A Presidential Roundtable

unning a college or university is a monumental undertaking. A president oversees thousands of people’s jobs and educations. They must have both a specific vision for their institution’s future and a broad understanding of its history and traditions. They need to be both a public figurehead and an action-oriented doer. It has never been an easy job, but these days, it seems downright impossible. Between a demographic cliff that means fewer students going forward, abrupt changes to longstanding research-funding norms, and skirmishes over free speech, academic freedom, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, higher education leadership is juggling numerous challenges in an environment where the value of a college education seems up for debate for the first time ever.

Penn GSE has educated more than 100 college presidents—many through its Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management (Exec Doc) program—and more than 40 are currently sitting leaders. So, we convened a small alumni panel to ask leaders how they do what they do in this uniquely challenging time.

How did your Penn GSE education help shape your leadership philosophy or your approach to navigating higher education today?

Aminta Breaux: In addition to getting my master’s degree from Penn GSE, I also worked at Penn for 10 years as a career counselor, so I had a wonderful learning opportunity to interact with some of the most outstanding leaders in the country. The theory that I was presented in the Graduate School of Education gave me a very, very strong foundation on which to build my leadership skills. I still remember the various group dynamic classes that we had and . . . putting them into practice and getting that deep understanding of how group dynamics connect to critical issues facing education. It was one of the best learning opportunities I could have ever imagined, as presidents are, more than ever, striving to build coalitions internally and externally.

Xavier Cole: I think Penn certainly changed the trajectory of my career. I was extremely comfortable in my career before I started Penn . . . and I didn’t have a longer-term plan about how I wanted to be a leader. It was exposure to my 23 other colleagues in our Exec Doc Cohort 11 that helped me think more broadly about what my gifts and talents were. . . . I was pretty much a solitary learner, but I realized I had been in group learning before. I had been a musician for many, many years, and, in music, we always learn in group cohorts. My Exec Doc cohort taught me to trust group learning, to share my gifts and talents with the group, to strengthen the product of the whole, and to lean in and draw from the talents of a team. All this has been extremely invaluable as I built my own team here at Loyola as president and encouraged them to embrace our challenges as an ensemble. If you have a great team that you trust, and they’re willing to share and be vulnerable, we can solve a lot together. I would not have approached things that way before Penn. My colleagues were amazing—Mel [Corn] being one of them, and it’s no surprise to me that she was one of the earlier presidents in our cohort, not just from her academic path, but from the leadership that she showed within our group.

Melanie Corn: Oh, you’re so sweet! I would echo one of Xavier’s themes and say that, in terms of being able to navigate the complexities of higher ed today, I think the Exec Doc program was the best crash course in contemporary issues in higher education anyone could get. When people are freaking out about the demographic cliff now, I’m like, “We were talking about the demographic cliff 13, 14 years ago, when we were in class!” And so, it provided a great foundation for the variety of issues that you deal with when you are a college president. We all have specific backgrounds in higher ed that we came from, and none of us, before becoming a president, had been a president, right? You always have to have your first presidency, whenever that may be, and you suddenly are responsible for a much broader array of issues than you could have possibly been prepared for through your professional career. And Penn GSE, again, was that preparation. The second thing I would just say, to build on Xavier’s point, is that in terms of my leadership philosophy, I think the cohort model was really influential for me. It made it really natural, comfortable, and essential to surround myself with experts and not to feel like I always have to be the smartest person in the room. It taught me that strength in leadership means—at least for me—collaborative, shared leadership with a team of other really great, smart people.

Matt vandenBerg: I knew at 22 that I wanted to be a college president—an unusually specific goal at that age. A mentor gave me a prescient piece of advice: “In 20 years, higher ed will be talking about one thing—money. Learn to raise revenue, build coalitions, fundraise, and recruit students.” That became my roadmap. Every step of my career has been about preparing for this work. When I came to Penn GSE, I wanted more than practical training—I wanted a deep academic experience. The Exec Doc program delivered. It didn’t just teach me research methods; it taught me appreciative inquiry—how to dig below the surface, study what’s working, and accelerate progress where momentum already exists. Higher ed often sets competing goals that cancel each other out. Penn taught me to think two levels deeper and make hard choices. Peter Eckel’s strategy courses were a revelation. We often mistake strategy for a wish list. Real strategy is a calculated bet. It’s picking a lane, taking a risk, and committing to win. That mindset shapes how I lead every day.

It is a challenging moment in higher ed, and I wonder, as leaders of four very different institutions, what you see as the most pressing challenge right now?

AB: There are so many complexities in higher education. I thought we were moving as fast as we could, but now I think we hit just a whole other level. I think the challenge as leaders today is not just the amount and pace of change, but to have that integrated into the culture, into the fabric of what we’re doing today, getting everyone, all the different stakeholders, on board with the idea that this is how it’s going to look for some time—accelerated change. So, how do you coalesce the team and keep them motivated? Focus on the mission. It is very, very relevant. For us, it’s about access. It’s about affordability. We’re celebrating our 160th anniversary at Bowie State University. So, the way that I’m doing that is to harken back to the past, 160 years ago, to use that as motivator for keeping everyone focused. Bowie State was founded in 1865, so I try to remind everyone here in our campus community, just imagine what was happening in 1865, and somehow, someway, they made a way out of no way to get us to this point. They went through those struggles, so somehow we’re going to make it through. Trying to motivate through this time of change and uncertainty is a huge challenge, but it . . . requires us to draw on who we are as leaders, to motivate our teams, to get them to focus on our mission, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

XC: That’s amazing. Dr. Breaux. It sounds like you’re doing wonderful work there at Bowie, and I’m glad to see that you’re leading that institution. I would echo much of what you’re saying. I think you’re right, managing the pace of change is a challenge. It’s coming faster than higher ed has ever seen. . . . I think the most pressing challenge is how to steady our communities and ground them in who and what we are. Dr. Breaux, you talk about mission—it has been the thing that’s been our North Star. It’s the thing that’s grounded us and anchored us. So when we’re asked why we do, or do not do, something, why we say, or do not say, why we act, or do not act, I will say, “We are a Catholic, Jesuit university with a mission and goals for access, affordability, protecting diversity and inclusion as part of what we have done for many, many years—certainly the last 100, but also this is what education has been about for the Catholic Church for 500 years—educating immigrants when it was not popular. We will continue to forge our mission regardless of the environment.”

I’m also a historian. When we say we need to be more of who we are, I draw upon what I understand about zeitgeist and moments. I hope people understand this will not last forever. When people say, “I’ve never seen anything like this before. This isn’t who the U.S. is,” I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re wrong. My parents lived through an era, a zeitgeist, where the rules had not been in their favor, justice had not been in their favor, and they were not promised safety. These things that you’re talking about were realities for many people in the U.S. not so many years ago. I am not happy that others are experiencing it and that it is extending to other identities. I’m not happy about that, but there is a playbook. But I remind people that we weren’t trained, actually, to work in that playbook. We don’t have the tools. So our job, our challenge, is to understand our past and what helped this previous generation fight through these moments, these hard moments, whether it was 1865 or 1965, and how do we inculcate this particular generation—and our faculty and staff—with those skills so we can have a sense of hope and progress and the ability to overcome. . . . In our particular case, our Catholic background allows for us to see God in all things and all people, and that allows for us to do more, to lean into the difficult spaces, to hang in and walk in solidarity with people and ask hard questions to help us understand how to move forward with them, not against them, searching for a peaceful path.

MC: That was really lovely. I will be brief and practical in my answer. We could list, together, 20 challenges facing higher education today in about 30 seconds, probably. Rather than trying to figure out which of those 20 is the most pressing, I would just say that I think the most pressing challenge is the multiplicity of challenges. I think that it may not be unprecedented, but it is intense. And those challenges are incredibly diverse. When I think about how I spend my time, one of the most pressing challenges for me is the whiplash that I face—that I think we all face—having to juggle many of these challenges in any given day.

MvB: I love Melanie’s line that the multiplicity of challenges is the challenge—it’s spot on. For me, the common thread is that the value proposition of higher education is under attack. You see it in enrollment pressures, price sensitivity, political rhetoric—everywhere. And sometimes we make it worse by letting society’s divisiveness seep into our own institutions. Here’s the punchline: Change happens at the speed of trust. Without trust, change stalls. Rebuilding trust—inside and outside our walls—is urgent work.

How do you balance your school’s values and mission with external pressures from your board or from the public or from legislators?

AB: Communication, communication, communication. More than ever, we’re pushing out a lot of messaging. I’m much more front and center. . . . Picking up on the last comment, I fully agree, I think trust is at the core of a lot of what we’re experiencing in terms of challenges today, a mistrust of higher education. Trying to get across to our stakeholders the mission, the vision, and our mutual interests can help rebuild that trust. And I would say, to a certain extent, we’re at fault, ourselves, in higher education for not always communicating in a language that speaks to our audiences. We can get into “academic speak.” We need to learn how to meet people where they are, and that’s where I’m spending a great deal of time. I’m doing town halls, forums, listening sessions at our faculty institute. I did my first Pizza with the President event. I’m making more videos for my students because that’s where they are—online. Our stakeholders need to hear the message of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. . . . We can’t afford to sit in our offices and say, “The world is changing, and woe is us.” We’ve got to lead the way, and communication is the glue that helps get information out there. Be more transparent about outcomes, the budget, the endowment, and how we’re spending, where we’re spending, why we’re spending, and connecting that with our values.

XC: To answer your question, we don’t balance it. We literally lean into it as a thing. The only reason to talk to donors is to talk about our mission. It’s the reason why they invest in us—this mission of forming servant leaders, of doing good work to help people in the simplest form. This is the reason why you should donate. With our board, we doubled down on their training about the mission so they understood it. I add two hours to every board meeting, which is a lot, for discussion around mission. Our board resisted at first, but I knew it was important for them to understand, so we could have the same language as we solved problems with our mission in mind.

MvB: My dissertation focused on how donors shape priorities at small liberal arts colleges, so I love this question. The key is knowing your nonnegotiables—your mission, vision, values, strategic plan—and using them as a decision-making sieve. When you do that, the competing agendas and the messiness that interpersonal relationships sometimes bring become much easier to navigate. It doesn’t remove tension, but it keeps you on course.

MC: I will just add that sometimes higher ed gets painted with a broad brush, but the truth is that there are so many institutions out there that there’s an institution for everybody—student, donor, board member, politician. Everybody can find an institution that they love, and everybody can find an institution that’s not right for them. I don’t have any challenges really with donors or board members because we attract people who know us and want to support a creative education and care about our mission and understand who our students are. Like many other institutions represented on this call, CCAD’s student body is incredibly diverse. Over a third students of color. Forty-some percent Pell Grant eligible. Super majority female-identified students. What may be a little unique to CCAD is that almost 60 percent of our students identify as part of the LGBTQ community. Our students are representing our mission and our diversity, and it’s not something that we can shy away from. It is who we are, and it is essential to the core of what we do. And we attract supporters who care about those issues and care about creative culture and the creative economy.

What advice would you give an aspiring college president now about the role?

XC: Going back to what Matt said about authenticity, if you do not know who you are, if you’re not grounded in what your nonnegotiables are—your character and your integrity—and you step into a leadership role at this moment, you could be flying like a flag in the wind. If you are not prepared to have everything that you care about challenged, do not take this job, because it’s hard enough to have those challenges in private. To have that challenge in public is not great. I was ready for that when I started this job, but I certainly didn’t attempt it until I knew I could articulate exactly who and what I was about.

MvB: Xavier nailed it—you have to know who you are and what you stand for. I’d add this: If this doesn’t feel like a calling, don’t do it. Eighty percent of the job is unlike being a VP. Without an exceptionally strong sense of why, this job will eat you alive. But if you’re driven by a purpose bigger than yourself? It’s the best job in America.

MC: You know, I am a Gen Xer. I’m sure many of us on this call are, and I think we can be the kings of cynicism. But I feel like one thing you’ve got to have in this job is a sense of optimism. Because if you are educating the future leaders of the world—which is what we’re all doing, in whatever part of the world they may be leading in—then you have no business doing that if you’re not optimistic about their future. So, that’s something that I try to hang on to. Despite my general cynicism about the world, I’ve got to be optimistic about the opportunities for these students. And if I’m no longer optimistic, then I need to step aside and let someone else take over.

AB: I don’t think this is like any other job. It is not a job, it is a calling, as my colleagues have said, and it is the most rewarding. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, even with all of the challenges that we face. I think being in this environment can be invigorating. . . . Each day is a challenge, but there’s so many great opportunities on the campus every day. If ever I’m feeling down or stressed, I go and sit with the students or I poke my head into a lab or classroom, and it reconnects me to that sense of purpose of why I’m doing what I’m doing.