Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed: mergers, closures and other major institutional restructuring Episode 5 of 7

In this 5th of 7 podcast episodes, Dr. Ricardo Azziz reviews aspects of leadership courage.

The basis of the podcast series is his new book:  Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed:  mergers, closures, and other major institutional restructuring.

Here are the questions Dr. Azziz answers in this podcast.

1. The 2017 closure of St. Josephs in Rensselaer IN is the case study for this chapter.  First, Let's talk about the lessons learned. The first one is. The need for governing boards to understand and accept the hard and sometimes ugly truth. There are colleges, probably many that cannot and will not survive.

2. The importance for big scary change leaders to engage directly- With faculty, staff, students, and community.   They really didn’t do this at St. Josephs.

3. There is considerable presidential turnover in higher education.  Ensuring financial due diligence is something both veteran and new college presidents should complete.  What has been your experience and challenges with college leaders struggling to engage and apply financial due diligence?

4. The importance of creating the right amount of urgency.  We have talked about this before.  Mergers in higher education cannot be slow-moving processes.

5. The last bullet point lesson learned is the need for extraordinary courage.  Expand on that, please.

6. Go back to the first ‘lesson learned’ one you have is the importance of always keeping student welfare front and center.  The book Requiem for a College.  It was written by Jonathan Nichols who was a faculty member present during the lead up and closure announcement.  It addressed in emotional detail the human impact of a closure.  

Talk about that in the context of when a college leadership team should share that their financial health is not good with their stakeholders.  We know that waiting too long negatively impacts students, faculty, and staff.

7. My contribution to this book is a section entitled:  ‘The Roots of Courage are in the data.’    The essence of the section is that it is the data in the form of  comparisons and trends is key in helping to sell mergers and even closures.  How challenging is it for college leaders to use data to sell their decision?