844: The Bowtie President - with Dr. Tim Cook, President, Clackamas Community College

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to EdUp on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio here for another episode of EdUp, this time with half my face numb. So you may be hearing that I sound a little bit funny. I had to go to the dentist. Each time I speak, I'm either drooling or chewing on my tongue, but we're going to get through this episode because there was zero chance - and I mean zero chance - that I was going to cancel on my guest today. Too important, and I love interviewing one of my favorite things to do is to interview community college presidents because of the work that they have to do to prop up our country right now and skill the workforce of tomorrow.

Let me take a breath and suck my drool back in. Yes, this is actually a professional higher ed podcast ladies and gentlemen. But it's also real and I know some of you have had dental work and gone to work and had to charge through it. So I'll do the same thing here.

But I want to take you on a journey. I do want to say this and a quick shout out to my staff at Lindenwood University, where I am chief experience officer. My birthday was on Valentine's Day and they played a prank on me. They put 2,000 ball pit balls, you know, like when you take your kid to urban air or something like that and there's ball pits. They made a ball pit inside my office somehow with some cardboard that was all folded up. And so when I went to open my door in the morning for my birthday, 2,000 balls flew out of the door, which was diversion for the real prank, which was they put a cat - put a speaker, hid it in my office, and it was a meowing cat that would go off randomly throughout the day. So I'd be on a meeting like I'm about to have right now with our guest that I'll introduce in a second, and I'd hear "meow," and I would go, what the heck is going on?

I'm rifling through my desk. So I'm trying to find it. I'm turning my chairs over. And for two days that went on and drove me nuts. But they thought I was getting upset. So they revealed, though I would have let it gone forever if I was the one doing the prank to somebody else. I would have never revealed - pranks are all about how far you could take it, in my opinion. But we're not going to prank our guests today. But shout out to my staff, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to bring him in right now. He's got a lot to say about what's going on in the state of Oregon. Here he is. He is Dr. Tim Cook. He's president of Clackamas Community College. Tim, welcome to the mic.

Tim Cook: Thanks so much, Joe. And I have to say shout out to your staff as well. Sounds like people I get along with really well. I love pranks and I love opportunities to give people a hard time. So that ball pit one is one I might have to borrow.

Joe Sallustio: It was a spilling effect, if you will, just everywhere. That's what it was.

Tim Cook: You know what, I'm with you on that. There's nothing more important than having fun with what we do. We serve students, gotta have fun while we do it.

Joe Sallustio: Can you talk about Clackamas Community College? Where are you? What do you do and how do you do it?

Tim Cook: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Thanks again for having me. So Clackamas Community College has been around since 1966. We're in Oregon City, Oregon, which is just south of Portland. It's the actual end of the Oregon Trail. I think that's just a couple miles from our college. And so there's just a lot of history with our college and with the state. We've got three campuses, that one in Oregon City, we've got one a little further away in Milwaukie, Oregon, and then another one in Wilsonville, Oregon, about just under 20,000 students headcount, which equates to about 5,000 FTE students. And we'll talk a little bit more about that, the changing nature of students as that goes.

Joe Sallustio: Well, let's do that now, because that's such an important topic, right? We have to go through too, like here's how many students we have, but here's how many equivalents we have, full-time equivalents. The students are different, students changing how they experience higher education. What do you see in Clackamas, how students journey?

Tim Cook: Yeah, some big differences. You know, before the pandemic we were finding we had probably close to 70% or so of our students that were part-time. And for a number of reasons, that number has gone up to closer to 85% now. And that's, again, I always tell people not because they necessarily want to be, it's because that's what they can afford. That's the time they have. They've got families and they're working through that. So it makes a big difference on completions. It makes a big difference on how we provide support and everything for those students. So that's a big shift.

The other one, or a few other ones, I guess, I'll just jump in. Concern I have is the just higher number of basic needs that students have. Again, a few years back, we were seeing like probably most places across the country need for more food banks. And so all of our campuses have food banks that are just decimated every week. And then the numbers of higher numbers of housing insecurity or just homelessness for our students. So it's changed the way that we, our foundation works, it changed the way that we were offering support for students. I mean, scholarships are important and tuition and books are important, but we're giving out money for electric bills and for gas and things like that for students that are close to dropping out because they don't have a place to live or they can't get to class or something else like that. So that's a big shift I think a lot of people that either worked in education or went to college years ago don't quite get, you know, that that shift.

Joe Sallustio: That's a fact. That's a fact. I agree. I agree. Also, maybe it was less acceptable to have socially acceptable to have all those things and communicate them. Right. Like I think about I think about my father and if had I gone and said, hey, I'm having mental health issues or I'm having this or I'm having that. I think he would have called me a wimp and sent me back on my way. I think it's more socially acceptable now that if you have issues, if you if you're a student and you have concerns, voice them. Now, what that does is puts tons of pressure on the institution to be something that you weren't built for and managing. We know how to do education, but how do we do all these other things? Can you talk about balance a little bit? How do you balance all of that?

Tim Cook: Yeah, that's a really great point. I'll just say, I thank you for bringing that up. Five, six years ago, our food bank was in a closet, kind of out of the way. There was a social stigma to even accessing that or counseling. And our new student center, when we designed that, counseling is prime. I mean, they've got prime real estate. People see it and you can have access to it. And our food bank is probably three times as large with an outside entrance and indoor entrance. And you see it, you and you can have access to it. So it's a whole different shift in how people are accessing these pieces.

So balance for sure. We talk a lot about Clackamas, how we, you know, communities are middle name and we really partner wherever we can. And certainly in these areas of kind of social services or support has become a big part of what we do. One of the more exciting partnerships that we developed in the last couple of years is an entirely free health clinic moved onto our campus. A few years back, they'd approached us. They were in a kind of dilapidated building that they needed to move out of and wondered if we had space. And of course, the silver lining from the pandemic is we were starting to really think differently about spaces. And we did. We invited them on. They raised the money to really put the clinic in. So now our students have, it's a great partnership because our students have access to free health care. Amazing.

And our health science students, nursing, medical assistants, phlebotomists have access to practical experience, which is helping the clinic as well. And the third win out of the win-win-win is community members who maybe never stepped onto campus are coming because the clinic's there. So they're getting exposed to that too. That is something that probably people weren't thinking about. I remember years back, we had health centers on campuses that were funded by student fees, and those all went away. Those were budget cuts years ago. So to get something like that again is really critical.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. Speaking of getting to a clinic, I might need to do that because I've chewed half my tongue off. My guest co-host. She was busy, but she's here now. She's Sonia Khan. She is the VP of innovation at Ellucian. Sonia, I've been dying for you to get here because I'm, and Tim has been hearing me. I'm fumbling and bumbling as I chewing my face off right now, I would love you to jump in.

Sonia Khan: It's the drool that's distracting Joe. I wish people could actually see what we're seeing right now. No, I don't. OK, no, I'm just kidding. Yikes! Well, I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me again. I'm sorry for being late.

Joe Sallustio: No worries. No worries. But I want to pass it over to you for any questions you have for Tim.

Sonia Khan: Yes. So I did come in here a little bit late, but I automatically loved what I was hearing. We at Ellucian take the concept of nurturing the whole student very seriously. I will tell you, we're always trying to figure out like what are the factors that actually equate to what that means? Is it food insecurity? Is it financial insecurity? I cannot believe you guys have figured out a way to get students all access to healthcare that easily. It's fantastic. But in your mind, it's completely epic. So in your mind, tell us what are your, let's say your top five factors for what it means to address a student's full wellbeing.

Tim Cook: Top five factors. Okay. So, if we're addressing their whole wellbeing, we need to do things like make sure our tuition and books and everything are affordable. So open education resources, low tuition. I would say that's kind of first and foremost. We need to make sure that we're offering programs that meet the needs of when our students are available. So whether that's fully online, whether that's hybrid, whether it's nights, weekends, we need to look at that.

We need to, let's see, third is probably basic needs so that they can actually come and looking at Maslow's hierarchy actually be successful in school, be fed, be housed, and do well. So we're trying to figure that out. That's three.

We need to have, gosh, we need to continue to eliminate barriers for students to actually get into their classes or find their classes or just navigate complex systems. That's a mixed bag. I think we've made some progress, but there's still some more work to do.

And five, I think, you know, I would actually I'd probably move this up higher if I were to think about this list further. We need to make sure that everyone feels like they belong. We need to have an environment that welcomes everybody and, you know, let's let's anybody and everybody know that they can be successful. I'm a first generation college student and that's been critical to me, you know, to my success was feeling like this was a place where I could be successful and achieve my dreams. And I am still committed to that, to everybody that, you know, this is a place that they can come and achieve their dreams.

Sonia Khan: What do the judges think about this? Let's go to the judges to see how we did on the top five.

Joe Sallustio: I was sweating that one out. You nailed it.

Sonia Khan: And clearly, community is like a key piece of what you do and how you lead. So if a student has that direct connection and feels like they have a sense of strong belonging at your institution, how does that show up in their academics? How does that show up in their retention? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tim Cook: Yeah, absolutely. So retention is probably the primary one, right? They see themselves there. They feel accepted. They're likely to stay or likely to persevere and continue on there. Additionally, if they feel like they belong, they're more likely to have conversations with their professors, with their advisors, are likely to seek out help and assistance and not feel like they're just another number. That this is a place that they're proud of and that they want to stay at.

It's not just a great idea from a values perspective, which is one of our primary values. It's a great idea for the bottom line. I mean, if you have a strong sense of belonging, not just for students, but for staff, you know, faculty and everybody, then you retain employees, you have a happier place that people want to be at. It just is a big draw overall.

Joe Sallustio: It is. It is. I want one quick note while I can. Well, I feel like feeling is coming back to me. Retention, Sonia brought up retention and retention has so many layers to it. We use it as a blanket term, right? Like if you're talking about retention in an Ivy League and you're talking retention at a community college, you're not talking the same language, in my opinion. We say out loud, yeah, retention and persistence. So we're all concerned about moving students to the next term and keeping them. But the work that community colleges have to do to retain students, to keep them going, is much deeper, in my opinion, than maybe schools where there's a little bit more privilege and so on. The student type is different. Students of color, first gen, lower resource students, when you have to pay that electric bill and you're thinking about paying that electric bill for that student, that's real. Like that's, if I can't get that electric bill paid, how am I gonna make it to school, President Cook? And so I've got to drop. I can't be here if I can't do this.

Talk about your team a little bit, the retention team you have, however you have them structured, whatever you call them, that is really hard work.

Tim Cook: It is hard work. Yeah, and earlier in my career, I did a lot of that. I was a counselor and worked in success and retention for years before I kind of moved up in administration. So it's important work to me. So we have a care team. We call it with the care team at work.

I would preface this by saying, yes, students have a number of barriers. My message is always, I want us to at least have tried to see what we can do to help them overcome that barrier. When I run into students or people that had to drop out for some reason and I find out that we didn't reach out and try to offer some sort of resources, that's where I get concerned. So all of the early alerts that we can do with faculty really recognizing certainly making students and staff aware of all the resources available, those pieces.

So, the care team's job, which is made up of counselors and staff and faculty that really tries to reach out early on and make sure that we have that environment is really critical. They have, gosh, they've had a tough job for years, they've had a tough job. As these issues get more more deep, it's becoming more and more an issue.

I'll give you an example from last week. We had a rather large cyber attack last month that really disabled our systems.

Joe Sallustio: No way!

Tim Cook: We did. It was still digging out of it. It's something else if you want to talk about. But one of the biggest concerns there was were we're to be able to get financial aid out on time, which for students, that's make or break. Can I pay my rent? Can I buy food? And so our foundation stepped up and offered emergency grants like on the spot. And we had just dozens of students that needed something to again, get them through until we could get those financial aid checks out. Those types of things I'm really proud of that we look and say, the primary goal is to help students stay. There are other reasons why they need to leave and so on. And we always wanna make sure that they're feel welcome to come back. But I don't want people leaving because they weren't aware or didn't have access to potential resource that keeps them in.

Joe Sallustio: Not to gloss over the student part of this, but you brought up the cyber attack. This is a real issue in higher ed. One thing I'm sure of is that I'm way less prepared to ask about it than Sonia Khan is. So I'm going to let Sonia ask you questions related to that because she's way smarter than me about it.

Sonia Khan: I don't know if I'm way smarter, but it is something that we talk about a lot in the SaaS world is cybersecurity, handling those attacks when you're on your own is very difficult, but being able to do it when you're part of a SaaS platform, you have the ability of having a large network of people who are ready to jump in and make sure that you are protected. And it feels like these threats are happening, obviously, more and more. They're targeting campuses. Talk to me, I guess, about the panic that was there and how you guys rallied to get around it.

Tim Cook: Yeah, it's something else. To your point about having resources and really thinking this through, the takeaways for me are really the way I described it to all the presidents in Oregon when I was telling them about it last week is imagine you wake up on a Friday morning right about this time or a couple hours later and you don't have access to any of your systems. How do you want to respond? It's challenging. It's hugely challenging. 

So we fortunately had a great IT team, but beyond that, really great teams across the campus that really, really rallied and started problem solving. We were still down for about two or three days where we couldn't offer online instruction. And, you know, we're still digging out of it, but most of our systems are back up. That's a true credit to our campus and the work that everyone did to try to figure that out. 

I mean, there was early on, we were like, how are we going to pay our employees? And, you know, the financial aid issue I mentioned and a number of things that there was this heroic efforts to really figure out some of those systems. But had we not had outside resources, had we not had the internal staff and a plan. And I tell everybody, if you don't have a continuity of operations plan, that's like priority number one to think about how would you really get these things up and running again. And I'll just say, I mean, we were in a number of areas doing that on the fly. How can we figure that out? We didn't have access to email. We didn't have access to our website, to our learning platforms. I mean, so we were literally posting things on social media or on our rave alert system. And that was the only way we could communicate for several days until we got an alternative website up. 

So there's just lunacy. It's a whole different kind of crisis management to kind of get through that. And talking to people, colleagues that I know that were down for much longer, I mean, I feel pretty fortunate that we didn't, you know, it wasn't as impactful as it could have been.

Sonia Khan: Yeah, that business continuity, it's a real thing. It's amazing how well you guys rallied. I love the fact that you guys were able to do that emergency funding. What a great way to showcase to your students that you care about them and that when that student leaves your institution, they know they can come back because they have a high level of trust that you care and are ready to support them. Terrifying, but what a great story of rallying and people coming together and making it work. Thank you.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, that's pretty impressive. What happens next, though, Tim, like what's the debrief on it? Like, you you've got to look at this and go, OK, this happened. What do we need to do now to prevent it from happening again? Because I think higher ed and Sonia, you know better than me, but I think higher ed is really easy targets for cybersecurity attacks. Like we're not built technology-wise to prevent them completely.

Tim Cook: Well, we're under resourced and I think that's one of the reasons why we can't afford all of the protections everybody has. Yeah, so as we're getting through this and getting everything back on, that's the after action plans. Really, what did we learn? How can we better protect ourselves? So we're doubling down on some of our software and some of our programs that are early alerts and let us be aware of that. We're certainly got the attention of the campus about phishing attacks and scams and really the importance of password protections that we've been doing, all the two-factor authentication, all those things before. But now people are paying attention to what's coming through. And so that's been helpful. 

And as I mentioned, it was probably the biggest wake-up call for all of us about getting that continuity of operations plan together. So we're working through those. Just figuring out kind of how, hopefully not when this happens again, but it's entirely likely that it could, that we are ready to respond and ready to respond quickly and get these systems back up as quickly as we can and work out. I don't want to downplay it. It's a ton of work. And people were working around the clock on weekends to get some of these things back up to respond quickly. And it it sucks the life out of everything else. You can't move forward on anything else while you're doing it. It's been, you know, about three weeks or so that we've, it's been all cyber all the time for us.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, I can feel crippling.

Sonia Khan: It is one of the main drivers of the value of SaaS is that taking that even those three days down to a matter of hours because you'd have an entire group of people willing to lean in and support. And it's sad that higher education keeps getting hit this way. It's that student data is so precious and they know it and they know that can hold people ransom with it.

Tim Cook: Yeah, fortunately, we do not believe that there was any student or employee data compromised. That was really the great part about all this as we got into it. We weren't - we don't believe they're able to access any of that.

Sonia Khan: Fantastic. Interesting.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. And this is like an issue of our our of our days, right? Especially technology is advancing very fast. The student is also accessing information more quickly. We talk about AI all the time, but we don't talk about AI in the student context as much as we should. We talk about it, we talk about it more like globally, more like out there as in the institution. How are we going to accept AI? But Sonia, I want to ask you and defer to you to ask the questions here because I know you're dealing with this and then, Tim, I really would love for you to talk about how students are experiencing it too. But go ahead, Sonia.

Sonia Khan: Yes. So, I one of the key things that I do here at Ellucian is I lead our incubator team. It's a little small startup within Ellucian all focused on playing and doing some of the future forward work that we're not able to do as part of our regular work. And of course, it has an AI first mindset. It has to because look at the world these days, right? 

So yesterday it's been all the news, but Sam Altman, that interesting man who is doing that, that little guy in the corner, right? He announced Sora. Have you guys heard of it? I was reading about it this morning. Have you seen the visuals for them?

Tim Cook: Just a few.

Sonia Khan: I mean, like, so like all things, it is amazing. But there's also the other side of the spectrum, right? Where people are wondering, well, if they can do that, what happens to the music or to the film industry? What kind of disruption is happening? 

So and my daughter, just so you know, is going into art school to be an animator. And we're having conversations with her in this world, too, to say, you know, how does the future workforce look like? And as an educator who is responsible to their students to make sure that they are going to be viable in a future workforce, knowing that there is this potential of AI to do some phenomenally disruptive things, not always good in the marketplace, how do you feel you're actually being able to prepare your students adequately for this future where AI has potentially automated a lot of things?

Tim Cook: Yeah. That's a great point and great discussion. And I would say when I talk about cyber sucking out all the air out of things, I we were really having these conversations about where are we looking at AI in the curriculum? Where are we looking at it for supports for the college and everything? And we'll get back to that. I mean, that's certainly for sure. 

Where I land on this, and I was at a presentation a month or so ago where a couple of months ago, I guess, a futurist was talking about, he's like, AI may not take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI will take your job. And so I've been sharing that with folks that might be like, my gosh, this is horrible. And this is the rest. I was like, this is another powerful tool, actually one of probably the most powerful tools that will have come to us in generations. I mean, it's not hyperbole to say this is changing everything.

I saw, I see that, SORA, is that what it's called? I saw this morning and my first thought was, wow, I can see why people feel threatened by this, that are creators and that are in the film industry, TV and the rest. I can definitely understand that. But I had the same thought as like, this could really be quite an amazing tool and what will this look like? My son is also, he's studying graphic design in college right now. So we have this conversation all the time. Like, how do you think this is gonna impact the work that you do and get along that. And it's just really this interesting conversation is there, you know, all these tools are getting better and better and at this and, what kind of work there will be. 

I guess I think about this like a lot of things, you know, it's coming and, you know, it's not like we're gonna stop it. And so how do we really prepare our faculty and how do we prepare our students to really embrace might be too strong of a word, but certainly to really figure out where these tools are going to be helpful and how to navigate them. As we all know, our students are way ahead of us on this way anyway, as they always are. They're using these and not always for good. How do we help them understand the rest of this? I personally find it quite exciting. I think it's quite interesting. And so I do tend to look at it and I try to be an early adopter and play and try out some of these things, but helping the campus get on those is something that we really need to spend a lot of time and resources doing.

Sonia Khan: Do you feel yourself wanting to steer your students to be stronger in their critical thinking, knowing that AI is there and it's likely going to grab onto those use cases that are very manual, labor intensive, pattern recognition, those kinds of things. In tech, we always say that with the search in AI, the next best coding language is English. True. It's basically like how well it's now in the future going to be more about how well are you able to creatively solve a problem or think of something or prompt an output instead of crafting it. Do you see yourself investing and maybe some of those older degrees that were under fire a while ago, like communication and English, these are things that are going to be surging. Do you see yourself having those discussions with your faculty?

Tim Cook: Yes. That I think is part of that larger conversation just in general about the value of higher education and the conversation about why do we need brick and mortar when all these things are the rest. And I think what I come back to all the time is what really makes us different is that ability to be critical thinkers, to be able to be socially adept and have emotional intelligence and work through those that will always, I think, always have the advantage over these powerful tools. And how can we really help our students be thoughtful, be good consumers of that, really understand? Be critical of all those pieces. I guess at the end of the day, that's what sets us apart as institutions and what we're doing is the ability to really help our students understand these tools, but to critical think wherever they can about them.

Sonia Khan: Are the kids using AI? I mean, kids and adults, community college, right? Are they using AI or are they coming in with their own tool sets from what your faculty are saying?

Tim Cook: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I say not always for good. I mean, the concern, it's not unlike when it's different, but I equate it back to when that conversation a decade or two decades ago when, we can't allow cell phones in the classroom. It would be so disruptive and they have access to all this information. I'm like, yeah, they do. We just need to recognize that and how do you have it? 

You know, students are, you know, using it to write papers or to, you know, to come up with assignments and the rest. They're, you know, and it's getting harder and harder. You know, people want to, you know, it's almost like an arms race to figure out tools, like to catch plagiarism and the rest. I'm like, again, you know, how are we designing assignments? How are we designing, you know, curriculum that really brings this in? It recognizes the, you know, what Sonia said, the fact that, you know, critical thinking and really utilizing all this, you can do some great things. So that's, that's the shift for some people that are more like, we just need to kind of, you know, find ways to, to fight this or, you know, recognize it. It was like, no, that's going to be a losing battle. We need to really figure out where we can harness it, where we can really show people how to, how to use it effectively.

Joe Sallustio: I, I think plenty of time. Yeah. I gotta tell you. So I experiment a lot. So I'll, I'll, I'll take something. I'll have I'll have like Claude. I like Claude. He's my Claude's my favorite. Right. Write an article from something that I put it, you know, it's a and then I'll put it through a detection. I won't I won't bring up what what what tool just to see if it picks it up to see if there's and then I'll write something similar to see if it picks me up. And so there's a lot of false positive in there. Then I'll run it through undetectable AI, which is a program that like humanizes all of your writing and then try it that way. So just to test the systems and a lot of them are not working the way we intend them to, right? Which makes it even harder to deal with this problem.

And then the other day I came across a Instagram post for TurboLearn AI, okay? Sweeping across college campuses, TurboLearn. So I go there and I upload my dissertation. It says upload a document, upload my dissertation, 150 pages, right? It breaks down my dissertation in all these different parts calls out my theoretical framework gives me a You know key findings, but it does it in a way that you would expect and then it makes a hundred flashcards and 200 quiz questions based on my dissertation just like within three minutes BAM So then I'm taking my quiz questions of my dissertation. I'm getting everyone wrong and I'm going wow I'm learning about myself right now I should go back and read that sucker But the point is is that boy isn't it cut down the first thought I had in my head was boy, going back to school is way different now than it was. And so I could hack my way if I wanted to, not cheat my way, hack my way by making the time I spent on research way faster. Writing would be easier, so the time constraint of college can be reduced if we embraced AI tools and embed them the right way. What do you think about that?

Tim Cook: 100%. In fact, now I'm intrigued to go back and do that with my dissertation is find that out because that's really, really interesting. To see if you get your own answers right, you're saying?

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, see, yeah. But I instantly went back to, boy, what a difference that would be even in researching and writing at that level now.

Tim Cook: I was just going to say, I don't use it a lot, but it saves me so much time. I've got my state of the college address next week. And I've got my communications director that helps and a bunch of people put things together. The initial prompts to really pull some of that material together and then outline it and kind of think differently about it, saves me probably hours of time that I normally in the past kind of start like you would, an outline and do all the rest of that. Then, so I have more time to spend then on how I wanna really organize it, how I wanna think about it, the message I wanna get across and less on the technical kind of putting it together.

Gosh, maybe it was before the holiday, our Phi Theta Kappa chapter, our honor society, as students often do, kind of last minute said, hey, would you come and give a keynote speech to us? And I was like, of course, I'd be happy to. And they gave me the topic and everything. I'm like, gosh, I've got a little bit of work to do and I've got like three days. How am I going to do this? So I worked on it with AI, got some prompts, got some different things to do there. And of course, put it my own voice because I think I can tell when people are giving an AI speech and I don't appreciate that. But it saved me so much time and ended up, and what I liked about it is with students, I always try to do like popular culture. I try to bring in music, movies, all the rest. So just prompting it to give me some relevant examples saved me probably hours and searching on YouTube and the rest.

Stuff like that is, and those are kind of easy examples that we do in my day-to-day work. I'm looking forward to really when I can get to the point, emails, the bane of my existence, probably like a lot of people, I get so many, where I can really trust AI to say, give me a summary of what I really need to look at, help me respond to this. Because I feel like that's going to, you know, save me every day time. So some of those basic things I get excited about.

Sonia Khan: Yeah I love that you're leading with this idea of embracing it instead of doing what we saw higher ed do a lot of this past year, which their initial reaction to this was to, well, we got to protect our students from cheating. When you come into something with that kind of view of this is a threat versus this is an accelerator, it completely changes the way that you lead an institution. I love that you can ask it to write a keynote in the voice of Taylor Swift to interview students. And that you're using it to summarize and you're trusting it to summarize your emails and accelerating your workflows. And probably in the back of your mind, you're looking for numbers and stats that can showcase overall how much more productive your staff could be with something like this. These are all like the mindsets of someone who was ready to embrace responsibly the technology. I think that's fantastic.

Tim Cook: Yeah, I don't want us to be left behind. I don't want students to be left behind. We always need to, it's difficult to steer a larger institution. And so we have to be doing what we can to move forward on that.

Joe Sallustio: You're a first gen student. You talked about that being important to you. I don't want to gloss over that point. You're serving in community college. You come with a unique lens as a first gen student, I believe. Can you just talk about that? What does that mean to you to be a first gen student? How does that manifest itself to your leadership style and how you look and serve other students?

Tim Cook: It means everything to me. And I talk about this all the time and when I give talks. So what's interesting, I guess, about my presidency is I'm president of the community college that's five miles from where I grew up. And I did not go there. In fact, my goal, probably like many people, it was kind of a blue collar town at the time. My goal was to get out and go away. And I did. I ended up at a local liberal arts college about an hour from where I grew up because there was an admissions counselor that came to my high school and I was the only one that showed up. And so she took me under her wing and became a lifelong mentor. In fact, she was on my dissertation committee decades later. And she gave me my first job at the college. She encouraged me to get involved.

I would not be in this chair today if not for her and that support and then obviously many others along the way. I think about just any kid who's growing up and thinking, do I have the chops? Do I have what it takes? Can I do this? Sometimes it's somebody stepping in, it's usually a faculty member, but somebody stepping in and saying, yeah, you do.

So how it affects my leadership style in so many ways. I talk to people and I say the most important thing we can do is to connect with our students and make sure that, so the first day of a term, my whole day is blocked off. I'm looking for lost students that are wandering around. And I encourage everybody to do that. And we walk them to where they need to be. And so they meet. I wear a bow tie every day. And I've been doing that for like 15 something years. And it started out as kind of a thing on a whim and it became kind of a signature. So students and actually most people in the community know me because I think I'm probably the only one, you know, who's wearing a bow tie all the time. So students will literally call out on campus, hey, bow tie guy, how's it going? You know, cause I hate in videos, this is like that. I encourage them to say hello. And, those types of things as a, as a first-generation, it's going back to belonging, really, really doing that. 

When I hire or encourage, you know, my staff to hire, it's all about how do we create an environment where we're helping people that maybe felt like they didn't belong or couldn't do this to create a space where they really feel like they could succeed. So it's such a huge part of who I am. I say all the time, when I first started, my goal was to become a dean of students someday and be able to give back and help that. And my personal mission has been the same every time. It's just the scope of it's gotten bigger. When I was a counselor, I used to help individuals get through or classes that people get through. Now I'm really looking at larger scale systems at my institution statewide, federally in some cases, nationally in some cases about how can we eliminate barriers overall so students can be successful and achieve those goals. So it's been there from day one. It will be there until I probably long after I retire.

Sonia Khan: No, I just...I think they are lucky to have you. And I think your inherent struggle that you had had as a first generation student goes a long way to be able to understand how to empathize with your students. And it's clear by the way that you lead. You are inspiring. Thank you.

Tim Cook: Thank you.

Joe Sallustio: Love that. Let's talk about Clackamas Community College. Anything you want to say? Open mic moment. No question. So pressure's on you. Tell us anything else we need to know about Clackamas.

Tim Cook: So a couple of things I haven't talked about. We are, you can't see it, because this is a not a visual podcast, but I've got a Zoom screen on behind me. We're going out for a bond this next year. And I think it's, we've been successful with our last bond. So this is a renewal. It's not going to raise taxes, but it gives us an opportunity to really plan for the next 10 years. So there's a lot in that about really re, you know, re-looking at existing spaces updating those and looking at safety and the rest. 

The exciting one is where Clackamas County is the county, it's just south of Portland and there's a lot of farming and a lot of agriculture, horticulture still in that it's, I have a fairly large district and it's kind of urban suburban, but big rural. And so we're going in on this, what we're calling the Center for Excellence in Farming and really combining kind of you know, advanced manufacturing and things that need to go into running, you know, kind of a generational farm, you know, these people that are inheriting these things from their parents are working, trying to figure out how they can do it. There's all sorts of really exciting things around precision farming and robotic farming, AI and farming is amazing, you know, to go back to AI. And we are going in on that with our partners in the county. 

And then the kind of the cool piece of it is the local extension service for Oregon State University, our land-grant university, wants to go in with us and move onto our campus and partner with us in this. So we see this as a kind of a game changer for the county to really go in on all of this. It's a signature program for us. So that's pretty exciting, assuming we're successful in November with our bond campaign. 

The other one, we, like many people, I mean, our fastest growing population are Latinx, Latina students. You know, we're probably not far from being a, you know, Hispanic serving institution. And our faculty have really stepped up. Our early childhood education program started offering about three years ago, a program entirely in Spanish. And we think it's the first ECE one in the country that we were aware of anyway. And they did it all online because that's what the students wanted. They were working all day managing their childcare centers and then they take classes online.

The advantage of that is, and so we graduated our first cohort. It was phenomenal, you all in Spanish. Couple of advantages. One is that we're getting folks coming now from New York, from Colorado, New Mexico, other places that are sending cohorts now to us to train. The other advantage is because we needed gen eds, we now have math classes in Spanish, English classes in Spanish, some other general ed courses. We now have a welding program that's entirely in Spanish as a result of this. So some pretty, I think responsive ways to look at, this is the growth area for us. And how can we do it? They all have long waiting lists. And so we're looking at other areas too, where we can grow there. Those would be the two I'd highlight.

Joe Sallustio: And correct me if I'm wrong, but HSI, Hispanic Serving Institution, 25% of your population?

Tim Cook: 25%, yep. So we're a few years out on that, but it's trending so much that I don't think it'll be long.

Joe Sallustio: Tim, what do you see for the future of higher education?

Tim Cook: Yes, I see much more what I would call intentional community involvement and collaboration. And that's a big part of our strategic plan is that we are always looking to see where we saw that example. The extension service is one of them. The volunteers and medicine is another one. Where can we intentionally collaborate with businesses, with the government and the rest to make sure that we're a vital part of the community. We don't ever wanna be a place that's the best kept secret. We don't wanna be a place that's sort of the, you know, the Harvard on the Hill, so to speak, that you hear about sometimes. We wanna be the community's college that people feel like they can come on there and they walk their dog, they can come on and get their GED, they can come and get their transfer degree, that this is their place. And so I think the future, what will keep all community colleges vital as we look at, you know, impacts like AI and just online and the rest is making sure that we've done what we can to create a community within all that. So some people may never step onto our campus, but they have opportunities. Other people will feel like this is their place and they come to regularly.

Sonia Khan: What did you think about this episode today?

Joe Sallustio: I loved it. Thank you for letting me ask about AI and get nerdy. But what I learned is the power of what you're doing with the community. I was going to write it down before I forgot it, but a place for you to be able to walk your dog. But also if you wanted to return and upskill and continually get something better for your career, you have a partner where you walk your dog that is part of your community and it feels like home. That's, that's what I'm getting from this conversation. I think it's beautiful.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. I was just thinking that as it's snowing here in, in St. Charles, Missouri, I thought, you want your community college to be the place where you take your kids sledding if you've got snow or you take it, right? And as they go, hey, you know what? I'm gonna take classes here when I get old enough. I mean, I think that's the idea, right? And that's why partnerships and why community is usually in the description of a community college.

Tim Cook: It's our middle name, yeah, 100%. It's an open door that you walk into versus having to hope for entry into. This is something that is part of your community. I think that's beautiful.

Joe Sallustio: Well, like anything else, when Sonia Khan shows up, things get better. Ladies and gentlemen, my guest co-host Sonia Khan, she is VP of Innovation at Ellucian and Sonia, I will see you in person again, April 7 through 10 at Ellucian Live in San Antonio. I can't wait.

Sonia Khan: You're going to have to do this with me in person. That'll be great. We have eclipse glasses for you ready to go.

Joe Sallustio: I'm ready. I will not be drooling when I come there. I will make sure I get to the dentist beforehand. Like today, I'm going to head straight to the medical offices and see what damage I've done to myself.

One person that has done zero damage here has been our guest. He's your guest and he is on top of his business. Ladies and gentlemen, he is Dr. Tim Cook and he is president of the Clackamas Community College in Oregon City. Tim, did you have a good time in the podcast today?

Tim Cook: This was fantastic. You two are really great hosts. I just I don't think I've ever been on an interview by somebody that you know that that had the dental issues you had today and you handled it well. And I just, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you both.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, it's debatable how we handled it. You handled it amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just EdUpped.