The Innovating Together Podcast

Today is a special episode of Start the Week with Wisdom. Bridget Burns is solo today,  introducing listeners to Dr. DeAngela Burns-Wallace. Later in the episode, we will have the chance to listen to a keynote speech given by Dr. Burns-Wallace. This episode will be a precursor to next week's episode, where you will get to hear directly from Dr. Burns Wallace.  In this keynote, Dr. Burns-Wallac...

In today’s episode of the Innovating Together Podcast, hosts Bridget Burns & Ian Wilhelm interview Drew Magliozzi, the CEO of Mainstay about the rise of ChatGPT and the impact of generative AI on college student success.   Drew, Bridget, and Ian discuss the breakthrough innovations of ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM), as well as the need for institutions to vet their technology partners ca...

In today's episode of the "Innovating Together Podcast”, Doug and Bridget are speaking with Dr. Jolene Koester, who is the interim Chancellor of the California State University System. She is also the former president of California State University, Northridge. Dr. Koester discussed the importance of building trust. This is especially true when it comes to leadership. Leaders must build trust in o...

Innovation Spotlight is a new show UIA created in partnership with The Chronicle of Higher Education. Ian and Bridget are the cohosts of the show, and Ian interviewed Bridget about the challenges she is observing on campuses across higher education, as well as the solutions she sees as useful to support advancing change. She talked about the challenge of turnover and transition as being the key ch...

Interview with University of LaVerne President Devorah Lieberman

Interview with CSU Fullerton President Framrose "Fram" Virjee

Today marks the 100th episode of the Innovating Together podcast, and Bridget Burns is in the hot seat to discuss the show's success. While the University Innovation Alliance has been around for several years, Weekly Wisdom just kicked off around the time of Covid. Bridget says it was needed for a variety of reasons, one being the palpable sense of people looking for optimism and leadership. The U...

Not even a year into her presidency role at UMBC, President Valerie Sheares Ashby feels right at home. The privilege of serving so many students, staff, and faculty is not lost on President Sheares Ashby. Always having had a central value around leadership, she has said if you turn a triangle upside down, the leader should be the point at the bottom. Everyone above you, you should be in service to...

As Secretary of Education for the state of Virginia, Dr. Dietra Trent had a lot of colleges, universities, and departments underneath her. All of those colleges and universities were independent, with no system tying them together. At the end of the day, Dr. Trent was working with the governor to convey his vision for higher education, while helping agencies to see how they fit into that vision. S...

As a licensed psychologist with more than 40 years of experience as an academician, scholar clinician, and administrator, Dr. Thomas A. Parham is well known for his work in African psychology and multicultural counseling. After serving faculty and students at the University of California, Irvine campus for over 30 years, President Parham took the presidency position at California State University,...

In this interview, Bridget responded to questions from the host of the Educated Guest, Todd Zipper. They discussed the goals and purpose behind the University Innovation Alliance, Bridget’s personal connection to the work, and what she and the UIA have learned over the past 9 years together. She focused on the need to prioritize empathy, which she clarified as being the first step of design. While...

Dr. Reyes had only been Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois for a year before he was given the position of Interim Chancellor in July of this year. It was a position Dr. Reyes didn’t expect to be in for a while. He went into it thinking it would be more of a team effort, but has quickly learned that, at the end of the day, the responsibility is on his shoulders. He’s...

As a third generation faculty member, President Taylor Randall has always been passionate about the University of Utah. President Randall served as a professor for over 10 years and Dean for over 12, before becoming the university's President last year. While making that transition, President Randall said he tried to assume that he didn’t know as much as he thought he did, and focused on listening...

Dr. Stephen Percy became the full time President at Portland State University in 2020. President Percy said the most surprising part of his career was, “It was not linear and certainly not what I was planning.” When asked about what change you see are needed in higher education. President Percy said, “higher education has been changing rapidly, and then you throw in the pandemic, which led to a lo...

Interview with University of Texas San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy

From engineering to higher education in public policy and research President Voight shared her background, “I took a pretty circuitous route to the position where I am now… I started out in civil engineering and minored in women’s studies. Then I worked in engineering for several years after college. I was consulting mostly for Departments of Transportation. What I realized was that even the perfe...

Leadership journey into academic leadership Paul LeBlanc has been President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) for going on twenty years. President LeBlanc’s journey started as a faculty member as a grad student when personal computers first arrived. He was a composition TA. The full-time faculty didn’t want to touch the new computers that were dumped on the school. The TA’s were the firs...

Academic Advising Panel

Interview with Arne Duncan, Former Secretary of Education

Interview with NVCC President Anne M. Kress

University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) President Loren Blanchard has moved back and forth between a campus and a system. Now as a University President he finds it takes “strong policies that need to be in place that can augment and give support to the work we are trying to get achieved to make sure that ultimately our students are going to graduate with knowledge, skills, and dispositions that empow...

Dr. Bridget Burns and Dr. Tiffany Polite from University Innovation Alliance (UIA) interviewed Dr. Amelia Parnell from NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Dr. Parnell wrote a book titled “You are a Data Person: Strategies for Using Analytics on Campus.” Her target audience is anyone who works in higher education in any position. She gathered context for the book by intervie...

“I have never been more excited,” said UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski in a recent Weekly Wisdom interview with UIA Executive Director Bridget Burns and Inside Higher Ed Editor and Co-Founder Doug Lederman. Dr. Hrabowski was reflecting on his plans to retire in June 2022 after thirty years as president of UMBC.  He is excited because the University is doing so well. Students, faculty, and st...

Interview with U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal

Background Today on the Innovating Together Podcast, we are interviewing President L. Song Richardson. President Richardson is the 14th President of Colorado College. She started in that position in the summer of 2021. Most recently, she was the Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. During this interview, we addressed leading during COVID, co...