901: The Epicenter of the Future - with Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President, San José State University

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to add up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. Dr. Joe Sallustio here on another episode as we continue on our march to 900 episodes, hopefully by the end of the year, if not more. We're really trying hard to get to 400,000 downloads of those episodes in our four years of existence. We've passed some incredible milestones lately. We were able to record 23 episodes at AACRAO Live in San Antonio during the month of April. Just a lot going on. So many conversations and podcasting still yet to be had. So many presidents yet to interview. 

And the president I have with me today, there are certain people that you schedule and then you have to reschedule and then they have something come up and then you have something come up. And it feels like we've been scheduling her for 18 months or so. But we finally got her today. Right when we finally think we have her, my Wi-Fi doesn't work. And I'm like six minutes late and I'm going, no, she's gonna never schedule with me again, but I was able to get on Wi-Fi. So we're gonna make this happen. 

But before we do, I wanna bring in my special guest co-host. This is his first time as a co-host. He was a guest probably two years ago. Here he is. He's Dr. Kirk Overstreet. He is president of John A. Logan College. Kirk, what's going on?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Everything's going on, Joe. Yeah, including the Wi-Fi, apparently. How are you? What's going on at John A. Logan?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: A lot of things are going on at John A. Logan. And so that Dr. Teniente-Matson gets a little context, I'm in Southern Illinois. So I am 500 or so miles south of Chicago. And I'm like 50 miles away from Tennessee, Indiana, and Kentucky. And Missouri, I mean, I'm there at the bottom. But we're about five, 10 minutes away from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. So a major university right down the road, just to give you a little bit of knowledge of where we are. 

But things are going well. We're building, we're moving, we're focusing on retention. We're trying to work back into our adult population and get our students on campus. And coming out of, I think, Joe, I think last time we talked, we were just getting out of COVID really. So now we're kind of getting back to square one, I feel like.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know what? Square one's not a bad place to be considering all of what presidents went through during COVID, where we get to put all that energy back into students at a really critical time, right? So many things going on around us. There's closures, there's budgets, there's lots of question on the value of higher education. I think we're going to talk about that today. 

But I want to just mention that, you know, I work at Lindenwood University, Dr. Kirk Overstreet, which is in St. Charles, Missouri. So I think you're two hours away from me. It seems like we got to record in person one of these days.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah, we should. We should. We should do that. I'll come down and visit you. That'd be great.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. Here, let's get her in now. Our guest, ladies and gentlemen, her name is Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson. She is the president of San Jose State University. Cynthia, what's going on? How are you?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Hey there. I'm great today. Thank you. It's a wonderful place to be in the capital of the Silicon Valley in the city of San Jose, where we consider ourselves to be the epicenter of the future between our city, our public university, and all the tech companies that exist here, including NVIDIA, which is just down the street, and Adobe and Zoom, which are literally within walking distance for me. There are just great energy and opportunities occurring in the Silicon Valley now with the tech revolution again at our doorstep, looking at the future of artificial intelligence and all the tangentially related professions that are associated with that technology from machine learning to large language models to spatial computing to robotics and how the convergence of all those technologies are impacting the workforce of today and of tomorrow.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing. A lot of questions there, especially as you say the name NVIDIA, it brings up lots of questions about the future, but let's level set for us. Tell us about San Jose State University. Who do you serve? What do you do? How do you do it? Take it any way you want.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Great. Well, I always have an opportunity to talk about this wonderful university that I'm so fortunate to be a part of. San Jose State University, just for context, I say is the original startup and the original influencer. We are the oldest university on the West Coast and certainly the founding university of the California State University system. We've been around a long time, so we have a long history of excellence and innovation. 

We currently are preparing for the end of the semester, all the commencement activities that are coming up in the next month, and preparing for our next academic year of admitted students. We had a great Admitted Spartan Day just a couple of weeks ago, even in the rain, with great attendance and a record number of students who are just interested in what's happening here at San Jose State University. 

We consider ourselves a large metropolitan urban-serving institution. We're a walkable urban downtown campus. And that is certainly different than many other wonderful universities and community colleges. It presents a different geography as well as different challenges to be in the heart of urban-serving dynamic challenges that exist as well as opportunities that exist. 

We have a South Campus, which is where all of our athletic programs live and reside. It's about a mile south of our downtown urban campus. And then we have a venue alongside the Pacific Ocean called Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. So San Jose State is very dynamic and we are at the core of computer engineering, computer technology, software, and so much more. We have a very integrated program, but no doubt our alumni are amongst the largest volume of alumni in all the tech companies across Silicon Valley and really across the world in our variety of innovative programs that we offer here.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, did you mention, I might have missed it, how many students you serve in total?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: I didn't mention that. We have about 36,000 students when we count everyone. So those are our students on campus, also in our online programs and around the country as well as those that reside here. We have about 4,400 students or so that live on campus in our residential housing. And we just acquired, we're in the process of converting a luxury hotel, used to be a Fairmont. So imagine in your mind a Fairmont hotel that was due to the pandemic acquired by Signia Hilton properties, that is now being acquired and retrofitted by the university for residence halls. 

So it's going to take us even further into downtown. If you can imagine, you know, just a downtown square of any downtown USA, we are on the far east side of the downtown and we're moving with this purchase and acquisition into the further west side of downtown. And along that walking corridor, it's connected by a beautiful paseo that connects the campus with our theater. We have a theater that's just right across the street from our main campus and a downtown beautiful urban walking trail right at the footsteps of Cesar Chavez Park, which is considered a large community gathering space in the city. And just along that way are Zoom and Adobe headquarters offices as well. 

So we're really bringing ourselves from our traditional core of East Downtown into the West side of Downtown. Also along that same pathway that connects us is the public urban transit stations. So the light rail, the VTA, you know, the bus station and the like. So we are sparking a lot of activity and innovation even along that last mile corridor that everybody talks about when you get off of your station to get to your final destination.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing. There is, yeah, I mean the way you describe it too, you're doing a great job of almost making me feel like I'm there, which I think is an important part of the student experience. All of this goes to the student experience, right? When I think about coming to San Jose State University and I can see what you're talking about in this vibrant urban community, it makes me feel, it's going to make me feel a part of it, right? So this is a big play to elevate your student experience, is it not?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Unequivocally. Integrating our student experience with the downtown urban environment, but also major employers. So one of the opportunities we're trying to take advantage of that might also be of interest to you, Dr. Overstreet, is how we think about our classroom experiences. We're actually moving more of our classrooms, this is not easy, into corporate headquarters so that some of the teaching that occurs is occurring in laboratory spaces or in teaching and learning spaces that are also occupied or owned by corporate partners, large major names that I'm not going to reveal today, that allow students to integrate. 

You have to see it to be it. We have about 44% of our students who are first generation. We have over 70% of our students who are identified from a community of color. And the opportunity to come into a corporate setting and to see, to know, I can get there from here is critically vital in their experiential learning and the academic journey that they and their families are on. So we are looking for ways to leverage those opportunities in the student experience itself, beyond extramural and co-curricular, but actual curricular experiences. 

One of the other very unique opportunities in the Silicon Valley itself is all the major companies that are here where we have access to laboratories and our faculty have access to opportunities to engage in those corporate settings or corporate R&D labs where there is a true exchange of information, problem-solving, creative thinking, et cetera. And we're finding more and more of our corporate partners incredibly intrigued by our students who are engaged in undergraduate research and graduate research. They're just being hired on the spot. So I think of San Jose State University as a pipeline to a job along with any other opportunities that expand to grow in the graduate programs.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing. Dr. Overstreet?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah, no, actually, that is a really great conversation to be had. You know, I was watching this morning on, I think it was Good Morning America, they had a segment this morning about some of our corporations actually devaluing our degrees by saying, "Hey, you know what, we can just have you come and work and we can train you here at Walmart. We can train you here at Home Depot." And I mentioned to my wife, I said, you know, it's a good idea and it's a terrible idea. They need to be with us on this. We need to be a part of that conversation because, you know, that's great if you're going to get that training at Walmart or Home Depot, but if you want to leave, how are you going to leave? What kind of credential are you going to take with you to show that you've got the experience that you need? You can have a resume, but will it translate somewhere else? 

And I think what you're doing is a really good example. We're doing similar. We're not quite, we don't have Silicon Valley here in Southern Illinois. We've got some smaller corporations, but we've got a lot of apprenticeship programs and it's the same kind of idea in getting our students out there. And we've been actually working with some of our corporate partners here to work on similar ideas, not quite as in-depth as you, but I love that idea of getting the students out. 

You know, one of the focuses we have that you guys, I love having this conversation with you. We're a CAE, we're a Center for Academic Excellence for our cybersecurity program. And one of the things that I'm trying to do down here is actually attract small cybersecurity companies to come down to Southern Illinois and open their doors here and build our own mini Silicon Valley, not even a Silicon Valley, but more of a cybersecurity valley. So I think it's really great that you're getting your students in there and they're seeing that firsthand, the possibilities, you know, I love that. And I used to work at University of Illinois Chicago. So I was in an urban setting for a long time and I love my setting now, but I will tell you that the setting there is, that's a fantastic setting to be in.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: You know, it's really interesting, Joe and Kirk, I don't know how much you are tracking all the data. And I don't know that there's a whole lot of data around this, but I have seen LinkedIn surveys, for example, and LinkedIn is just, you know, take me 10 minutes in my car to get to the LinkedIn headquarters. They have some data through their large tools that they use in the LinkedIn enterprise. And we think about them in terms of networking and job placement, career placement, all the things that continue to evolve in LinkedIn learning and the like. 

And what I've read from some of their surveys is about the great range of employers, to your point, who are indicating that they have lowered job requirements when it comes to an educational credential. However, what I've read recently is that of that pool of individual or employers and job ads, announcements that have reduced hiring requirements, over 60% of them, close to 70, I think the number was 66 or 67%, are hiring people with college degrees. Surprise. 

So there is a big statement that we're welcome y'all come in, sort of, but in reality, what is actually being, individuals being hired are those with a college degree. And usually what I say to employers or sometimes other stakeholder groups is, I understand that you're questioning the value of a college degree or questioning who should earn a college degree. Are you applying that same standard to your children?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I like that. I actually have brought that up on this podcast before. I remember who I was talking to a couple of times and I said, tell me what that conversation sounds like for somebody that agrees with this, that goes home and talks to their own kids and says, what do they say? Does it sound like, you know what, Johnny or Jane, don't go to college, right? Don't do it. Go get this skill. I just can't wrap my head around that, that that actually happens. And so I love what you're saying.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: I think, you know, this is interesting what that conversation might look like around the dinner table or whatever the proverbial dinner table is now, the red table talk sort of in some cases. Certainly for someone who's still exploring, if you're going to take a loan or burn aid, then it probably does make sense to get into the workforce and figure out what you like. Find an employer who has either a tuition reimbursement program or will pay for your education through stackable credential models type things. I could maybe see a conversation like that, Joe, but that's not a broad sweeping statement that college isn't for you. It is a broad sweeping statement about the process of self-discovery and the journey of who you're going to become over a lifetime. 

But all of the evidence, all of the evidentiary support, and I cannot even imagine a world of AI besides the basics of how we use prompt engineering without an advanced degree of some sort beyond high school and maybe even beyond community college in the tech world. It's a little bit different in the chip manufacturing industry. There's a lot of jobs happening there and there's different levels and I can again see stackable credentials there, but there are no employers even in the chip manufacturing area who are saying, gee, you don't need any sort of education. I think they might be saying, we're going to help train you, we'll move you along a pathway, but they're investing in stackable credentials too. 

So it is really, we know we're talking about inside baseball here that it's how we nuance that discussion about the value of a four-year traditional bachelor's degree is probably very different than how we value higher education experiences in general.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: You know, I did 15 years in electrical construction before I went back to college. And the conversation that I have at every high school I go to and every high school group I get in and every open house that I talk about to folks is, look, you can have a good career. I had a good career in the construction field, but you will hit that plateau. And when you hit that plateau, that's where you're not going to go any further. And so having the education in your pocket gives you the ability to be transportable, to become the owner of that company, not just one of the foremen of those companies or to branch out and do different things. 

And I have a liberal arts background. And so my liberal arts background says also that part of what we teach is not just about those skills and about the scientific education that we need to get our students involved with, but it's also those soft skills and those ideas of citizenship, of liberal arts, the background in liberal arts, that idea that you can be a critical thinker. And that's an important skill that we give from every aspect of the college, from community college to our four-year degrees to our master's degrees and on. And it's important. And that's something that we need to work on helping folks around the dinner table have that conversation. I agree with you. I can't imagine having this conversation with my daughter when she was 16 and saying, yeah, don't worry about going to college. You'll figure it out. There wasn't even a conversation about that.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know the fascinating part about what you guys are talking about. This is where I get into, it's so interesting. Go back to ChatGPT was released what? December of '22, probably, right around there? December and January into that. In that three month period. So think about 2022. If you don't know how to code, you're not gonna have a job for the future. You better learn how to code. You gotta teach your kids how to code. You better take coding classes, coding boot camps. We don't need to code anymore. Then you have the NVIDIA CEO that comes out and says, I think it was him that says, you don't need to code. AI is gonna code seven ways from Sunday. You don't need to know how to code. We need critical thinkers now. So in less than a year, it went from if you don't have these technical skills, you're never going to have a job for the future to, boy, you better get critical thinking or you're not going to have a job for the future. It's insane how quick that flipped, isn't it?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Yeah. Well, for us, I think for the three of us, we've always valued critical thinking, right?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Right.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: It is employers who need to better articulate what they find is important. And I don't know if every corporate CEO affiliates critical thinking with a college degree. And that may be where some of that narrative spirals up. But when you really get into the conversations about what it is, it is about what you were just describing, Kirk, the ability to discern, the ability to move up, the ability to always be engaged and entrepreneurial and all the things that employers seek to continue to build their businesses. I think the other practical aspects are also an aging demographic, a slowing of the birth rate around the world means that we're all going to be in the continuous cycle of upskilling and learning, which we've been talking about for a long time. Continuous learning is not new. We've been talking about this imperative for a very long time in higher education, but this nexus of how it comes together now is going to be, I think, even more critical in this next revolution of what does the workforce look like in the future?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Tell it like it is. Talk about a little bit about the companies that you're around right now. How much interaction do you have with those organizations? Do they help dictate directly or indirectly how you think about building curriculum for the future? What degrees you might be offering because you're there and you can see what's happening. Can you talk about the connection to this particular workforce in Silicon Valley?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Well, Joe, as you know, curriculum is owned by the faculty. So there is not a lot of dictating going on. However, there is a fair amount of collaboration to understand the needs of our employers and the future of their work. So yes, there are round tables. There could be more, of course. And it's like anything. We have faculty members who are actively engaged with corporate partners. We have faculty members who are actively engaged in sponsored research that is lifted even higher with a corporate partner that allows them to understand what's happening on the proverbial shop floor, right? Or computer laboratory or research lab, you know, any number of those spectrums that would describe industry. So that, how that, it is fairly active.

I'm going to say it is, I think, leading edge active, to be quite honest with you. So we talk about, we have investments from third parties who invest in curriculum development. They invest in internships. They invest in co-laboratory spaces. They invest in creating pathways for these kinds of conversation that sometimes naturally lead to the innovation that we're talking about.

Right now, I think with the explosion of the large tech models that are being supported through AI and the rapid pace, I find myself in a place to ensure that we're convening all of the resources that are occurring on our own campus. Because as you know, irrespective of size, it's a very decentralized environment of a community of experts who come together at our universities. So convening the experts in lanes of strength so that we can create those degree offerings and research opportunities in a coordinated way is one of the things that's taking up time for me, Joe. And, you know, I say everything is figure-outable. So how we -

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's an educational term too.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Yes, exactly. To help facilitate, but it is - and compared to any place I've ever worked, a lot more of the core DNA and I think the time, the moment that we're in for being a university, a public university located in the heart of the Silicon Valley where we drive by corporate headquarters to come to work. The geographical setting is different which makes the strategic imperative different than it might be in another city.

But I would add to that, it's no place is a panacea of perfection. We know that there are still today, in 2024, disparities and inequities, even within the big tech companies of underrepresented minorities. There's more women, certainly in tech. We have a strong women in engineering program, and we have strong women leaders in our engineering programs, in our computer science programs, in computational linguistics, and I could go on data science and all of those elements. However, we still see disparities in the number of African-American students and Hispanic students and Latino students that have the academic readiness to enter into those programs. And if they do enter those programs, the long-term viability in a tech company for any number of reasons that we could probably point at.

So we still have a lot of work ahead of us when we think about inclusion, equity, support infrastructure to help build a diverse workforce and to build AI with insights on ethical technologies and different people's experiences and cultural and ethnic experiences integrated into those technologies. So it is a unique value proposition for San Jose State and our student body to be engaged in.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Kirk, over to you.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah, I'm loving what you guys are doing out there. And as a community college, we rely heavily on our advisory boards, especially with creating new certificates, creating new pathways for our students to get into the workforce. But when you talk about inclusion and equity, that's really the heart of what a community college does. We are sometimes that open door to education that somebody wasn't going to get into. We open enrollment with our Pell Grants. Illinois has a MAP grant system, so we have a lot of ability for our students, first generation and minority students to get their foot in the door. That's really what I love about what I do at a community college. We are able to give students that first step. I love when they go on and they go to that four-year institution and then they're successful. And that's part of what we try to prepare them for, especially if they're coming out of high school not prepared.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Yeah. So I think Joe and Kirk, one of the critical elements that we all are striving for is how do we think about that K through 12 experience so that it is a stackable and guided pathway into a community college and then onto a four-year degree. Like I said, no one's in the panacea of perfection and this work is hard when you look at the credentialing process for a dual enrollment program that meets the state high school requirements as well as a community college requirement or a public university or private university for that matter, GE requirement who are all accredited by different bodies. Well, community colleges and four years, we have the same, if we're in the same region, but the K through 12 system often has a different set of credentialing requirements for their learning outcomes.

How all that becomes stackable for a student whose family English may not be their first language, they may be immigrant-minded from another community or another country that we're educating children in the districts in multiple languages. Then you think about how do they get to this job over here when they're over here requires this very complicated trio from K through 12 and that board, community college and that board, and the public university, whether their board is involved or not, but the faculty governance then in that discussion is enormously complicated, even when everybody wants to do it. Barriers are high.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: We're gonna, we're gonna go ahead, Kirk, I don't want to interrupt you.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: No, I, you know, I think of it as tightrope work, like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon in wintertime. Are you kidding me? But, you know, I think that the outcomes and regardless of what's going on in media and what media is saying about our outcomes right now, I think that in the long run, those outcomes will be evident. You know, I think in four or five years, we're going to see a real big swing back in the media about what our value is and about what we're doing. But I think to what you're doing there in San Jose about really embedding the faculty and students into the corporations and getting them that experiential learning opportunity. That's going to be huge because I think that we have to think about our model. That's the other part that I'd love to hear your thoughts on. We're looking at what is our model anymore? We're not that traditional 1162, the monks decided to create a university. We can't run on that anymore. It's not the way it works. We're looking at new models for tuition, we're looking at new models for learning, for stackable credentials, for PLA, CTE, all of these different things that people are bringing in so that we can get people that headstart and then get them to those critical thinking courses and get them out the door. So I'd love to hear more about what you're doing there.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Well, first of all, I agree with what you're saying about the models. I think some of the things we share in common is how do we think about with intentionality? And this is happening now, but sometimes it's happening because of, you know, a tremendous, two tremendous faculty get together and create an articulation between this particular program or this particular program or this particular course and that particular course, especially if they're high failure rate courses and you sort of have, you know, this explosion of goodness that occurs when that works. But I think the intentionality around what is a three-year guided pathway look like if you pick up the right coursework in high school and that is built upon in the coursework in the community college that allows a student to go on and earn both the associate's and then the bachelor's degree in a shortened or flattened period of time. So the idea of what that looks like I think is a huge opportunity, particularly for what I would call the whole first generation, the sort of new majority of America as we continue to grow, our models have to keep up with that. 

So I agree with you on that, but Kirk, the other side of the spectrum is we're looking at three plus ones or four plus ones so that you're going straight into a master's program. So that particularly for first generation students, they have that guided pathway that this is how you can do it and more of those courses that would be Pell eligible that would allow that some of those barriers to be reduced to get to a master's degree is really critical as well. I think the idea of partnership for employment is very critical. As you know, Kirk, when you're from a first generation low income household, and this is a lot of students in community college system as well as our university system, every semester they face a decision tree about whether they're coming back the next semester, whether they have the finances to make it through the next semester. So we need to make that as seamless as possible. And one of the ways is a guarantee to a job. 

So I think for school districts in particular, we're facing these challenges in maintaining their workforce or hiring computer science teachers, all of the high demand areas where they, when the freshman knows that they're going to, provided they do X, Y, and Z, they will have a job, they're guaranteed employment. That is far more impactful than a signing bonus. When you'd have no idea that you're going to get that far to get a signing bonus or a promise of a job is critical. So I think all of us have to think about this in a different way and listen to what and how students are making decisions. And that's, it's very difficult to predict the consumer behavior of a student. That's the truth.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, we're gonna give you guys a little bit of a curve ball. Since we were talking about bonuses and finding out how people think, we're gonna do a little thing that we do towards the end of our episodes called the EdUp Either-Or Experience. And this is where our guest and our guest co-host have to pick from the words I give them which one they like better. If they select both, they owe me $5 and I know I can drive to Kirk's institution to make that money. And I know where Cynthia is. Let me turn on my music. Guys, hear the music. All right, here we go. We're gonna start with Kirk. We're gonna start easy. Ready? Eat lunch or skip lunch?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Skip lunch.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Cynthia, eat lunch or skip lunch.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Eat lunch.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I like eating lunch myself. Okay, we'll go a little bit harder now. Kirk, over to you. We're gonna go bursar or student accounts.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: I like student accounts.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, student accounts for you too?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Student accounts.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Okay, now we're gonna get a little more fun. Dr. Matson, we'll go to you. Table that or circle back?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: I didn't hear you first.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Table that or circle back?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Circle back.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Kirk, over to you.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: I'm definitely circle back.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Okay, I turn the music down so you can hear me now. All right, we'll go a little bit harder. Cynthia, student, consumer, or something else?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Student consumer.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Kirk.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah, no, explain please. Give me your thoughts.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Well, I use, I might differentiate. I would use student consumer if they're consuming our services like in food service or housing or in the bookstore. I might, I might say student consumer much better than customer, just student consumer of our services and then are we framing it appropriately for a student?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: I love that explanation. I would go with student consumer. I think we're really struggling with trying to get our faculty and everyone on board with student consumer rather than a customer. We don't tend to like the word customer, but consumer or I'd love to find something else. I'd like to find a new word. It's a hard one.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Okay. I like this. All right. We're going to go a little bit more fun now. Kirk, we'll start with you. Paradigm shift or pivot?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Pivot.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Me too. I would go with pivot. Although I think we need another word because we all pivoted to death during or pivoted seemed like in perpetuity during the pandemic.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, that's why I put them on here because I know what you guys think. Okay, a little bit more fun. Cynthia, late afternoon meeting or early morning meeting.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Early morning meeting.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Kirk.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: I'm going to go with early morning meeting.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Okay. All right. We'll do a couple more since I think you guys are having a little bit of fun. We're going to go power skills. Kirk will go to you first. Power skills or durable skills.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: I like durable skills.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Cynthia?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Power skills.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. So better words for soft skills, right? Like that's what those are. What are we using to describe these skills? All right. One more. And this is the one that is going to burn your brain into the night. Cynthia, we'll start with you. Pedagogy or pedagogy?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: I say pedagogy.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: We got to go. What do we think? Two pedagogies.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: That one more. Do you know what is the proper pronunciation?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I have no idea. That's why I'm asking you guys. You think I come here with answers? How do I say it?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah. I don't come here to give answers. I come here to get the right answers from you educators.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: No. Good. I do this to find out a little bit about how our leaders think, have a little bit of fun. How do we use words in higher education? We always talk. This is my favorite one. We talk about soft skills, critical thinking, leadership, organization. What are we going to call those? How do we bring some organization around this as an industry as we communicate to students? Durable skills or power skills or lifelong skills or whatever. We're all calling it something different. We all started with the term that nobody knows, which is bursar. And then we can't pull ourselves together around something that students really need to understand. Anyway, hope you guys had a good time with that.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Just let me add to that. Your range in that skill development. I think students really relate to superpowers. And when I'm talking with them, sometimes I'll ask them about their superpowers. These are superpowers of the Titans where you're going to go work. And so how do you translate that to whatever vocabulary you're going to use? But that phrase is one that seems to resonate when I'm talking to students about their superpower.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I love that. That's great. 

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Yeah, that's really cool.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. Well, let's bring in our last two questions that we have for our guest. Number one, what else do you want to say about San Jose State University, Cynthia, that we didn't maybe ask you or anything that you have a new program? Talk about your staff if you want to. Anything at all that you want to say about San Jose State.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: It's a, we're in a major inflection point. We truly believe we are the epicenter of the future with all that is occurring in the Silicon Valley and how San Jose State positions itself is very critical to leverage our competitive advantage of our geography, which is something cannot be replicated. We know that students kind of back to superpowers, we've done some surveying of Gen Z high school juniors and seniors and their parents and their school counselors on how they're making college decisions. And it is a wide range right now that links in what is San Jose State's work around climate change? What are we doing to improve and sustain the environment? In addition to the experiential learning, the hands-on experiences and credentials that are going to land them a job, whether it's in the tech industry or something else. Those are critical path items that we are very much working towards in our definition of what we do and shaping that. But we are very forward looking and forward thinking about our position with the world in the space of artificial intelligence and our ability to partner with corporate entities.

So those are some of the critical things. I think some of the misnomers is how we're navigating the cost of living. The housing costs are high. There's no doubt around that. And so as a public university, we are very focused on affordable housing, access to affordable housing for students and students in the community. But still a difficult value proposition for our employees who want to come and work here and if they're earlier in their career may have challenges with affordable housing. So those are still some barriers that we are trying to overcome and work through with viable solutions to maintain our talent, our leadership talent, our technical talent, our faculty talent, our staff talent. It's across the board.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because when you started talking about housing, I immediately thought student. Right, you know, there's the homeless crisis in California. There's so many, you know, people that need housing. Then when you take it to staff and you go, yeah, if I'm just a fresh college graduate from Maine and I want to move to California and work for San Jose State University, I'm going to have some shock on the housing. I need to find something that's affordable for me. So yeah, that's a part of talent acquisition and maintaining talent that would be critical.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: I think one of the core lessons we've all learned post pandemic is none of us can do this work alone. So we have to be very closely aligned with our K through 12 partners, our city and local government, our counties, those that really rely on us, in addition to all the industry that I was talking about. But in some of these social and civic good, and I think that is one of our opportunities, we have a number of AI initiatives around AI for social and civic good that are also propelling us forward in meeting the needs of the community and the needs of the region.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: July 8th, 2021, I released an episode with Milly Garcia, Dr. Milly Garcia. And I said to Dr. Garcia, after we interviewed her, we said, we don't have a lot of Latina presidents that we'd like to bring more on. And she gave me a list of Latina presidents of which we have been able to interview many. You were on that list. And we tried to get you and then it was your last institution. And then you moved. And then we didn't do it because you had to get your legs under you, of course, at your new institution. So it's been a while for me to ask you this question that we've been waiting to ask you. Cynthia, what do you see for the future of higher education?

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Well, I think a big part of what we've been discussing today is this great pivot, this great reset, this opportunity that we're in to shape the future of higher education with appropriate influences from the technological demands of today, but also the changing landscape of our human environment of humanity, of climate change, of sustainability, of aging workforce, geopolitical influences and the like. There is a lot for us to wrap our head around. And that's the, that's really the imperative that we're all facing today to continue to be relevant in the future.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Dr. Overstreet, what do you think of this conversation today?

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: No, I loved it. You know, I was thinking about what Cynthia said, and there's so much there and so much to unpack, but we've been working really hard here to boil it down to a short statement about what we're doing and what we're trying to do, what our mission is. So we look at it and we say we're enriching lives and uplifting our community. And when I say that, that means enriching the lives of everybody that works here, everybody that comes here, everybody that lives in this community, everybody that goes to school here, and uplifting our community economically, sustainability wise, thinking about the environment, thinking about what we do. So we've really pushed on that idea. Matter of fact, everyone here, when they're thinking about budget, when they're thinking about their strategies or their tactics, it's all through the lens of enriching lives and uplifting the community. And I think Cynthia, what you guys are doing in San Jose is just that. I like to think that we're doing that. And I think that, you know, as higher ed institutions, that's where we are. That's what we do.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, I want to thank my guest co-host today. He is Dr. Kirk Overstreet, president of John A. Logan College. Kirk, thanks for coming on, man. I've been waiting to have you here. Glad to have you on.

Dr. Kirk Overstreet: Awesome. It's been great. Thank you.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: What a great co-host.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Yes, and our guest here she is. Her name is Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson. She is the president of San Jose State University. Thank you for coming on. We're glad to have had you and hope you had a little bit of fun along the way as we got to talk about higher ed.

Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson: Absolutely, it's always a great opportunity when we can have a fruitful discussion with other thought leaders about what's happening in the world of higher ed.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, there you have it everybody. You've just EdUp.