843: The Community College Crusader - with O. John Maduko, President, Connecticut State Community College

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 on another episode. I've got to tell you guys, as you listen to this episode, we're probably going to have hit one of the conferences that we have coming up. For those of you that follow us, you know we're big into mugs. What does that mean? Not mean mugs. I mean actual coffee mugs. Last year we had the EdUp Experience mug and then some of our colleagues called it a wine mug and they're using it for wine. We said, well, we're going to go ahead with wine mugs from now on. So we have wine mugs here at the EdUp Experience. We just printed a new line, so to speak, of mugs that you can get if you interview on this podcast.

While we're on the road, where are we going to be? When you listen to this episode, we'll be returning from Insights EDU hosted by Education Dynamics. That took place February 20 through 22nd in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, all about recruiting the online student, marketing the online student. That was really the focus of that conference. And then we're going to be, I'm going to be giving a presentation along with some colleagues from Western Governors University. Of course, I work at Lindenwood University and we're going to be on a panel talking about online recruitment at South by Southwest in March.

And then coming up after that will be Ellucian Live, with 5,000 or so of our colleagues in and around higher education. We'll be interviewing from dusk till dawn or dawn till dusk, whatever it is there at the conference. They keep us pretty busy. Shout out to Lindsay Stanley and Jess Weston over at Ellucian. 

With that said, we're going to keep the business of higher education front and center, talking to the most innovative leaders today that we can find. I've been chasing this gentleman down for a couple of months. He's busy. He's a busy man. And you'll know why when we get him in here. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the one and only Dr. John Maduko. He is the inaugural president of Connecticut State Community College. John, what's going on?

O. John Maduko: Hey, Joe, happy Monday or happy snowy Tuesday here in Connecticut. Good to see you. And I'm pleased that we're finally able to connect. We've been playing virtual tag, but definitely happy to be here.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, we finally made it happen. And you know, I'm going to jump right in because your doctorate is an actual M.D. And I think I got to go back to memory. The last I know for sure, the president of Howard when I interviewed him, he was a surgeon. He's an M.D. It's not too often that you find a medical doctor leading a higher education institution. It's fewer and far between. It's less than the Ed.D. or the Ph.D. How the heck do you get a medical doctorate and end up as a university president? That's my question.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm still asking myself that question. And I tell students when I have the opportunity to engage with them that when I was in college, and especially when I was in med school, shout out to St. Matthew's University School of Medicine, I'll be honest, our class, we couldn't stand our administrators. We were just bumping heads. I remember just telling myself who in their right mind would be an administrator for a college or university. So you flash forward and all my buddies, you know, give me that grief. But now I see it on the outside in terms of the amount of work and obviously the support that administrators and leaders do across our sector.

Joe Sallustio: So you've been in the industry for a while. Did you trip and fall into higher ed? How does it happen for you?

O. John Maduko: Absolutely. I fell face forward. Long story medium, graduated with my MD, started working, passed my boards, was trying to figure out what subspecialty I wanted to go into beyond general practice. And I took a break. I took a break because we had a baby on the way. My wife had some health-related issues in terms of some surgeries. And I said, let me, you know, I don't want to be an absentee father. So let me take a break from medicine and do something else. That something else, I had no idea. Because most physicians don't know anything outside of medicine. And I literally had a conversation with myself. I said, you know what? I've taken a lot of science courses over my educational path. I can easily teach and just hop on board. So, you know, I taught, I taught online and in person in Atlanta at some local colleges and crashed and burned. And thank the good Lord, I had some mentors who put their arm around me and really broke down the concept of pedagogy and just going back to basics. That's literally how I got into higher ed and it honestly just snowballed after that.

Joe Sallustio: And then you thought, well, if I'm in higher ed, I don't have to be on call. I could just work normal hours, you know, doctors are always on call. And then you found out, that's not true. You're on call all the time.

O. John Maduko: Yeah. You know, I, and especially as an adjunct professor, you know, my courses were always evening, evening and weekends. Right. So, you know, I was a third shifter with other higher ed professionals mixing their own day careers and education. But to me, I'm proud of where I started. I felt like I had to, not at the bottom, but I felt like I touched the majority of, using a baseball analogy, the majority of bases in higher education to really get that full picture experience of what it takes to not only provide exceptional instruction to students, but really the operational needs an organization has day in and day out to keep it afloat.

Joe Sallustio: So lay the groundwork for us. Talk to us about Connecticut State Community College. Obviously, we know where you are in the state of Connecticut, but what do you do? Who do you serve? How do you serve them?

O. John Maduko: Yeah, yeah. So I am the president of Connecticut State Community College, aka CT State, aka CT State Community College, aka the Community College system. So we have a lot of names. We were approved for initial accreditation per our accreditor, NECHE, on July 1st, 2023. And upon that approval, we became the largest community college, not just in New England, but I believe in the Northeastern United States serving north of 70,000 students with 12 main campuses. And, you know, the number increases every day. We have at least eight satellite locations. So we have about 20 locations across Connecticut. We're also in an additional 10 correctional facilities. You know, we are the biggest college in Connecticut. So I tease my UConn friends that we dwarf them. About 25% of all undergraduate students in the state of Connecticut is a CT State student. We're the most affordable, biggest footprint. We're the most diverse institution of higher ed in Connecticut, with 60% of our students being students of color. We're really proud of that. But we're an infant, we're a baby, right? So we're eight months old, you know, we're still crawling, don't know who our parents are, relying on resources and support from every direction. But we've landed that plane, right? We landed that plane. It took about seven years, seven long hard years to finally get the approval to be this unified community college here in the Nutmeg State.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. So you get to this point now, you've got 70,000 students, you're in it. You're in it now. It's not like you tipped your toe in the water and thought, you know, I'm going to be university president. I'm going to start with an institution that has 1,500 students, cut my teeth a little bit, you know, figure out all the ins and outs. You went big. You know, let's go big or go home, I guess, is the way that works. What does this look like for you? I mean, you step in. I mean, this is an incredible infrastructure of management and demands on your time. Talk about the job itself.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, I mean, we are, you know, we are a first. I think when we work with external entities, so our accreditor will be doing their comprehensive assessment and site visit a year from now. So I think spring of 2025, they'll do their comprehensive visit. They don't know how to do it yet. They've never done a statewide institution visit. So they're, you know, they're scrambling. So it's massive because one, you know, like a transformer, you had 12 community colleges individually accredited to come together with individually 60 plus years of their own history, different parts of the state, different culture, different service area and dynamics. And to me, that's the part that makes it complicated, right? Because again, it's not only us as the singular, unified community college, it aligns and mirrors the landscape of Connecticut. So Connecticut has a lot of nicknames, the Nutmeg State. But also the land of steady habits, right? Connecticut does not have county governments. So you have 169 individual municipalities, right? That operate independent from their neighboring, you know, from their neighboring cities and towns. And the community colleges operated in the same vein, right? Like that is the personality of Connecticut. So you have to understand that in terms of centralized mission, centralized vision, but individuality will always be at the core of our individual sites. So understandably, there are a lot of growing pains that we're going through right now. I think one, it was traumatic because it wasn't a popular decision, right? There were two sides about this merger. Two, a big chunk of this merger and building this thing happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, right? So timing was completely horrible. And then three, to your point earlier, you know, trying to, I won't say control or even manage, but really support 6,700 employees, over 4 million square feet of real estate, multiple buildings, facilities, 181 high school partners, right? It's a huge undertaking. And again, I'm not here without the great faculty and staff and leaders that I have the luxury to serve day in and day out.

Joe Sallustio: Let's talk about the infrastructure a little bit now. Does your - and the reason why I think this is so unique - so does each location have its own president and those presidents report up to you? Is that the way that it's fashioned or do they report to a board of trustees and you're overseeing the administration? How does it look?

O. John Maduko: Yeah, so let me go more global. We, CT State Community College, we are a part of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system. It's a two-year and four-year system, similar to SUNY and CUNY in New York, similar to the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system that actually I came from prior to this role, right? So that's one. So it has a state-level Board of Regents, 12 board members, eight are governor appointed, four legislatively appointed. So that's the fiduciary for the six individually accredited institutions and our system's led by a chancellor. And then you have me over what was the 12 individual colleges, now the one big college, and each of our 12 main campuses is led by a campus CEO.

Joe Sallustio: Okay. Yeah. So you're, so the campus CEOs are reporting into you.

O. John Maduko: Yes. Yes.

Joe Sallustio: So that, so I come back to my first question, which was the leadership piece of this, which I find fascinating because it's not that you're jumping in to lead an institution as an inaugural president, you're leading other presidents and all of the challenges that they have now at a state level and saying, OK, how do we do this together? So it's not like you jump in and you've got novices around you and you're going to bring everybody up and train everybody. You've got seasoned leaders around you and you've got to establish yourself and so on. How did you do this? I keep - I think there's a more elaborate question that I'm trying to get to. But what was your approach and style to getting into this role, developing relationships with these leaders with the big umbrella goal of providing education to students across the state? And this is a big goal.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, yeah. So I'll split my response in three parts. So when I was appointed by the Board of Regents and the chancellor, you know, the main objective was to get this thing merged. Right. So I had a year, a simple task, not a simple task because NECHE, the accreditor had said, no, you know, a couple of times. So, you know, get this thing merged. I think two, I was walking into a situation where my first year as president was the first full year that faculty, staff, administrators were back in person. So they had been remote and I had saw this phenomenon two years earlier because we all, we all got the hell out of Dodge, excuse my French, at the height of pandemic March of 2020. In Minnesota, we started coming back face to face fall of 2020. So the union, the administration, we're just like, how do we do our CTE programs remotely? So we came back in person in a limited basis and phased in more elements of the institution. So we had two years to work through those COVID growing pains, right? And the social awkwardness. So I was seeing just people hit the physical wall of fatigue, the awkwardness of being remote now in person and everything that comes with that, right? So I had to be empathetic with that. You had that piece. I walked into a design and structure of an institution that was created by others. So when I came in, not only you had 12 campus leaders, you had three regions and each region had a regional president and each regional president had a handful of campuses reporting up to them. So I walked into having two parallel cabinet groups, this regional cabinet group that consisted of those three regional presidents and my central office were my headquarter administrators. And then you had the campus leaders. I'm just like, yeah, this isn't going to work if we're heading towards the one college identity, right? So I had to break it, right? So I had to eliminate the regional structure because I thought that was just go from 12 to three to one. It was just confusing. Unite my cabinet leaders to report up to me. And then the last part was, you know, we're in the people business, right? And it's all about the human element. And I recognize that though the main objective was to get this thing merged, how it was built, majority, once in the majority of 6,700 people, you know, probably 6,000 of them did not agree with the structure and felt like they were on the outside looking in. So it was really a year dedicated with just meeting people and not just meeting people and telling them my vision. No, it was flipping the classroom, just sitting there and not only listening, but allowing them to get their frustration out. And just for them to be mad, have it be targeted at me. And then for me to say, acknowledge you. I hear you, right? Empathize with you, right? I'm sorry that you weren't at the table. I'm sorry you were on the outside looking in, but without any of you, we're not going to make this thing work. Like the train has left the station. This thing is going to get approved, right? In theory, but we need all of us to make this thing successful. More importantly, have it be worth 12 or one, we still have students that we serve, right? So let's be mission-driven, student-centered. And then once we get this thing accredited and approved, help me write our own story. I get it. Someone else has been telling us this story. This is how it's gonna be. No, throw it out the window. Help me write this story in terms of what we're gonna look like. And that was extremely helpful for me.

Joe Sallustio: You hit on something about change in higher ed, which we all know if you're an administrator in higher ed and you try to change anything, usually you're met with some level of resistance. It's embedded. It's real. It's strong. It's cultural. And the whole saying culture eats strategy for breakfast is absolutely true. When you see it in higher ed, I've seen it in higher ed more than other businesses too, because it's hundreds of years old in many respects. There's a - the change management piece of this, no matter what you say or how you say it, the people who are being changed always look at it as in, what's gonna happen to me? You know, I'm fighting this because I feel secure in my job right now. And if you change these things around me, what happens to me? What happens to my job and my ability to feed my family and all these things? So I'm gonna fight you because fundamentally, I'm not sure what's going to happen to me. You've got to take away my uncertainty as a leader. And that's really hard to do. But isn't that a big part of the change management process when you get down to brass tacks?

O. John Maduko: Yeah, it is. I think, you know, I'm really appreciative of my experience in the Minnesota system. It's a collective bargaining system. When I was there, it was 30 community colleges, seven universities that made up that system. Right after when I left, I think five small colleges merged into one. So now it's 25 community colleges. But I really cut my teeth and sharpened my appreciation and acknowledgement of shared governance and what that means. And ironically with our initial accreditation from NECHE, two of the, one of the main, one out of the nine standards of accreditation is governance, right? And that you can't ignore that. And in the Northeast, maybe more so than other parts of the country, the faculty own the curriculum, period. Like, the faculty own the curriculum. You can't make programmatic and curricular changes without the faculty at the table. So though I have the title president, and though I have privilege with this position, I can't do this alone. I can't drag this institution to a destination without our people.

So I actually took my foot off the gas pedal and, you know, I did something that maybe it's unconventional, but when I took over, it was a very centralized structure. And I mentioned, I did away with the regional structure, but you still had 90% of all personnel of everything reporting centrally to my quote unquote headquarters, my central office. And immediately I was like, how do you manage and support 6,700 individuals, 70,000 students, 20 plus locations, centrally? No, so in partnership with our campus CEOs and other leaders, we've been working to decentralize many of the reporting lines, many of the operations, because one, that's what everyone was clamoring about. That was like one of the sticking points in terms of, to your point, we're losing our identity. What does this mean for me? What about all the things I've been doing for the past 20 years as a faculty member or staff member? I'm just like, I'm not going to die on the hill of pride. Yeah. Ignore what the masses are telling me. So that's what we've done. Right. And we've been really peeling back the layers and asking ourselves this element of the original plan does not make sense. It was created in a vacuum. It's very white paper heavy. Let's shred it and let's get back to basics in terms of just the basic needs of our faculty and staff and more importantly, our students, right?

So, you know, I'm not hesitant, but I don't believe in changing for the sake of change, right? It's more so the mantra that I established was stabilize, build and thrive. First and foremost, we have to stabilize this because this is probably the most complicated higher education merger in the history of higher education - two governors, protests, rallies, you name it. And the worst thing I can do is just put, you know, have tunnel vision, put my head down and say, nope, we're just gonna change to change and get to some destination, even though I look behind me and no one's behind me because people are still healing. People are still trying to wrap their heads around this. And then three, you know, at the end of the day, because it's Connecticut, the needs of a Hartford, Connecticut, right, can look completely different than the needs of a New Haven, Connecticut, and that's actually okay, right? So the whole culture piece, my focus isn't to change the culture. It's more so we have to stabilize and help people feel comfortable speaking up, speaking their truth, bringing their ideas and ingenuity to the table. And with that, using that as the inertia to help us formulate some really great strategies and plans and visions, right? So that's been my game plan. And that's been really my focus this year, even compared to my first year in this position. Year one was just, I'm a new president. This is insane. Got to get this merged. Everything's on fire. Year two is more so, okay, I have a million ideas, but it's not going to work if it's about John Maduko. It's going to work if it's about our people. What do I need to do to put the microphone, no pun intended, right, to our people to really hear their thoughts and feelings, right? So this year has been more about that.

Joe Sallustio: Talk about the students along the way here because that first year I'm a president and I've got to bring all this together. I've got to figure out the structure. Meanwhile, there's a lot of students, they have a lot of needs. They're also coming out of COVID too at the time you start - learning loss, you've got community college enrollment declines, you have black men not coming back to college, you have all of these problems. Food, you know, one of the most fascinating things that I've found through my time interviewing community college presidents is how they have become like, clinicians, mental health counselors along the way, because we have to think about all the things a student needs. OK, you go to college for school. But wait a minute. You need Internet and you need food and you need a place to live. So all these insecurities and all of a sudden schools have food pantries, have mental health clinics, they have Internet hotspots. It's like, what does a university or a community college not do now? All the things it's technically supposed to do, but has to do in order to serve the students. How do you balance that with all of this merger stuff going on around you? There must have been like landmines everywhere.

O. John Maduko: Yeah. You know what? So I embarked on a 100-day tour and it allowed me to visit all of our locations. And I think the fear that people have, what people have shared with me over time was we felt that you were going to get hired, you were going to stick to the original plan, you're going to sit behind your desk and you're just going to take your first year and do like a victory lap, right? Just shake hands, shake hands and kiss babies. I'm like, I'm not wired that way, right? It's not just being an MD. I'm, you know, I'm a first generation Nigerian American. We Nigerians, we're just wired differently, right? We're a little crazy. We're just wired differently in terms of like you jump in head first. And so during my tours and visiting campuses, it wasn't just a campus visit for two or three hours, I would visit each campus and stay on campus at least eight to 10 hours. I was really big on it. Faculty and staff said, "Maduko, there's something broken. There's a deficiency or hole in the roof." I'm big on it. Go show me. Like, go show, like, help me understand how this is impactful to you. And during those visits, I got to meet with students and have these student forums and meeting with those students, it actually brought down the stress. Because one, it got back to basics. It reminds us constantly the why, the why that we're here. And hearing about their aspirations and their dreams, but also their challenges, and what it takes for one student with no transportation, the student parent who's working a couple jobs, just to get to school every day, right? Humbles you to say, okay, if you're doing all this to get to one of our campuses, at the very least, I can shut my mouth and make this thing work, right? And make it all for you, right? So that was helpful.

And to your point, student insecurities on all of the areas. So when I drafted and published my 100-day report, at the core of it, yes, all the concerns that I was hearing from our faculty and staff about communication, about academic affairs, about the curriculum, about services, I get all that. But at the core of it was really student support services, right? It was mental health. 40% of our students, we surveyed, you know, reported they've got mental health needs and challenges. I'm like, okay, I'm going, so by the end of my first year, I'm going to invest institutional resources and make sure that we have at least one mental health licensed counselor on all of our campuses. Check that box, that's what we did. Right. And we re-upped our telehealth, you know, our Timely Care subscription because our funds ran out. So we use our own institutional funding to make sure that there was accessibility. Right. Our students shared concerns about public safety. Some of our campuses had inconsistent public safety. So now we've made sure that we hired our inaugural chief of police and also ensure that every one of our locations has some form of public safety where that wasn't the case, right?

So at the core of year one, at the core of all these things going on, hearing these student issues as heartbreaking as some of them are and continue to be, reminded me why I'm here, reminded me that that's a common thread that connects faculty, union, administration, staff, whomever to rally around our students and their needs. So that was actually helpful for me. I felt like it grounded me in my first year that was the epitome of chaos. But it made me see more clearly in terms of what I needed to do, right? Tell and amplify the story of our students, not only to our internal stakeholders, but definitely to our external stakeholders at all levels of the state.

Joe Sallustio: Right. And also, I'm sure this was going on in your mind. How do I minimize any disruption for the student? No matter what our structure is, could be seven levels of this or two levels of that, the student just goes to class, gets their education, gets to develop a relationship with their faculty member, gets their grade, goes home, enrolls in the next class and so on, accesses the services and goes. Wait a minute. I don't even know you changed the structure, right? It's the whole Amazon model, right? You order something on Amazon, you have no idea how it gets to you - procurement and manufacturing and trucking and robots and whatever - it just kind of comes to your doorstep. When you make changes in higher ed, we all work to eliminate disruption to the students. Some do well, some don't. How important was that to you? Was it a tenet? Was it something that was always discussed to say, okay, we got to make sure our students don't feel this because if they do, they get skittish. If they get skittish, they can use it as a justification not to come back.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, because it's easy when you're - to your point, change management, merging, all the things that came with, you know, the first year in this job to let those things fall through cracks. But what I learned at the height of the pandemic in Minnesota, I think we all learned it in the academy is we have to do whatever it takes to hold our students harmless. Regardless of how we got here, regardless of what was supposed to be in place or whatever, we have to hold our students harmless, right? So stop focusing on who's at fault or how bad this new thing is. Let's make sure our students are good to go. Right. I think in Minnesota that helped, right. I think in Minnesota, I learned, you know, serving as a VP of Academic Student Affairs for Minnesota State College, Community and Technical College, where faculty would come to me in my office, close the door and just yell at me for 15 minutes. And I realized, man, you're not, you're not even mad at me. You're just mad. You're just frustrated with this situation. And in that moment, my response is, it's going to be okay. Right? And I'm glad you got that out. Like, how do we hold, how do I hold you harmless? And how do we collectively and together hold our students harmless? And that was really important. 

And I think the early wins were, you know, expanding mental health, expanding certain things and access, right? In the midst of all of these things going on. I think as higher ed administrators, because every state's so different how we're funded, the role of the legislature or local elected boards or local county governments, what have you, that common thread is our students. And I think, yeah, I think we've seen the headlines, administrators are stressed and they're going through a lot. We have to lean on the very thing that keeps it, the purest part of our jobs, the purest part about academia higher ed is the students. So that's been helpful, right? You know, what I've learned along the way from people that I stand on their shoulders is if you can justify or tie what we're doing to students, then why are we doing it? So simple as that. If you can't tie it directly, then why are you doing it? I think that level sets a room, a circumstance in the challenge.

Joe Sallustio: What's next for you? 70,000 students. You've gone through this massive merger. You're - I would say what you've - you've gone through the disruption phase. You're in the - what kind of phase are you in right now? The organizing phase to see what's next. What's the vision? Where do you go? Is it programmatic vision? Is it population vision? Is it service vision? Talk a little bit about what's next.

O. John Maduko: Ooh, like what's not next? I think for me, we're still in the stabilization phase, right? That's the word I was looking for. Right, right? We still have to stabilize this thing and in no way are we thriving. And the stabilization is really our operations and our processes to make sure like they, we are aware of them and the end user, our faculty and staff feel confident that it's situated in a manner that's not causing harm or people feel like they're having to come up with workarounds, right? And we're simply just going through that right now. I think two, we've stabilized our enrollment. So year over year, we are flat in enrollment and I'll take being flat in a -

Joe Sallustio: Congrats.

O. John Maduko: Right. I'll take that versus what, you know, so many institutions went through and, you know, at the height of the pandemic, second only to Arizona, Connecticut, you know, suffered the highest loss of enrollment by percentage than any other state. Right. And so often I face not criticism, but the question is, well, you guys aren't where you were five years ago and 10 years ago. And I think the beauty and the irony of higher education is we have to constantly educate people on how this thing works. And I tell people we were a different world 10 years ago and 10 years ago were the good old days. The height of the recession where enrollment was much easier. We're not getting back there. You know, there's this thing called the pandemic and two, like we've stabilized and three, we're in the Northeast and the Northeast United States is suffering a demographic nosedive in terms of just birth rates, high school graduates and et cetera, right? So to compare this era of higher ed through the enrollment lens to compare it to five years ago, 10 years ago, it's not only unfair, right? It's not apples to apples, right? 

But we've stabilized enrollment and now it's, are we ready to turn that corner? Are we ready to recognize the position that we're in because we're the largest institution of higher ed in Connecticut? Because per our governor, we are at the center of workforce development for the state of Connecticut where no one else can move the workforce needle to a level or to a degree like Connecticut State Community College. I feel like that's a huge opportunity for us and also too, and Joe, you might, through your research, Connecticut doesn't have a codified dual enrollment infrastructure. So, UConn provides the majority of dual enrollment opportunities, and we are second to UConn. So we provide about 28 to 30% of dual enrollment opportunities in the state of Connecticut, it's about 8,000 students. That only represents 3% of our enrollment. That's scary. Considering the lost opportunity.

Joe Sallustio: Exactly.

O. John Maduko: When I come from places, you know, in Minnesota and Texas, it's 25, 30% of our enrollment. So when you're asking like what lines ahead, our strategic priorities is really establishing a dual enrollment infrastructure where we have an early college umbrella. It will never be one size fits all, but there's conventional dual enrollment and concurrent enrollment. And how do we provide these, you know, provide these programmatic offerings to high school students? Seeking and advocating in partnership with our state department of education and our system and the executive branch, you know, a sustainable funding model. So we can expand that. So to me, that's one. And then I think, too, there's some high demand areas in Connecticut that are in desperate need of more workers. So health care, IT and manufacturing. And I feel that we are the leaders in those areas, but we can do so much more. Right. So big picture, you know, North Star type of things are those areas. But in terms of the fundamentals, we are still stabilizing and building this thing called CT State.

Joe Sallustio: You know, what's fascinating about you, John, and I don't know if the listeners are going to get this, so I want to say it out loud, but there's very few people in higher ed that have ever gone through an acquisition or a merger. Very few. And you can find them, they're around, but even fewer the number that have gone through a merger on the public side because it's very rare. So rare because of the administrators, legislatures, the governors, there's so many political points to it where if it's in the non-profit area, non-profit privates, you know, they'll merge, they'll acquire each other, but when it's public and you've got trustees that are appointed by a governor, much more complicated. So you represent like a case study in a merger at a public institution. 

People out there doing research on this. And I want to just bring light to what you did because it's massive. It's massive in nature. And it's not just tactically massive because of the people you had to pull along with you to get to where you need to go. But to hold students harmless and then set a vision for the future, there are so many concurrent things that you have to be considering when you go through something like this. And as an inaugural president, I mean, it's just an amazing accomplishment. Congratulations. What's the governor saying? Your relationship with the governor - you're moving forward together, is everything, all the boxes get checked?

O. John Maduko: So you know, I've had an opportunity to speak with the governor a handful of times. You know, I leave that opportunity you know for our chancellor who I report to who has more engagement with the governor. When I do speak to the governor, you know, I'll give him credit - he does identify our community colleges as having a big role in workforce. You know, he recognizes what we're trying to do. And again, he's given me opportunities to say, you know, "Mr. Governor, there were elements of this that were designed years ago that we're just making changes and shifts that better give us the best opportunity to be successful." So, you know, I'm extremely appreciative of our General Assembly, so our state representatives and senators, and also our executive branch and our board members and our faculty and staff, because it's gonna take all of us to move this thing forward. 

And to your point about the case study, I'll say this, I didn't do this by myself, right? So I have a great team that I serve and that's behind me and that they challenge me. But I think also too, I think there have been, let me just say there have been some state systems that have reached out recently saying, yeah, we need you to come up and talk to us. My response has been like, are you - do you want the honest raw feedback from me? Right? Because I'm going to ask you, why are you merging? Because if you think that the issues that existed pre-merger are going to go away because you've merged, that is absolutely untrue. So I would ask you, I would ask you, are you willing to maybe address those issues now? Right? Because they're not going to - they're not going to disappear and understand that there is a risk and a reward when it comes with this, right? And you need to understand that. 

And I think, again, the irony is institutions of higher education, we provide instruction to so many students, but I think we all have to be not only lifelong learners, but students in the academy, using every institution, every state, every system as a case study on what to do, what not to do, and at the very least, pick up the phone and call our colleagues across the country to say, how in the world did you land this plane or why did you change your plan at the 11th hour? I think higher ed is not the greatest at doing that.

Joe Sallustio: What else do you want to say about Connecticut State Community College? Open mic for you. Anything you want to draw - programs, students, situations, tips, anything at all. And then I'll ask you the final question and end the episode.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, yeah. You know, Connecticut State Community College, aka CT State, we are a mission-driven, student-centered, equity-minded, data-informed, comprehensive and statewide community college. And we're proud about that. And though we are new, we have 60 plus years of history of community colleges in the great state of Connecticut. And as a minority-majority serving institution, we recognize the challenges that our students are going through now. We recognize the disparities, both socioeconomic and cultural and racial and gender-based that continue to persist across our country and Connecticut. And I feel that as a community college, we have that role to be the conduit, not only to bring people together, but also resources. 

As the newest college, probably in America, but definitely in New England, we're here, we're not going anywhere. I'm proud to lead this institution. I'm proud that our institution actually looks like Connecticut. 98% of our students are from the state of Connecticut and 90% of our students stay in Connecticut. So an investment in us is an investment in our institution. To our faculty and staff and our students, I'm just gonna say thank you, and our leaders, I wanna say thank you. Beyond support, thank you for challenging me and not mincing words when it comes to the things that I need to improve upon. 

And to our colleagues nationally that are doing this work - and unfortunately we've lost some members of our administration across this country, females and people of color, people in situations that are simply just unhealthy - just know that there's a bigger community that's out here and a platform like EdUp, right? And a leader and a thought provoker like Joe and others, there are places that we can go to just to listen, right? To laugh, to maybe sometimes cry, but also to kind of pick up the phone and just ask the question, like, hey, how do I handle this, right? I think the more we're willing to lean into each other, especially with what's going on in higher ed and what's upon us, is really the only path forward for us to get through it, right? 

So I think wellness has to be at the core. Individual wellness has to be at the core of this work and to make sure that we remind ourselves this is what we do, it's not who we are. We have families and things that we love beyond the job, the title and everything that comes with that. And that balance needs to be in place, right? Again, I'm not giving anyone a piece of advice, but what I'm saying is those are the things that I'm actively working on day in and day out. So I can be the best version of me, not only for CT State Community College, but for the great family, you know, wife and three beautiful kids I have here at home. And, you know, I wish everyone that peace and grace that we all need to get through this.

Joe Sallustio: I got to echo your comments because you know that you have to rely on your colleagues for support, not necessarily in your institution, but outside your institution for perspective. That was one of the beautiful things about the EdUp community is that people connect and they - you're connected to so many people we've interviewed here too, John. If you get outside yourself, whether that person has more experience than you or less experience than you, every situation in higher ed is different. You can learn from so many people. All you have to do is ask. Higher Ed community will help you when you ask. Now, if you don't ask, nobody's going to know to help you. And I think that's - it's - I always tell my team that asking for help is a show of strength. It's not a weakness. It allows you to admit that you need support. We all do. And if you don't get it, it's a hard road ahead. 

And speaking of hard roads, higher ed, you - you were talking about competition earlier too for, you know, enrollment declines and all this. And we also are competing with the value of a college degree. Forget the institution down the road. The value of college or whether I should go or stay. What do you see for the future of higher education, John? Crystal ball it for us.

O. John Maduko: I think we as higher ed leaders need to listen to our students and our communities, right? Because there has been a shift, not only in terms of the favorability ratings of us, but I think beyond that, people are questioning the value of education and the degree. But I think just we, at some point, in many aspects of higher ed, we are perpetual in terms of trying to hold on to what it has been for over a century. But we have to understand it's not just AI, it's everything about this world is changing. How people learn, how people travel, how people - you know, before our generation, I think we're the same age, around the same age. It was you graduate, you gotta get that car, you gotta get the apartment, the home, you gotta take on debt. And you, and you, and we have a generation of people that, nope, they're not, they're not wired that way. They are happy to stay at home with mom and dad and save money and Uber and use public transportation versus jumping on the debt horse like we did, right? I think we have to understand that. And are we willing to adapt? I think in higher ed, if we don't adapt based on listening and believing the people that we should be serving - students and communities - someone is going to adapt us. And we are seeing that in the academy, right? I think we have to understand like the change moment is here in higher ed and what type of sector and what type of individual institutions are we trying to be? I don't have the answer for that, but I think we need to tap into that. 

And also too, we're seeing colleagues that are just leaving or people being reluctant to either go to or stay within the levels of administration. And we have to understand that's happening for a reason, right? That's happening for a reason, right? So I think it's all connected and it's all relative, but you know, the amount of change that's ahead of us, I believe is going to be rapid. I think it's going to be something we've never seen before. And we have to be ready to, you know, to step up to the challenge to continue to serve people. I think it's people, not just students and communities, it's really just people. Right. Like that's our role. Right. You know, that's our role. It's service. It's serving people. And we have to better define that and understand our place within it.

Joe Sallustio: So are you ready for the change that's coming? I know one person that is, and that's my guest today. You heard him speak about pretty amazing change at his institution. And he has done something that very few in our industry have done, which is he's leading 70,000 students. That's an incredible feat by itself. Ladies and gentlemen, he is Dr. John Maduko. He is the president of Connecticut State Community College. John, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. I've learned a few things from you. Wow, man, what a heck of a deal you've gone through. Congrats on getting to the other side of that.

O. John Maduko: Yeah, no, no, no, thank you. I'm appreciative of the opportunity to tell a little bit of our story. We're here, right? So I hope we can connect again in future. If you need anything from myself or from us here at CT State, just name it and we have your back.

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