846: From Silicon Valley to Appalachia - with Brad D. Smith, President, Marshall University

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience Podcast, where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio back with you again. I told you I was going to keep coming back. And of course, somebody that keeps me coming back every single day is my co-founder, Elvin Freitas, who has me booked out every single day until the middle of June-ish. This is, we're in March, beginning of March. So it's a ways out, but there's so many amazing people to interview in and around higher education that we just won't stop. You know, lately, we've passed four years. People come up and ask us both, you know, when are you guys going to stop? How long are you going to do this podcast? And the answer is forever. We're going to do it forever. Why? Because you keep listening and by listening, you let us know that you want to keep hearing these episodes and we're not going to stop where we are. 

What we are going to do, I will tell you this, is we are going to be live at Ellucian E-Live 2024, April 7th through 10th in San Antonio. And we'll be there over the eclipse. Ellucian is bringing amazing speakers. There's going to be thousands of people there talking about the future of higher education. It's a can't miss conference. I think we're bringing like eight microphones. We're going to have two podcasts going on simultaneously. Elvin's probably going to get on a mic and do his thing. It's going to be a great conference. We hope to see you there. 

And that said, the guest co-host that I have with me today has - it's been a long time coming. In fact, we thought she was going to guest co-host and then she wasn't and then she is - it's just been rumored that she would come on. We finally pinned her down. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen. She is the chief transformation officer at Ellucian. She is Melissa King. Melissa, welcome to an EdUp mic.

Melissa King: Hey, Joe. Thanks for having me today. Very excited to be here and to have my debut in your co-host seat, especially given all the really exciting topics we've been discussing recently with some of the leadership teams and tech companies across higher education. There's a lot going on in higher ed right now, isn't there? It's crazy how much artificial intelligence has already changed things. There's been leadership changes, the value of higher ed conversation, just so many things to talk about, Melissa, and you know, probably better than most because you're working with so many institutions at Ellucian. I feel like, in my opinion, the time is now for higher education.

Joe Sallustio: We've been through some bumps, but there is a recognition that there is no greater gift than the gift of higher education or post-secondary education for us as humans. What are you guys talking about at Ellucian right now?

Melissa King: Absolutely. The time is definitely now. And I think, you know, that the pressure point is the how, right? So if this is the moment behind all of the momentum, how do we best align our strategy and our execution so we're realizing the opportunity? So I think that that is probably the biggest thing that we hear unanimously across all the institutions that we have the privilege to partner with.

Joe Sallustio: Well, you know what? We brought a special guest to answer all of the how questions. We're just going to say, how do you do this? How do you do that? And we're going to hope that he gives us precise word by word answers for every single burning question we have. And you have no, he's not going to really do that. He's going to give us his opinion. And I bet it's going to be a good one. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. He's Brad D. Smith. He is the president of Marshall University. Brad, welcome to an EdUp Microphone.

Brad D. Smith: Hey, Joe, I'm doing great. It's great to be with you and Melissa. I understand I'm the 266th university president that you've had. I would say you've moved me too far up the list at 266, although my mom would claim I'm number one in her heart. So I'll go with that.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, I'm not surprised that your mom would select you as number one. By the way, you know what? It's funny because we've interviewed so many presidents and your story is so unique. So every president is one of one. There's so many different passions. That's why I'm so excited to talk with you today because you bring such a different perspective to the industry. And no two passions of any of the presidents that we've interviewed are the same. Everybody has their own lens that they're approaching their job through. So tell us a little bit about your story. Was it tripping and falling into higher education? Maybe you came into higher ed with laser focused intention. Would you just give us your little bit of background? Where do you come from on how you ended up at Marshall University as president?

Brad D. Smith: Oh, it's a full circle story, Joe. I grew up in the little town just outside of Marshall, population 3000. I graduated from Marshall University in 1986. That prepared me for an amazing 36 year journey that took me through four industries in 10 states. It culminated in Silicon Valley where I was the CEO of the company Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks and MailChimp and Credit Karma and the products that you use for FinTech. And was serving as the chairman of the board of directors and our philanthropy, our family foundation was focused on leveling the playing field of opportunity back home in Appalachia. And the name of the foundation is Wing to Wing Foundation and we focus on education, entrepreneurship and the environment.

And through a series of those efforts, someone said, hey, the president's thinking about stepping down at your alma mater. I reached out to try to convince him otherwise. And instead he said, you ought to put your name in the hat. And there were 107 candidates. I went through the process like everyone else, the only non-traditional candidate to go through and somehow emerged out the other side. So I would say to you, it was serendipity. But as Mark Twain said, the two most important days in your life are the day you're born and the day you discover why. I have discovered my why.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. What a story. You know, it's interesting. 107 people apply for the job. You're the non-traditional candidate. You end up as president. Now you're the non-traditional president. But the job of a president has changed over the years. And we'll talk about that later. But I do want to talk about Appalachia a little bit. You know, it's been in the news. There's been shows about opioid crisis that were prevalent in the area. There's the Netflix stuff. I saw an article recently that West Virginia was lowest of all the states on college attainment. And then you move back to where you are. And there's a reason why you're doing this. You're also a first gen student. Tell us more about that. Why are you here? Because you don't have to be - anybody that looks at your background and goes, man, he could be in Maui right now. He could be chilling on a beach doing whatever he wants. You know, you put in a lot of years into your career in tech and business. Tell us more about your why.

Brad D. Smith: Well, first of all, Joe, thank you for the kind words. I'm not sure I had any choice of anything. I felt a calling to come home. One of my favorite songs is Humble and Kind by Tim McGraw. And when he says, when you get to where you're going, don't forget to stop and turn back around and help the next one in line. And so for me, I am a first gen student who had the chance to go to college. It changed my entire life. It changed my family's life and for generations to come. And I want to pay that opportunity forward. And then when you're in Silicon Valley, you learn techniques like design thinking and the greatest innovations occur closest to the problem. And what you described in West Virginia and Appalachia is true. There are lots of things here that West Virginia is trying to navigate its way through, but that's where the greatest innovation occurs. And where else to do that than on a university campus.

So we have really leaned into those opportunities as opposed to problems. And we're looking for innovative ways to help the rest of the world solve them as well. And that's happening right now as we speak. So I'm very excited. Two years into this project, we have some really exciting initiatives underway.

Joe Sallustio: That's a fact. That's a fact. Brad, I want to ask you more about those initiatives. But before I do, let's get the mic over to Melissa, who's been ready for this. Melissa, you have been ready, haven't you?

Melissa King: I'm ready for this and I have to admit, you know, non-traditional candidate, you know, aside, your story has been amazing. And it would be remiss of me if I didn't tell you that I went on a bit of a rabbit hole fan girl moment in learning more about you and your background. And, you know, one of the things that just struck me in the way that you just synthesized your purpose and you were really intentional around, you know, stepping into the role around trading, you know, your profession for a purpose. But you've also anchored your strategy on seeing the problem, but also keeping the focus on the opportunity and guided by the desire to dream bigger. I think I have it right. Like that was, that's a really compelling rally cry, if you will, for your institution, for your community, for your stakeholders. How did that start to shape kind of your initial strategy and some of your transition into the role?

Brad D. Smith: Thank you, Melissa. I am so humbled by what you just said. And I have to say, I did the same thing. I went out and did background research on both of you. And so I'm sitting here as a fan boy, so excited to have the opportunity to spend time with you and with Joe. I'll start with what my mother taught me early on. I have two ears and one mouth and I should use them in that ratio. So when someone even put the idea of a potential candidacy for a university president, the first thing I said is I'm so unqualified. I couldn't go in and do honor to the alma mater and I'm afraid that I would mess things up. And they said, why don't you do a little research? So I did. I reached out to 18 sitting and former presidents of universities, many of whom are non-traditional. I read every book I could get my hands on. I visited a half a dozen campuses, including shadowing Michael Crow at Arizona State University for a couple of days.

And then ultimately started to develop some hypotheses of, I wonder if these things could apply at a place like Marshall University and help solve problems in Appalachia. But then when I showed up on campus and was ultimately selected, I went on a listening tour, like many do, and we had 38 sessions, 1000 participants in the community, over 1200 ideas. And what was amazing is there was a lot of pattern recognition between what they were saying and what I had seen at these other campuses and visiting these other presidents. And that started to form what has ultimately become a plan called Marshall for All, Marshall Forever. And what gets me excited is the campus describes it as our plan. We wrote this. They see their fingerprints on it and that has really galvanized our efforts. But that's really what allowed me to come in with both a hypothesis, but ultimately get it validated and refined by the campus so that we collectively own it.

Joe Sallustio: I like your style, dude. You know, I have to tell you the president that I work for, John Porter, he's a 33 year veteran of IBM and coming to Lindum was his first gig in higher ed. And if you sit him down and you ask him, what did you expect from higher ed? What did you not expect from higher ed? He'd probably write you a dissertation if you asked him. Because when you come from the corporate world, things seem to work at a different speed. There's different urgency, a hyper focus on the customer, product and verticals and scale and some of the things that higher ed doesn't understand entirely as an industry or there maybe aren't that many examples of. Can you talk about the shock and awe parts of Higher Ed that you experienced? What did you expect that was exactly the way you expected it to be? And what things did you see and you went, huh, that's a little bit different than I thought it would have been. You must have had those moments going home at night, talking to your family, going, this is a very different industry that I work in today.

Brad D. Smith: You know, Joe, I love the question and I'll answer it with what surprised me to the upside and then what surprised me to the downside that I felt we were going to have to reconcile if we were going to achieve the dreams that we collectively set. So the surprise of the upside happened my very first day on campus. And it was in January of 2022 and a snowstorm and unseasonably large amount of snow hit the campus the day we were supposed to be welcoming students on campus. So I was once again reminded that people like superintendents and presidents get up early at 4:30 in the morning and call into the university physical plant team and say, can we open or not? Have we got to delay for two hours? When I dialed in for that first call before I'd even stepped foot on my official first day on campus, I was informed that our staff and faculty had come in the night before, had slept in their offices, had put the salt out, cleared the sidewalks, and we were welcoming people on campus. And I said to them, in all of my years of working incredibly customer focused companies, I had never ever served with a team that slept in their office, got up in the morning, salted the sidewalks and made sure people could show up safe. So I was reminded of how purpose driven an institution like a university is and it really warmed my heart. 

Now the opposite side was something we took on immediately. We talked about shared governance. There was appropriate nervousness. Someone coming in from the outside who didn't understand the traditions of higher ed, would they honor shared governance? I've always believed in the power of the we, all of us collectively making decisions. And so what I asked them to do is why don't we become the gold standard of shared governance? Let's go out and study all the universities that we admire and let's talk about the things we feel like haven't always been present. I only have one constraint. It comes from the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. In nature, it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow. So if we can be the fastest moving shared governance institution in the United States and around the world, I will buy in. And to their credit, they came back with a model we've implemented and we're moving faster. So to your point, that's the thing we have to continue to focus on is velocity of idea to impact.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, that might be the biggest oxymoron in the history of higher education - fast shared governance. Melissa, you work with so many higher ed institutions. Is fast shared governance possible?

Melissa King: It definitely is. And I think sometimes higher ed buys too much into this notion that it can't change and that, you know, it moves at a glacial pace. But one of the things that, you know, you didn't just stand up your shared governance team, you held them accountable to what looks like a reporting cadence back to your community and really, you know, started to create the momentum for those voices to come together. And it doesn't look like, you know, maybe a lot of clarity and I'd love to hear a little bit more. How did you bring the feedback into the process, but also not confuse collaboration and consensus? Because those can be very, very different things, but the feedback and shaping the prioritization and the focus and really the execution of this team looks to be, you know, a critical success ingredient.

Brad D. Smith: Thank you, Melissa. And two very important points that you just teased out. I'll start first with how do we shape the feedback and turn it into action? One of the things I wanted to do early on was demonstrate trust and credibility. And so when you do listening tours, we recorded all 38 sessions and then we actually sent the transcripts to an outside firm to use natural language processing to look for what were the themes and the patterns. So I didn't have my fingerprints on it. We played back what they said and then we took what we heard and we broke them down into the big five priorities and the big five no regret decisions that we would take action on immediately. And part of that, for example, the big five priorities, one was we need to develop a vision and strategy for the future. We have to be a 21st century academy. So we formed a vision and strategy steering committee, made up of shared governance counterparts. And we said, we're going to get this done in less than nine months. And we actually got it done in six months. So that was sort of one way is they collectively knew that their voice was heard. It became our priorities. We put teams on it and then we time constrained it. So that was, that was one.

The second question that you asked, and I want to try to make sure I get to the crux of what you're really looking for, was it the, do you get consensus versus collaboration? How do you tease those apart?

Melissa King: Yeah, a little bit, because I think sometimes what slows higher education down is this really embracing being collegial means you need to all be together and have the same point of view, but really you need to figure out how to bring those different perspectives forward to center on the right outcome. So feedback, incredibly important. But influence, I think in your plan and your action, I'd love to hear how you kind of took those 38 sessions and rationalize it. I love the integration of AI, but in terms of just where you'd place that focus as a team.

Brad D. Smith: Yeah, so what we ended up doing is we rolled out a tool, which is used often in other institutions and certainly in private industry, called a DACI. And the DACI is, okay, who's the driver of this particular initiative? Then the second is who will be accountable approvers and you could have no more than two. And then who will be the pre-decision contributors? That's the C and then who needs to be informed of the ultimate decision so they know what role they play in the execution. And so up front we developed this model to say, OK, who will be the chair of this particular task force? Who will be the one maybe two ultimate decision makers that will break the ties? Who do we need to make sure is included before the decision so your voice is heard? And then how do we communicate out? 

And that took some time because we had to tease apart who has the unequal vote when it comes to this particular decision. For example, what's taught in the classroom versus what we do on the physical plan. And once we worked through that part, which came through that shared governance model that I talked about, we were able to start to move through the decision-making process and we've gotten comfortable now. We do have a small group. I will use a reference from the Godfather. You may recognize the heads of the five families. So we actually have a chair of the faculty senate, the chair of classified staff, the chair of non-classified staff, the president of the student government, and then me. And those are the heads of the five families. And on big decisions that come up in real time, we convene the five families and we will scrimmage the ideas and thoughts, and then we'll make a decision on behalf of the collective campus community.

Joe Sallustio: Are you in or out? I love this when we start talking about innovation in higher ed, right? Because this is, and you're seeing it, Brad, you know, there are schools down the road from you finding out about huge budget deficits and you go, one of the questions I think, you know, anybody who's really watching financials of higher ed closely is how do you just find out about budget deficits that are so large? You know, we've got this budget deficit, all of a sudden, does that really actually happen that way? 

And I come from for-profit higher education. And that's really where I cut my teeth, I should say. And you just did not run deficits in for-profit higher ed. If you were you were moving on to your next institution, it just didn't happen. And I find nonprofit higher ed, it's definitely more common that you're running an approved deficit. You know, you get this approved deficit where your revenue is lower than your expense line. And you're basically accepting a loss of money. This conversation actually exists. And one of the skill sets of the future we found, and it was pulled that way in "Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education" that I co-wrote with Kate Colbert, that financial acumen is critical for a president. When you came into Marshall, was financials looking, digging into those financials a huge priority for you? You know, you talked about gaining trust, but did you dive into those financials and say, what is going on? How do we talk about the debt, the deficit that we're in? How do we talk about expense management? Where was that in your thinking?

Brad D. Smith: Yes. And I will say that we also walked into a scenario where we have a $28 million structural deficit that we've now worked its way down into the high teens. We have a multi-year plan to get that going in a good direction without disrupting the core of what is important in higher ed. But to do that, to answer your question, the first is a set of priorities that emerged from the campus community that aligned towards that goal. They felt like there wasn't as much transparency as they wished around where are we sitting financially because they were hearing the rumblings of other institutions. And so we began to be very transparent. I adopted a term from Intuit, which is facts are friendly, whether they tell you what you want to hear or not. And so we shared very openly. This is where we sit.

And then we mapped out a game plan, a strategic enrollment management plan, a program called Save to Serve, where we're actually going to focus on supplies and other services, not personnel, but areas where we had allowed our growing, our increases to grow faster than our revenue. And so we really started to tackle it as a community and we're chipping away at it. And then we've got some transformational things that'll close the gap. But to answer your question, there were two things we did. One was transparency on the financials.

And the other is we've trained everyone on the campus in design thinking. The board of governors, the administration, the deans, the chairs of the departments, faculty, and now all first year freshmen. And if you know anything about design thinking, which I know both of you would, but for those listening may not, I'll boil it down into Stanford Design School really sort of helped originate it. It is popular throughout the tech sector. It has three phases. First, you fall in love with the problem. You go deep with empathy to get to root cause. The second is then you go broad to go narrow. You come up with at least seven different ways to solve the problem, not one. You don't fall in love with the idea. You fall in love with the problem and come up with seven different ways. And then the third is you run rapid, low cost experiments to figure out which one is going to move the needle the most. 

So that's helping us with agility, but it's also helping us kind of own the problem together. And we're running a lot of different experiments on campus to try to close that gap and get growth going in another direction. And I'm pleased to tell you after a 13 year consecutive decline in enrollment, this year we turned it around. We grew total enrollment 4.5% and first year freshmen 13.5%. And that is against the secular headwinds that many of us are talking about and in this state in particular. So I'm excited people feel ownership and they're empowered to do something about it.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, I'll hand it back to you, but I just want to know how important the concept of transparency is. The minute you tell everyone, you know, here's where we're going to go. Here's the information. It can bring people in and they ask how they can be a part of it. So I just want to double down. I think that's such an important point.

Melissa King: I think it's important as well as the agility, right? So in terms of pressure testing, those hypotheses, when you want to fail, you know, you're experimenting and you're going to take a risk and making folks comfortable with that. Not everything's going to get you to the impact that you desired, but the learnings that you're connecting to that, you know, that experimentation culture, so that there's maybe less fear to take that risk, to try to make the adjustment, to see what returns. Are you also connecting some of those learnings back to the communications you share with your community in terms of what you take away from the process?

Brad D. Smith: Melissa, that is such an important point and probably one of the harder things that I did not anticipate coming into higher ed. I forgot what it felt like to get a paper back and have points deducted for being wrong. And that's sort of the culture we reinforce here when we grade work. And so to have a mindset that says, it's the number of at bats, not necessarily whether you got every single, a hit every time you're at bat, just get up there and run more experiments and figure out which one's going to work. That really took a little bit of massaging and getting comfortable. But now we're celebrating the velocity of learning and that velocity of learning is leading to higher impact results.

But that part was the hard part. But that's why I loved what you asked in conjunction with what Joe asked, because Joe's point of transparency was key. But then we needed a tool set to take ownership of the problem so everyone could be a part of solving it. And that's where design thinking has come in.

Joe Sallustio: It's not what you know. It's what you can prove. See, Melissa, I brought the right sound effects for the day. Someday, I think we're going to have to see this mysterious soundboard that's behind the magic of the Ed-Up experience.

Melissa King: Melissa, when I see you in about a month, you can sit down and you can use it, can press every button that you want.

Joe Sallustio: All right, Brad, I'm going to hold into that. So we've got that one on record. You know, Brad, just a transition, I got to ask you because you know, your background is, you know, intimidating, right? If you're a faculty member, a staff member, you look at what you've done in business and industry, and it can be where somebody looks at your background goes, Wow, I don't understand that world that is an intimidating world. This dude is real life big, you know, driving huge organizations, huge training and all these things that you know, so much global information that you have at your fingertips in that type of role as CEO. Then you come into higher education and the average staff or faculty member might look at and feel very uncertain. You know, what's going on? What is this going to mean for me? Are we going through staff cuts on day one? Because that's a way a corporate guy like Brad works. You just start cutting 10,000 employees because that's what people read about the corporate world. How did you tackle that level of inertia because it must have existed on some level.

Brad D. Smith: Absolutely, Joe. I will say to you that the interview process was the most arduous, grueling process I've ever gone through. There were 16 off-campus candidate interviews, and then five of us were invited on campus. I was the only non-traditional president. Some of the press thought, hey, it's the first alum. We know him because he's been giving back to the school, so this is a shoe in. It was not a shoe in. The faculty had great questions. The students had questions in the community and so I wasn't certain to be frank with you. My wife and I did not think that we would come out the other side and we were OK because we were committed to Marshall no matter what. 

So I will say right off the bat that was the first test and one of the things I love most is they asked me about my point of view on liberal arts and my point of view is I don't believe liberal arts suffers from a relevancy challenge. It suffers from a branding challenge. When you ask employers out there what they wish for out of college graduates, they want more critical thinking, communication, collaboration and teamwork, and that's liberal arts. We need that more than anything. And so my view is how do we make sure that people know what you're building in terms of capabilities and skills and well-rounded citizens? And I think that helped. And that was one. 

The second is I just asked to be known as Brad from Kenova, which is a small town I grew up in, which by the way is where the plane crashed in 1970 that took the lives of the Marshall football team. So I was six years old and watched that mountain burn when that happened. And so they knew my story, but I didn't want to be President Smith. We have an iconic president Smith that served this university for 22 years, about 50 years ago. He should be in the history books. I'm just Brad. And so that sort of helped.

And then the last was I will share one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa. She said you can do things I cannot. I can do things you cannot and perhaps together we can do amazing things. I don't know and understand higher education the way the faculty and the staff do, but I can help with resources. I can help with bringing in people that can help us with AGI and some of the other things. So what we tried to do is complement each other and I think that slowly over a couple years help people see that we're better together than we are apart.

Joe Sallustio: Great points. Melissa, back over to you.

Melissa King: Yeah, well, maybe we can pivot in another direction because there's one component of the Marshall strategy that I'd love to hear a bit more about, and that is Marshall for All because I think there's a lot of innovation in the idea and the goal that's been set for that program. Can you share a little bit about the genesis of Marshall for All and where you're at in year one?

Brad D. Smith: So I'll give you a little bit of context about Marshall University and who we serve. And then I'll put it into the context of that listening tour that we started with and how we turned that into a strategy. And then I'll just touch on a couple of key points of Marshall for All. So this year, Marshall will have 57% of our freshman class will be first in their family to go to college. 27% of our students come from families below the poverty line. Only 10% of our students come from families whose combined household income is more than $110,000. But when you look at our 120,000 alumni, they include admirals and generals, Fortune 500 CEOs, Emmy, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize award winners, scientists, doctors. So they go into this out of humble beginnings and go out and change the world. 

And so what we want to do is ensure that whatever we came up with was the most welcoming, inclusive, and supporting environment for anyone to come and achieve their dreams. And that is the Marshall for All aspect. The Marshall Forever aspect, as we understand now, it's moved from higher learning to continuous learning. We know that the half-life of a college education is a handful of years. We know the velocity and pace of change is so fast that if you look at the knowledge doubling curve that Buckminster Fuller coined back in 1980s, it took 100 years for all of human knowledge to double in the year 1900. It's now doubling every 12 hours in this decade.

So we have to think about micro credentials and certificates. And so we're actually taking all of our curriculum and starting to launch these stackable credits and credentials. So that even after you leave the campus, if they launch chat GPT and AGI and you learned how to code in Python, you want to learn how to write prompts, you can come back and take a certificate through Marshall and stay relevant in your current job. And so it's a continuous learning experiment. To do all of that, what we wanted to do was set some bold goals. So we developed in the Marshall for All, Marshall Forever strategic roadmap as a community, a campus community. And in 2037 we will have our 200th anniversary. And so we said what we want to do is we want to have in 2037 100% of our students will graduate with the job of their choice and no student will leave here with student loan debt.

When it comes to innovation, we want to grow our research grants and contracts from $65 million today to $150 million. And we want to increase the number of startups in our state by 3X by teaching them design thinking and bringing them together with the right mentorship so that they can get their businesses up and running. And then the last is economic impact. Today, for every dollar the state invests in Marshall, we give a 14X return. Our goal is to make it 30X, which will be $2.5 billion a year. And those are our aspirations. And what we've done is simply adopted three phases and in-demand curriculum. It's now available on demand, whether it's in the classroom or in a hybrid class online. And then we've chosen six areas where we can be distinctive and we have evidence to show that we can compete with anyone in the world. And those six areas have really what's given us the lift over the last two years.

Melissa King: So many follow ups in terms of the, you know, the areas of distinction and just anticipating some of the future needs. How are you keeping your team focused on what are the skills? Because you're a market ready workforce is another big component. How are you keeping yourselves informed around the skills that are needed today, but also looking forward on leveraging those areas of distinction to fill the future needs of work? Because it's a balancing of the now and the next, as you think about preparing that next generation workforce.

Brad D. Smith: It is, and I'll start with the skills and it'll once again bring back design thinking. I mentioned earlier, we've trained pretty much the entire campus and now we're embedding it into a program for all first year freshmen. And what makes that special is the learning not only happens in the classroom, but we're asking our students to adopt a problem in the community and use that as a hands-on case study to see if they can actually drive an improvement in that business or that nonprofit or the city's sort of results. And so what we're doing already is we're making sure what we're teaching in the classroom is relevant to the community in which we serve. So that's kind of helping us develop the skills and the contextual understanding for a student of how this applies in the real world. 

The six areas of distinction, we had a head start. In 2016, the state, in addition to Marshall and West Virginia University had hired McKinsey Consulting to come in and do a classic customer driven innovation. Where is a big important problem happening in the world that West Virginia has demonstrated it has the skills, the experience and the education to solve well. And then what could West Virginia do that's pretty durable and competitively differentiated from anyone else? And it pointed us to six areas: cybersecurity, rural health, manufacturing. We still do things with our hands here. If your car breaks down, break down in West Virginia, cause someone will be kind enough to stop and crafty enough to fix it. So the fourth is energy, we're an energy state. The fifth is aviation and the sixth is entrepreneurship. 

And so nothing had really been done with that work. It kind of got published, people talked about it. So when we went through our campus wide strategy session, we said, let's pick those six areas. Let's set up centers of excellence with interdisciplinary clusters and let's go after it. And in two years, we just got designated the East Coast Hub for Cybersecurity by the Department of Defense. The West Coast is San Antonio, Texas. The East Coast is Marshall University, and we got a $45 million grant to build an Institute for Cybersecurity right here in West Virginia because we leaned into that. And so those are the kinds of things that are helping us really differentiate, but we're preparing our students for skills needed by solving problems in the community using design thinking. And then with these six areas we've really leaned into based upon the work with McKinsey.

Joe Sallustio: Nailed it. Everything you said is so good because underneath the it's underneath the covers of what happens tactically at a university to really boost the relevance of a degree, right? I want to go back to what you said, kind of bring it forward, which is that we have this marketing problem around liberal arts, around education in general. I've said it on this podcast a million times that what we have in higher education is a packaging problem where we know what we do is is good, that people need it. And we've taken a lot of shots recently over the last couple of years and maybe lost confidence or lost our way in how we communicate that good that we're contributing to society like I talked about at the beginning of the episode. 

You know, we haven't, maybe we haven't updated our curriculum in two years. Okay, so you're telling us that we need to do that. We're going to do it. We're going to bring in colleagues of Brad. We're going to, when you were at Intuit and other companies, and we're going to say, you know, what do you need exactly? And institutions are doing that more and more. And then there's power skills or durable skills, right? You have to critically think, you have to learn through technology, you know, but technology isn't going to teach you how to deal with people. So we need to give you those skills on how to be a leader, how to kind of critically think how to problem solve, you know, how to collaborate, how to move people along with you. That comes from this experience of getting a college degree. Now, some are along the line with all the poking. Right. It's like, like an air mattress and opinion, and you're just poking holes in it. And over time, it's just getting more and more deflated. You know, that's kind of what it has felt like to be in higher education last couple of years. You know, you could just squeeze us and we're going flat. Can you tell the story about or your opinion of this and higher education value in the marketing packaging problem that we have?

Brad D. Smith: I would just say exclamation point to everything you just said. Not only did I experience it personally, I got a great education here at Marshall. I showed up on the West Coast, had a chance to work side by side with people who went to incredible schools. And everything that I learned at Marshall, they learned in their school and were able to stand shoulder to shoulder and get it done. Liberal arts, a well-rounded education system is the foundation. You will learn the new skills. When I graduated from Marshall, we were coding in COBOL and FORTRAN. When I left Silicon Valley, it was Python and prompts for AGI. The number of iterations from C, C++, C#, you know, Java, you go through it. It changed so many times and I learned those skills on the job. But what I learned at Marshall University has carried through a lifetime. 

And it reminds me of today. You know, we have a challenge with listening to opposing points of view. And I remind people it was once said about Martin Luther King. What made him special during his era is he learned to speak without being offensive. He learned to listen without being defensive and he left his adversary with their dignity at the end of disagreement. That is what a great college education teaches you. It teaches you critical thinking, communication skills, how to be kind and open-minded to other alternatives. And I think that is what we have to continue to embrace and let people see.

Joe Sallustio: Well, we're going to interrupt this episode for a little fun exercise I put together for Brad and Melissa today. I'm experimenting with this. There's a podcast that I listen to that does this, but for something entirely different. I said, how do I take this concept and bring it to higher ed so I can learn more about my guest or my co-host without actually doing like question buildups. It's just gonna tell me more about them. You guys ready?

Brad D. Smith: Absolutely.

Joe Sallustio: You gotta choose one or the other or neither or both, right? So you gotta say that I like this one or I don't like either of them. All here we go. Melissa, we're gonna start with you so that if you mess it up, it's not our guest that has to pay the price.

Melissa King: That's fair, totally fair.

Joe Sallustio: All right, here's your choices. Let's table that or I'll circle back.

Melissa King: Neither.

Joe Sallustio: Brad. Let's table that or I'll circle back.

Brad D. Smith: Neither of those.

Joe Sallustio: All right. Melissa, Teams or Zoom?

Melissa King: Zoom.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, Teams or Zoom?

Brad D. Smith: Teams with Co-Pilot Pro.

Joe Sallustio: Ooh, I like that. That was definitely the better answer. Brad, early morning meeting or late afternoon meeting?

Brad D. Smith: Early morning meeting.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, did you see hearts start coming out of Brad's hand?

Melissa King: I did, I did. That's pretty cool. I don't know how he just did that.

Joe Sallustio: I don't know how this is happening. See, we're both - must be a MacBook. It's probably only MacBooks do that kind of stuff. Actually, for that one, I'm going to say both.

Melissa King: Both?

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, LinkedIn or X formally Twitter?

Melissa King: LinkedIn.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, LinkedIn or X?

Brad D. Smith: LinkedIn.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, you and your 438,000 followers that you have on LinkedIn. Melissa, pedagogy or pedagogy?

Melissa King: Pedagogy.

Joe Sallustio: Brad?

Brad D. Smith: Pedagogy, just like Appalachia. By the way, that word, that's a made up word, pedagogy or pedagogy.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, enrollment or fundraising?

Melissa King: Ooh, enrollment.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, enrollment or fundraising?

Brad D. Smith: Enrollment.

Joe Sallustio: Okay, here's a hard one. Brad, student or learner?

Brad D. Smith: Learner.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa?

Melissa King: Learner.

Joe Sallustio: Ooh, I like it. Final, final one. Melissa, committee or council?

Melissa King: Council.

Joe Sallustio: Brad, committee or council?

Brad D. Smith: Ditto, council.

Joe Sallustio: I gotta say, that was a lot of fun. This or that, higher ed version. We're gonna do this in the episodes moving forward, and as you can tell, I forgot to turn on my microphone during the last segment. I'm going to hand it back to Melissa for any final questions before we hit the final two.

Melissa King: All right, sounds good. So you got a lot of questions around the transition into Marshall, you know, and your background. I'm curious, you know, with your sophomore year really starting to come to a close, what are learnings that you have now that you look to carry forward into next year?

Brad D. Smith: I learned in private industry and now I have lived that the first year you come in, you know nothing and you're trying to figure out the acronyms and figure out the rhythm. And then year two, you're lapping yourself and saying, okay, now can I see a pattern here? And it's year three and I'm in my third month of year three that I'm starting to get a sense for the landscape and the lay of the land. And I'm starting to have better anticipation of what to expect. And for me, that's exciting because what I'm seeing around me is for two years, this university has carried me on their shoulders and they truly have helped me learn and grow. And now together, I feel like we're moving forward in a pretty exciting velocity. 

I share, you heard me with Rudyard Kipling, but I talk about the two greatest lessons I learned from nature is a bucket of crabs or the wisdom of geese. A bucket of crabs is when you put crabs in a bucket, you watch them and truly if one starts to get out, the other crabs will grab it and pull it back down. And so no crabs ever escaped the bucket. But if you study the wisdom of geese, scientists have discovered they travel 70% further flying in this formation of a V. And if you study them long enough, a couple things happen. The first, the one in the front position only stays there for 10 minutes and the wind resistance wears it down and it drops back and somebody else takes a turn leading. And if one of them gets sick or weak, drops down and two others drop down with it to protect it from the wind until it can get back with a flock. And what I love is that I have seen the wisdom of geese in action the last two years as I was really getting up to speed, doing my best. I was busier than, you know, a cat on a hot tin roof, but ultimately we're really now starting to move this thing forward. So what I'm excited about now is our velocity of execution is accelerating.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, don't you think you could go through an entire meeting with Brad and he would metaphor himself through that whole meeting and you would leave knowing exactly what he was saying?

Melissa King: Absolutely. I'm confident of it. You know, I did, you know, in prep watch 38 questions with Brad on YouTube. I'd encourage everyone to do it. And you know, this is this is authenticity and action. And without a doubt, Joe, that would drive the outcome that you asked about.

Joe Sallustio: You know, Brad, one thing I've noticed about you and obviously we don't know each other and I'm noticing it is how humble you are. That makes a big difference when you come from industry into higher ed because you're dealing with students and the students humble us every single day. But it makes you more accessible and approachable when you have a humble leader around you. And you know, we talk about the student first philosophy. Is a student a customer? Are they a consumer? Are they something else? All those things are easier to understand and work around if you are humble at the core.

Brad D. Smith: I can and Joe, thank you. If anyone ever said anything to me that I would really go home at night and say, wow, that meant the world to have someone say he's humble. I really want to do that. I want to be humble. And it's earned, by the way, in the fourth grade, I had a crush on a classmate and she was really a young scholar and she signed up for a spelling bee and I wanted to be near her. So I signed up for the spelling bee. I didn't know you actually study for a spelling bee and I got eliminated. And the next day I passed her a note, will you be my girlfriend? And she wrote back, no, cause you're stupid. And I went home that night, my IQ didn't go up, but my work ethic did. So I am truly humble because I've earned the need to be humble. That's sort of headline one. 

Now headline two is I had to actually change my terminology because with design thinking, we talk about customer obsession, customer first. When I came here, there was genuine concern we don't want them to be thought of as customers. And so we did talk about the value exchange they get, the fact they want to measure what they got here in their lifetime achievement, but we have changed it to student first. And what I will tell you is the terminology does not get in the way. We are still solving the same exact problem and trying to deliver the same outcome for our students, but we simply call it customer, excuse me, call it student first instead of customer first. So I didn't get caught up in that language after I understood the intent behind what they asked me to think about. And so that's the way we've embraced it. And we have five student first priorities right now. Increase access, ensure affordability, develop support programs to ensure that they can matriculate on time. The fourth is deliver on demand and the fifth is measure success through their lifetime achievement. And we have five different cohorts that study those and make sure that we have the right sorts of outcomes for those students.

Joe Sallustio: Well, we're coming to the end of the episode here and I want to give you, Brad, the final two questions. Number one, open microphone. What else do you want to tell us about Marshall University?

Brad D. Smith: I did not fully appreciate how adversity can sometimes become an excuse and how you have to remind people that adversity is not an excuse. It's a reason. And so one of the things we talked about and Melissa referenced this earlier about dream bigger is one of my adages is success is seldom limited by aiming too high and falling a little short. It's when you aim too low and hit the target. So we are purposefully setting aspirational goals that to some may feel like they're completely unapproachable, but we are surprising ourselves by actually stretching and reimagining and reinventing to get there. And so I would say to everyone dream bigger. Truly ask, question everything and just ask yourself, what would perfect look like if we were on a journey of reinventing this thing starting today as day one?

Joe Sallustio: I love the question everything mindset, question everything. Cause if we don't, we get stuck. One place that's not getting stuck is Marshall University. Brad, please tell us what you see for the future of higher education to end this off.

Brad D. Smith: I see higher education as a prosperity platform. The prosperity platform that accelerates individual success of anyone who has the curiosity and the grit to try. I see it as a platform that accelerates innovative ideas, whether it's through scholarship, creativity, or invention and research. And I see it as a prosperity platform that does contribute to economic growth. Because if we cannot connect how education translates into some sort of an economic impact that will be continuing doubt as the Gallup Research poll shows in 2015, 57% of Americans said higher ed was important. It's now down to 36% this past summer. We've got to be able to demonstrate the return on investment in well-rounded citizens and civil discourse and the skills needed, all the things we've talked about. So I hope higher education views itself as a prosperity platform that does those things and is willing to question everything and reinvent itself along the way.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, what did you think about this conversation?

Melissa King: I genuinely loved it and deeply appreciative for the time today, Joe. So thank you for including me on this discussion.

Joe Sallustio: Melissa, make sure you come back and you know I'm going to see you in about a month or so in San Antonio. Ladies and gentlemen, she is Melissa King, the chief transformation officer at Ellucian.

Melissa King: I'd love to be invited back. This was so much fun.

Joe Sallustio: And of course, he is our esteemed guest. You're going to have to go back and listen to this episode multiple times to pick out everything that he was able to pin down in really a short period of time. We could probably do this in a two-part episode, but I think his staff would get me, and he's probably a busy guy. So we won't do that to him. But we will ask him to come back in the future as he continues to innovate at Marshall University. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. He is Brad D. Smith. He is the president at Marshall University. Brad, among the conversation, amazing. Did you at least have fun here on the podcast today?

Brad D. Smith: I had an amazing time, Joe and Melissa. I absolutely loved your questions. And as I said, as I did the research, I love what you do as a day job. Appreciate you both and go herd.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just ed-upped.