Our guest today is passionate about education. That, of course, could be said of any of us working in institutions across the country. Amy Laitinen doesn’t exercise her passion for education in the classroom, however. She fights for quality and transparency in Washington as director for Higher Education at New America.
Today on the show, Amy joins us to share her perspective on policy in higher ed, and the role of policy in fostering innovation and quality. There’s a gap, to be sure, and today we’ll discuss the complex competing factors that impact our ability to close it in our administrative conversations.
About Amy Laitinen
Amy Laitinen serves as director for higher education at New America. She’s served as a policy advisor on higher education at both the U.S. Department of Education and the White House. She was named by the Chronicle of Higher Education as one top ten innovators of 2013 for her work on federal policy and competency-based education. Today, her efforts are focused on crafting federal policies to increase quality and transparency in higher education.
Links & Notes
151: Goucher President José Bowen shares the power of improvisation in institutional leadership
How do we transform our institutions and learning models to meet the needs of tomorrow’s students? What does “student success” mean to the academic mission of tomorrow’s institutions? How do we better adapt the college experience to address complexity and transparency? José Bowen currently serves as the 11th president of Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and he joins us on the show today to help map the winding road toward student success. Along the way we learn a deceivingly valuable lesson of music: count on modulation and improvisation as a versatile leadership mentality.
Links & Notes
150: "A Voice, a Vote, or a Veto" — A Human Approach to Shared Governance
146: WACUBO Live — Outgoing Regional Presidents on the "Education Trust" and Innovation on Campus
This week we have the first in our live podcasts coming to you from the Western Association of College and University Business Officers Annual Conference in San Francisco. Howard Teibel is joined by the current regional association presidents in which they share their valuable insights in innovation, change, service, and the state of education in their regions.
The President's Roundtable Guests

Lynn Valenter
President, WACUBO
Vice Chancellor, Finance & Operations
Washington State University Vancouver

Lynne Schaefer
Chair, EACUBO
VP, Administration & Finance
University of Maryland Baltimore County

Ben Crutcher
President, SACUBO
AVP, Auxiliary Services
University of Kentucky
Peter Murtaugh
President, CACUBO
VP, Finance & Administration
Ranked Technical College
Thanks to all our guests for taking part in this wide-ranging conversation at the live event, and the WACUBO Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Photo courtesy Helen Norris, Chapman University
142: Managing for the Future while Solving Problems of Today with Bentley University President Gloria Larson
At this year’s EACUBO Annual Workshop in Boston, Howard Teibel shared the stage with Bentley University President Gloria Larson in a conversation titled Building and Supporting your Leadership Team that centered on how leadership teams communicate their shared vision for success across the institution. This week, we have a follow-up conversation between President Larson and Howard Teibel in which they share their observations and reflections.