RESOURCES:
Dr. Brendan Kelly begins service as 24th President of Eastern Michigan University
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU, and I am Caroline MacGregor. Eastern Michigan University has a new president, who has now been officially on the job since April 1st. Dr. Brendan Kelly was voted into the position by the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents on December 10th. He is EMU's 24th president, and he takes over the reins from Dr. Smith, who has retired. A proud two-time EMU alum and Michigan native, President Kelly is returning in a true homecoming fashion to lead the institution that basically helped him shape his academic and professional path. Dr. Kelly earned his bachelor's degree in public relations with a minor in philosophy and a master's in communication from Eastern. And his wife, Dr. Tressa Kelly, is also an EMU alumnus. Dr. Kelly, it's so good to have you with us here today!
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here!
Caroline MacGregor: You have now been in your role as president of EMU for just over a week now, but you were working here prior to your official starting date in your president-elect role preparing for the transition. And you bring tremendous experience to the position, having held many previous roles including as president for the University of West Georgia and, more recently, as president of Arkansas State University. Tell me about your transition and your decision to return home to your alma mater.
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Great place to start! One, the transition back to our alma mater is a really special one. Higher education is really hard right now, and it doesn't much matter what university you're at or what state you're in. It's just a very difficult, challenging business and one that is going through transformation and is going to continue to go through dramatic transformation for the years to come. So, if you're going to do really hard work, let's do it at the most meaningful place in your life. Let's go and be in service to people where you feel like it matters most. And serving this institution is something that's deeply meaningful for both the other Dr. Kelly and myself. So, that decision was, I won't say it was an easy one, but, man, it felt right. And then, the transition, I've been through this a number of times. So, I know a lot about presidential transition because of that. And the day I was named on December 10th, that's when I really started focusing in on Eastern Michigan in an operational sense, kind of the context of strategic planning and trying to find and understand the opportunities that are ahead. Universities are connected to their regional and state economies. They're connected to shifts in industry and politics and government. We are very unique intersection points, and we have to be nimble enough to both react to all of those forces and be proactive amidst those forces. That takes a lot of time and study and planning, understanding of people, and that's the process that I've been going through over the last few months.
Caroline MacGregor: To your point that we are in a pivotal moment, so to speak, for public higher education, you are taking on this role at a time where career readiness and affordability is top of mind for students and their families. EMU is down to 12,000-plus students today from over 21,000 students in the fall of 2016. That's a big drop in numbers. What is your vision moving forward to raise those numbers, given the difficulty of fundraising? And do you think that EMU would possibly focus on students who already have credits coming back to try and finish their degree?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: The hitter has been a profound drops in enrollment. There's no question about that. You know, one of the key focuses that we have to have is how do you connect the dots between a person who decides to become part of a university and what the future holds. And, frankly, we've had a lot of universities in the United States, and we are not immune to this variable here, where we designed the institution either around other institutions or around the expectations of the people who worked there, rather than the people we were serving as an institution. Career readiness should be top of mind for students, and it should be top of mind for every single person who works for Eastern Michigan University too. We should be finding unique, vibrant, new ways all the time, substantive ways to connect students into the industries that they want to be part of because I've served many universities around the country, and I have yet to meet a student, who says, "I do not want to go and participate in the economy after I graduate." They very much want to connect us to those opportunities. And it is incumbent upon us to find ways to deliver higher education that inherently embeds those connections to professional networks and to industry into the way we're delivering education. So, your question on would we want to service students to a previous college credit, I'd say two things. One, we already are serving those segments of students, but, two, 66% of the students who graduated with an undergraduate degree in America last year attended two or more institutions--66%! So, the notion of us even asking that question tells us that we are not focused enough on the actual reality that we have right now, which is one where people are going to get education in a wide variety of different ways, and we have to be equipped to be part of that journey. And sometimes, it's from beginning to end and sometimes, it starts with dual enrollment in high school and sometimes starts with graduate school after they've already earned a baccalaureate degree and had a career. And there's no reason why we can't play all of those roles. It's just making certain that we're designing the way in which we're delivering education around the needs and expectations of the student.
Caroline MacGregor: But there still has been quite a big drop in the number of students. What do you put that down to exactly?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Well, I've spent the last month talking to students, and that doesn't change in year five for me. I constantly talk to our end user consumers because us being in tune with their experience, not our perspective on their experience, but their experience the way they are living it, it gives us the best data on how we can be successful moving forward. And we start off those conversations with what's working and what's not working. Are you getting opportunities or aren't you getting opportunities? You know, I did a survey at another university. We track student experience. And I had a dean who said every single student who we service has an internship. And then, I asked the students, and the data showed otherwise. And now, if you looked at their transcripts, yes, they had some sort of internship, but the value of those experiences varied. Some high-quality experiences, some low-quality experiences. And students didn't view it as an internship if all they did was make coffee. They wanted to be involved in doing the work that they were training to do. So, all of a sudden, our target changed. It wasn't having an internship. It was having a high-quality internship that we had to monitor, that we have to make certain was providing that student with professional mentoring, with somebody who had the qualifications to provide them that professional mentoring. The standard just went up. As I've talked to students, our standard of excellence has varied. And my mantra is always the standard doesn't change. We set a very clear standard of excellence across the entire institution and then our behaviors function in relationship to that standard, rather than the standard changing based on our behaviors. And when I've got that feedback from students, I've found a host of ways in which we can, in some cases, get out of our own way and improve as a university, and others communicate better about what is available, what we're doing and why. But overall, if we want to have greater success as Eastern Michigan University, we have to make certain that we are 100% dialed in to the needs and expectations of those we're in service to. Those will change, they will morph over time, and we have be flexible enough to constantly be adapted.
Caroline MacGregor: Given all that you just stated, as a public institution that relies on public funding, obviously, fundraising is a huge part of the president's position. And with so many universities competing for a declining number of eligible students, how much more important is fundraising going to be moving forward, given the lower student pool?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: So, I don't know that it's a lower student pool. It's a low pool of students who fall into the traditional definition of what a college student is. But we have more people who need learning at a higher level than we've ever had before. And that's why I say we as universities have to adapt to that, because this is not a demographic issue. In many ways, it's a structural issue with the way in which we are connecting higher education, industry and making that an opportunity for those we're in service to. From a fundraising perspective, that has become a critical part of public higher education. And it's not the way in which we operate, right? Fundraising isn't key to us operating. Fundraising is key to us accelerating, meeting standards of excellence, innovating, being able to experiment, elevating opportunities for students that funding and, in general, revenue doesn't contribute to. I mean, I want to see extraordinary and transformational opportunities for students. And if we have to go out and raise money to make certain that we can provide those opportunities, I get really excited about that work, and I've spent a lot of years fundraising as a result of it. But we just have to understand that the purpose of that activity is about elevation, and I believe very strongly, both as a donor to universities and as somebody who has spent many, many years raising money for universities, I think people believe in giving gifts to that type of elevation in people's lives.
Caroline MacGregor: If you're just joining us, this is 89.1 WEMU, and we are talking with incoming Eastern Michigan University President, Dr. Brendan Kelly. The tenure for many university presidents is a lot shorter than it was in the past. You know, we're seeing shorter terms for university and college presidents. The average tenure fell from, I believe, eight-and-a-half years in 2006 to 5.9 in 2023. That's according to the latest American college president study from the American Council on Education. What does this say about the changing nature of higher education and higher education administration?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Oh, these jobs are incredibly hard! And I think 5.9 is generous.
Caroline MacGregor: It's a stressful position, isn't it?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Oh, they're terribly stressful! They take up every minute of every day, and I don't mean that during the week. I mean every minute of every single day. Look, I've been president before. I knew what I signed up for. The 10 years are shrinking. They're shrinking because of political pressures. They are shrinking because institutions make it very difficult for us to advance in the way we need to advance. The physical demands of these jobs are remarkable, and most people don't ever understand or appreciate that. I am fortunate to serve as the executive head of the New Presidents Academy for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. And so, we help develop a large number of new public university presidents every year. And that's one of the things that we start off with. You have to take care of your own health and wellness because nobody else will. Nobody else is going to remember the games you missed if you are president with young children. Nobody appreciates the kind of a constant incessant focus because you've got information coming from all sides and demands coming from every direction all of the time. That being said, it's important for us to do hard things. And I don't just mean presidents. It's important to us to lead. You know, just before I started at EMU in late February, as we were transiting from Little Rock, Arkansas here, I came across a quotation that a friend had shared with me not too long ago, and he said, "If you're interested in being friends with everybody, don't go into leadership. Sell ice cream."
Caroline MacGregor: Good point!
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Part of these jobs having a shorter term is just that the things that you have to do to help elevate institutions are really challenging, and they take a toll on people. And sometimes, they take the toll politically, socially, personally, whatever it is, and that results in people being able to tolerate that stress and those demands for a certain period of time. It's just different than it was years ago. If you go read books about university presidencies 25 or 30 years ago, you're not reading about the job that we do now, which it's pretty fascinating. I said at the board meeting when I was introduced on December 10th last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education did an article on the university presidency, and I believe it was entitled "The Impossible Presidency." And the first line of the article was, "Welcome to Hell," which I got to say, when I say it, I just chuckle, because I love this work. I am honored to do this work. My wife, Tressa, is honored to be involved in advocating for a university, especially ours. So, despite everything that we just said, I still get so excited to wake up in the morning and be able to come to work and affect this type of positive change in people's lives.
Caroline MacGregor: Your predecessor, Dr. Smith, he's a huge proponent of public media. How important is public media and the future of WEMU as the local NPR affiliate to you?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: That's a great question! Well, unlike my predecessor, I actually discovered jazz via this station because I was a student here and that was the benefit of being in Ypsilanti and being at Eastern Michigan. And I've had other public radio stations under my charge in the past. Look, these are really critical elements in communities and people don't really recognize how often they use the service until the service is threatened to go away. And then, they go, "Oh, wait a second! I listen to that every morning!" Well, of course you do. And for me, I think part of what makes a great university is us ensuring that we're providing things that people feel like they need in their lives. And this is something that I think a lot of people feel they need in their life.
Caroline MacGregor: Earlier, you mentioned the importance of internships. How do you see those being important at WEMU, for upcoming news people, for example?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Oh, I think every element of the university should be offering apprenticeships and internships at every turn. And I will tell you right now, the Office of the President is about to be a center point for that type of activity as well, because we have so much to teach students who are trying to develop professionally and having administrative apprenticeship programming should be a calling card for Eastern Michigan University. So, I think it's critical. I think if we're running any element of this institution and we're not providing students who are professionally developing to take the positions that we have, not that anybody goes and earns a degree in university president, right? But I've had a lot of students who say, "Hey, I want your job! How do I get there?" Well, first, we have to start by giving them a chance to do some of the work at a level that's appropriate for where they're at. And that should be in an environment where the work is substantive, where they get a chance to be involved and make mistakes and experiment and explore. So, I think it's absolutely critical, and that's how we get better. We get better by going out trying it and somebody who is better at it than we are saying, "Hey, let me show you how you can improve on the product that you just produced." I think a live-fire environment for students is what a university is here for.
Caroline MacGregor: Just lastly, onto lighter fare. Students have reported that there's not a tremendous amount of dining places around campus. The choices are low. Prices are high. What is going to happen about this moving forward?
Dr. Brendan Kelly: I'll start with we're going to change that service level. I've talked to a few hundred students about that. I've visited every single site where you can get any piece of food on this campus. We are having meetings this month to go and review where we're at and where we are going to be. The fact is, food is the center point in people's lives. That's certainly true for college students, and I want to make sure that, at Eastern Michigan, that's one that is a point of pride for students, rather than a point of angst.
Caroline MacGregor: Eastern Michigan University President Dr. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today!
Dr. Brendan Kelly: Absolutely! My pleasure! Anytime!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
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