Episode Transcript

Jay Lemons:

Hello, and thank you for listening. I’m Jay Lemons. Welcome to Leaders on Leadership brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute.The purpose of our podcast is to share the stories of the people and the forces that have shaped leaders in higher education, and to learn more about their thoughts on leadership in the academy.

Delighted today to be joined by Daniel Greenstein. Dan is the chancellor of Pennsylvania state system of higher education known as PASSHE more locally, where he serves as chief executive officer of the state system of 14 public universities, which serve more than 90,000 degree seeking students and thousands more enrolled in certificate and other career development programs.

Prior to joining PASSHE, Dan held post at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the University of California system, and he began his career at the University of Glasgow. Dan holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate of philosophy from Oxford. Welcome, Dan.

Daniel Greenstein:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jay Lemons:

Really delighted to have you with us. One of our goals for the program is to ask leaders to reflect and to consider their own pathways to leadership with a hope that others will be inspired.

Dan, tell me your story, tell us, share with our listeners, talk about some of the people, the events and opportunities that might have forged the person that you are and the leader that you have become as your journey in higher ed has unfolded.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. So, great question, I guess like every leader, I guess my story starts when I was a kid. I was a child of the ’60s. I guess I’m the last year of the baby boomers, 1960s. So, I’m giving away my age.

But more to the point, my parents were very swept up in the movement, the broad social movement around Civil Rights Act and the Great Society in the 1960s. And they became themselves passionate about issues of what we would call today’s social justice and social equality.

So, as an 8 and 9 and 10 year old, other kids are out playing Sandlot Baseball, in the summer going to camp or whatever they did, I was being enrolled in courses on urban regeneration and race violence in American, stuff like that. So, that was my upbringing and really just-

Jay Lemons:

Where was that at?

Daniel Greenstein:

That was in Rochester, New York. So, of course in the late ’60s, the trigger event was the strike at Eastman Kodak-

Jay Lemons:

True.

Daniel Greenstein:

And Saul Alinsky and the Black Panthers mobilizing with RED. So, that was a pretty, it was a Tinder box, and I was just about to looking at entering middle school as that conflagration began to…

And, of course, it just fueled the dialogue around the dining table, frankly, so imbued or acculturated or nurtured into a social justice and equity orientation, and followed that up at Penn where I encountered what was then the new social history, which was as you know all about bringing the voices of the unheard into the telling of American history.

So, those were pretty foundational moments in my life, which I carried with me. I did get distracted in my early days. I got a PhD and as you’ll know, most people who get a PhD just wind up in some academic role, which I did and got distracted in academia by the innovation then, and now in the ’90s available through the internet and through applying internet services, not just to research and teach, to research, but also to teaching and learning.

And that became a passion for the next, I don’t know, 20 years or so years. I ended up giving up my tenured position because who wouldn’t give up a lifetime job to take on a series of several month long and year long contracts, but I did; and always working in change agency roles in and around higher education often involving technology.

But cutting a very long story short or shorter, I found myself ultimately at the University of California in a vice provost role during the Great Recession, when I think in 2009 estimate was at 400,000 Californian. It’s mostly black, brown and low income people who did not look like me mostly, and lower income people were not going to have access to the college education they would’ve, otherwise had as a result of the Great Recession and the ensuing cuts.

And I realized at that moment those two origins, that facility for change agency and higher education, and that passion for social justice and equity just collided because I realized, oh my God, higher education, the country is at an inflection point, and I wanted to spend my time helping higher ed in particular through that inflection point. That’s what got me ultimately to Gates and then frankly, to the Pennsylvania state system.

Jay Lemons:

That just begs more in some ways. And thank you for sharing all of that. We are people of exactly the same temporal experience on this planet, so a lot of those images ring really familiar for me as well. I beat you to this place. I’m a ’59, so-

Daniel Greenstein:

Oh, my brother’s ’59.

Jay Lemons:

But one for so many people who live in the world of higher education, how does one land at the Gates Foundation? It doesn’t just happen.

So, I hear you having this epiphany and seeing this inflection point and understanding the economic impacts on access and the 400,000 Californians, was that in the UC system or was that CSU and UC together?

Daniel Greenstein:

It was California whole together. It was UC, CSU and the community colleges, most of those students, community colleges. So, I was involved at that time as vice provost for academic planning and programs. And in that role we were involved in a major restructuring of the office of the president. The office of the president there when I started had 2200 people, very sizable budget.

And of course, even before the recession was going through some significant restructuring trying to basically compress its footprint. The idea being that most of the dollars should be spent at the universities where the students were. But also really looking at the range of academic programs that I was overseeing, all of which were centrally funded, the top-slice funding. And they included wonderful programs that California digital library, the University of California press, very prestigious press an internship program in Washington, one in Sacramento, et cetera.

Our education abroad program sent two something thousand, two and a half thousand students abroad every year. But all those things were top sliced and the question was, well couldn’t we be putting them on a self-sustaining model where they’re basically earning as much as they possibly can towards their upkeep. And that was of challenging, but I think ultimately very successful.

As part of that and in response to this, so the cataclysm of the Great Recession, we started an online initiative to try to tap into the great intellectual resources of the University of California system in order to make education available to more people than the University of California was ever going to accept as an elite research institution. And obviously that was a very challenging thing in its own way.

But it ended up, because of that equity orientation and because of its investment in online technology and online learning, we became a grantee of the Gates Foundation. So, in the course of that work, I was invited by the Gates Foundation to put my name forward when the directorship became available and was delighted to take it in 2012 when it opened up.

Jay Lemons:

What a journey from Rochester, New York.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. Yeah. To Seattle.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you found your way back to the US Highway 15 corridor?

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. That’s right.

Jay Lemons:

Dan, you find yourself leading a very major effort time here in the Commonwealth. So, speaking of inflection points, a time of great change, resource scarcity, challenging demographics and now throw into a world that’s been reshaped by COVID-19.

And I’d love for you to talk about your own thoughts about the mission, the role, purpose of higher education in our society, and maybe identify for you the compass points that are leading you through this major integration plan and study for the PASSHE system as the chancellor here in the Commonwealth.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. Yeah. They’re very consistently with the past. I think they… But particularly forged through the years at Gates really recognizing that higher education is arguably the last most reliable pathway into the middle class and beyond, engine of social mobility and economic development.

And true in this state as so many others, I think in Pennsylvania, the numbers are 60% of old jobs today require people in them with some post-secondary education. 47% of the adult population has some and there’s this huge gap, and the only way to diminish that gap is to do better with historically underserved populations.

So, populations of students haven’t been well served by higher education. So, students of color, low income students, rural students, frankly, adult students who may not be looking for a full degree, but are looking for some re-skilling and upskilling opportunities.

And that was really the passion and the orientation of the work at the Gates Foundation. I remember when stepping down from Gates, somebody who I respect enormously, a mentor of mine, and I was looking at a variety of opportunities and they said, “Can you imagine there you are at retirement and you never got an opportunity to test whether or not some of the strategy that you had actually led at Gates and helped the family to invest in.”

And was really beginning to take hold whether that actually worked, whether you could execute against it. So, when I left, it was literally looking where I was looking in higher education. I was looking for a university that served the population I care about so deeply that… So, mostly looking mostly at the public. That was at a major inflection point.

And frankly, that had two attributes, one knew that it needed to change. I didn’t want to be the chancellor or the president who had to make that case, not because that’s important to do, but I’m just not that person, and I found the Pennsylvania state system and I found them because the board was advertising for a chancellor with a very unique role description in which the board was saying in I think a very unique way, something you didn’t see all the time, is basically we’re in trouble and we need help.

They had already committed to a fundamental system redesign, which was reflective of the fact that obviously there were a number of financial, political and demographic challenges, which are true across higher education nationally, but are particularly acute in Pennsylvania. And the board had already committed itself, I think already two years before, to a pretty massive overhaul system redesign in its terms, which it oriented towards student success, ensuring that all students succeed irrespective of zip code, which obviously appealed to me, oriented towards university success.

So, how do we do this in a way that’s sustainable financially going forward? And how do we do it in a way which leverages our strength as a system. Those were the three kind of tenants.

But what was so unique in my limited experience at that stage, looking across leadership roles in higher education was, well, and you would see in your role more of this than I do, it’s very unusual for a board to be that public about the challenges that it’s facing. And I thought that was, A profoundly moving and B suggestive of great. You have an opportunity to work in that close proximity, that leadership engagement between the board and the chance of the chief executive is so critical. So, it proved to be very incredibly attractive, and that’s why I came.

And I have to tell you in the interview process, which I’m sure was common where you meet with hundreds of people in a long day representing every constituency possibly. And of course, all good. Everybody said the same thing that there was this just not a lot of agreement about what the change was that was needed, but the general acceptance that we cannot just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and expect better results that, and that the tenor was, we need a significant shift. We’re not going to tweak our way out of this.

So, they were all… That plus the fact that we have great data resources, I mean, I was also looking for that. Those were the things I was looking for was a place to try to find a new direction for public higher education, given its criticality of the country where you maybe had a chance to work with some smart people and great mission and see if there was a direction to be set.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Well, it’s an enormous task that you’ve undertaken. As you work with your board in this period of examination, are there two or three compass points that are critical from your perspective?

Daniel Greenstein:

In terms of the how or the what?

Jay Lemons:

What things will guide you in your work and support of the board in making these determinations?

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. Yeah. And actually again, our board’s fantastic, the board chair, shout out to Cindy Shapira. She’s a board chair and boss and has really overseen a redesign since its inception in 2016. So, a lot of this was worked into the conversation around the leadership role a couple of key touch stone.

So, one of them is data driven, analytical. This stuff is super hard and it’s why I was so keen on, do we have data? I mean, do we have the data resources that can be… You cannot into a U-turn, but you don’t want to fly blind in this kind of circumstance.

These transformational agenda are also very risky and the best way to mitigate the risk at least to do everything you can is to analyze the heck out of everything. So, data driven is absolutely critical. I don’t want to sit in a room and talk about what people believe as much as I want to know what people believe.

I want to know how their assumptions are borne out or supported by data. And I want to understand directions and what their implications are for student outcomes and financial outcomes and a handful of other things. So, data is really important and what’s important to the board, accountability and transparency, I think also critical. I think as with many institutions of higher ed, public higher ed, maybe in particular, I think Pennsylvania state system was challenged in that regard.

Not because of any ill will or ill intent or bad acting. It is just that there had not been a… And there’s a reticence and the board demonstrated the leadership through their job ad for the CEO. Sometimes, you actually have to talk about the problems that you’re facing, especially in a public institution where 25% of our revenues are supported by tax payer dollars.

And it’s not… I think we have an obligation to be open about where we are and how great we are, but also the challenges that we’re facing and I think there’s 10,000 people who work here as well as our 90 some odd thousand students who have a need to know as well as a right to know what our circumstances are and what our various options are.

So, I thought being very transparent, very accountable has been very critical to us, and we’ve pushed that forward and obviously try to engage as many voices as possible in the work, which becomes incredibly difficult as you can imagine in a period where we’re adjusting our size to our new enrollment realities and obviously downsizing our workforce.

I mean, those are tremendously hard things to be inclusive about it, and yet we have an obligation to try, to invite as often as we can folks to the table, even if we’re not super comfortable with the things they’re telling us. So, we’ve been tried to pursue that. Obviously, we have a unionized environment. So, in our circumstances, it means obviously making time to work with our union colleagues.

But it also, in the case of the Pennsylvania state system, we didn’t have system wide faculty shared governance. So, again, with board leadership, we built that. It’s just now taking off through our new faculty council, which I’m really excited by, and creates opportunities to work in new ways with our faculty.

To engage our students in different ways, we have obviously, as elsewhere, student leadership, but I don’t think we’d engage with them as formally as we could have. So, setting those tables and really beginning to learn how to work with them has been something that’s been… I think those three things have been pretty important.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Thank you very, very much for sharing all of that. Share with us, if you would, what in your mind makes a good leader, and by good, I don’t mean grade B. I mean, virtuous, effective, successful.

Daniel Greenstein:

Oh gosh, just take up all the things I do and then the contrary, I guess. So, I pay the things that I think about, and I’m going to add them to the things I just talked about. Transparency, accountability, data driven inclusivity.

I think it’s really important to create safe places in which people can have difficult conversations and that’s hard to do for someone who’s opinion as I am, but it’s also really important, and I’ll give you an example. We have great presidents, but I don’t think the presidents have been as engaged as they should have been in my view in system wide strategic direction and leadership, and it’s a funny thing in our system, corporate, our structure, we’re a single corporate entity, which means that as a financially, weakness financially anywhere in the system tugs everywhere. We are all of us on the hook for each of us.

So, the accountabilities that are typically baked into a system are vertical president’s, chancellor’s board. When in fact, given our corporate structure, as importantly are the accountabilities, which are horizontal, university to university, which when I got here meant establishing a leadership group of presidents and actually they worked with me to establish that group in a moment of bold and courageous conversation, quite frankly, and how do we create a space where people can have those difficult.

I’m just not comfortable with the way that you are doing X because it’s drawing down on scarce resources, which could otherwise be made available across the system and differently. Those are really challenging conversations, and yet they’re essential and it’s not just presidents with which one needs to have them. I think that’s true across the creating spaces for safe conversation and encouraging that courageous conversation, I think is really critical.

I think having a North Star and this is directly out of Bene Brown, but if you haven’t aspiring or currently who haven’t read Bene Brown, the Three of you Left, go out and read them. Anything you can get your hands on, but dare to lead is probably the one that I would point to first.

And she speaks about having a value, understanding what your value system is in a way that you can define it in a word and just understand it. And because at the end of the day, so many decisions are based on judgment, as well as analysis. What’s going to shape that judgment and to be clear, and of course, what that value and what that word is going to differ by different people. But that clarity is really important.

And then I think in a transformational journey like this, I’m not sure if it’s resilience or courage, it’s probably resilience. I think it’s really important. I mean, this is super not fun, and this is not the kind of work that… And I wish I could have told myself, this is a younger person.

And it’s something I learned from Michael Sorrell, President of Paul Quinn, who, although he is much younger than me, I remember being on a panel with him before he came to Pennsylvania state system and he’s involved in a transformational effort at Paul Quinn successfully. And he says, in these roles, you must lead from courage because the resistance you’re going to face is intense and it’s profound and it is potentially a fundamental threat to your longevity in the role.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Daniel Greenstein:

And you can’t let that get in the way of doing the right thing. So, I think both courage and resilience are absolutely critical, and how do you be resilient without being callous? Because a minded of Lily Tomlinson who said something like no matter how cynical you get, you just can’t keep up or something.

So, for me, it’s combining that sense of mission, but with the distance and resilience, you need to keep going through some pretty tough times. Yeah. Yep.

Jay Lemons:

What’s your advice for new leaders? For those who aspire a leadership positions? That’s a core part of our audience are the participants in the AALI leadership programs on an annual basis.

Daniel Greenstein:

Another Bene Brown I’ve already told you.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Daniel Greenstein:

Another tidbit from Bene Brown, it’s really about feedback. Feedback is so important. And actually what I think the word she is, I think it give feedback with empathy, receive it with humility, receiving it is easy. I think giving is really hard, giving critical, it’s easy to tell somebody, “Hey, you’re doing a great job.” It’s really hard to give critical feedback in a way, which is supportive and growth oriented, and she has whole protocol getting ready to give critical feedback,

But it’s also something you can’t do without practice. So, practicing and feedback I think is super important. And coupled with some of the other things I just said, I think those would be my… I think I guess what I would tell my younger self is, I didn’t have the courage that I think I have now when I probably needed it more, and I don’t know why, because I had a family and job security was important because like everybody else, I want to be liked. But I think it would’ve tempered some of… Maybe I would’ve learned faster and more gracefully had I had the courage to make mistakes and to not and to learn differently.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. So, what’s the Dan Greenstein one word leadership mantra?

Daniel Greenstein:

In one word. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I think the value that I drive myself by, it’s actually not equity, it’s fairness. But I guess from a leadership perspective, I would combine fairness with compassion.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. I’m going to move into what I call a little bit of a lightning rod, a lightning round here, Dan. Just you can answer with as long an answer as you want, but who most influenced you?

Daniel Greenstein:

Oh, my mom, no doubt. Probably, everybody tells you that, but she will.

Jay Lemons:

Well, tell us about her.

Daniel Greenstein:

Well, so I lost my mom when I was 18. She was tremendously sick for probably her last eight or nine years, but she was herself an educational reformer turns out K12, but she just profoundly supportive, guiding.

And even as she was deteriorating in her strength and her health really able to the critical time in my life, ’16, ’17, ’18 to invest in me the strength and fortitude that was draining out of her system on a daily basis.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Daniel Greenstein:

So, there’s very little. It was a defining moment for me and I still returned in the hardest time or war times. So, still there for me.

Jay Lemons:

Well, no doubt. That’s in part the well from which courageous leadership flows.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah.

Jay Lemons:

It sounds like she did some profound teaching as life was being drawn away from her in the way you described, and thank you for sharing that. You may have already answered this, but I’ll give you a chance to go back to the well, one more time or not, or raise up another book, but books most influence you?

Daniel Greenstein:

So, I tend to get swept up with the enthusiasm for the latest thing I’ve read like many. So, there are things like Bene Brown stared elite that you just hold onto. And there’s actually a handful of things in the change management, change leadership world, which I still hold onto.

There’s a book by a BCG, Boston Consulting Group, consultants called the change monster, which talks about phases of change, but really things in terms of organizational culture and often the emotions that go along with change. I think to me, those have been some of the most challenging and interesting at the same time things to learn how to deal with change is incredibly emotional thing. So, one has to meet people where they are and often where they are in a major transformative, transformative journey is an emotionally driven place.

And especially for someone like me, so analytically driven and a techno walk in my thinking about how higher education how to connect with that other side, another book called Switch by the Heath. I think it’s Chip and Fred.

Jay Lemons:

[inaudible 00:29:17].

Daniel Greenstein:

Also, talk about the head and the heart and it’s my language of change, so really plumbing the depths of that. So, understanding change and engaging folks in ways that appeal to that, the many attributes, those have been important.

Recently, I become fascinated by Kurt Anderson’s fantasy land where he basically writing a book would be published three months after president Trump had been elected, but not because he had seen president. I mean, he’d just been fascinated by the topic, but Fantasy Land talks about the history of how America perhaps uniquely of all countries in the world has produced a culture where it’s just okay for everyone to have their own fact and reality, and it’s disturbing, it’s fascinating and it is so completely relevant to the world I’m occupying now where in major conversations around big public policy type initiatives.

Oftentimes, people aren’t actually debating different interpretations of the same basic facts. You see whole alternative realities being constructed and in an environment like ours, in a political culture like ours, where that is normalized, it really very challenging to move an agenda in empirical way in the best liberal tradition, I mean, smaller liberal, because facts don’t matter; and because reality is constructed at a personal level, and that seems to be held closely as an individual human. It’s fascinating. So anyway, gotten lost in that thought, which is [inaudible 00:31:05].

Jay Lemons:

Thank you for all of that. There’s a lot of richness there. And by the way, which is one of my all time favorites, the contribution of what I would call the behavioral economists is in terms of thinking about human behavior been really, really interesting over the last decade. So, let’s switch gears again. What about your favorite memory of your undergraduate experience?

Daniel Greenstein:

Oh, gosh, I have a bunch, but I was very fond of… Well, professor is often people are probably unbeknownst to him, it turned out to be a mentor to me, Mike Sacoman, who really taught a class called community and culture, probably community and culture in America and there was probably some dates around. It’s a long time ago.

But this was again in University of Pennsylvania where I did my undergraduate and the new social history was prevalent throughout Penn, was one of the Penn historians were amongst the leaders internationally. And of course, a lot of the focus was on social structures, a lot of quantitative work, a lot of thinking about socioeconomic structural aspects that drive change, and there was Mike who was trying to unpack critical components of American culture and how they themselves were forces that were shaping history.

So, in some ways it was a counterpoint to a lot of other things I was reading and learning, but it’s also really oriented the fascination that has oriented my fascination with change leadership, frankly, because again, it goes back to the fact that so much of success and failure, so much of success and failure is based on the ability to engage with people where they are, which is often at an emotional place, and in ways that reflect the organizational on community cultures that they’re engaged in and failure to understand that is going to result in failure to connect, which is going to result in failure to lead. So, how often I return to his class, it’s something he’d probably be alarmed and mortified to learn, but I do.

Jay Lemons:

No, that’s terrific. I love that. The number of times you return to that class, I think that reflects the very best of this tradition of higher education, and I want to go there next, and I am mindful of a person who has spent a lot of your time around change and transformation.

But I wonder if you might have a favorite tradition at some place that you’ve attended or worked. Is there a place for tradition and in a world, or is this what makes the challenges of the day so hard? Is we’re so high bound in tradition, but I’m more thinking about the Boyer notion of ritual and tradition being one of the essential elements of what makes the culture of higher education.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. It’s interesting. My wife would tell you that we move around. She might tell you, we move around a lot because either I get bored or I can’t keep a job, I don’t know which.

But we’ve moved a lot. I mean, a lot, and we tend to move far. So, quick pricey from my first academic role, Glasgow, London, DC, Berkeley, Piedmont, Seattle, Harrisburg, and I’m sure I’ve missed a stop or two.

Jay Lemons:

We are academic nomads in a way.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. It’s a very nomadic. So, as a consequence, that kind of ritual is hard to establish and take root in a way that is reflective of the place or the organization that one works for.

So, while each of those places and organizations had their own, I guess the ones that have followed through with me are basically my family, because they won’t leave me. I guess we evolve in different ways. So, our traditions are really located there and I draw a great deal of strength from.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. So, if you hadn’t worked in higher ed, if you hadn’t become this academic nomad, what would you have done? What are the other paths that had appeal for you or forks in the road you did not take?

Daniel Greenstein:

Oh gosh. So, there’s always been, in the last 20 or so years, the opportunity to go join a startup and see what that’s all about. I’m fascinated by consulting, strategic consulting, partly because I’m an analyst, I guess in some, and I’m probably a strategy level analyst and fascinated by all of the opportunities, and I love solving or trying to solve other people’s problems even more than I love solving my own because there seems to be that level of remove.

So, there’s a whole range of opportunity there, sort of path’s not taken, and frankly I love strategic philanthropy. It’s wow because it combines the strategy planning with the analytics required of smart investing and also evaluating outcomes from investments.

So, I think that one I did get to try, I guess, in that domain and what is it? How old am I? 60 is the new 20, so maybe get an opportunity to explore some other point.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, who knows? I mean, I’m grateful that we live in a time where retirement is not an event but a process. And personally, I can’t imagine going from 60 miles an hour to zero, and I don’t think we live in a world where many don’t have a choice about that, and others do have an ability to think about glide path.

So, one of the things I like to do here is really close by asking our guests to share with our listeners, the distinctive qualities or the organizational DNA that makes a PASSHE system so very special, important to you, but equally or maybe more important to those that you serve.

Daniel Greenstein:

Yeah. So, I guess I pick this up on my… I visit our universities every semester. I used to drive last couple of semesters. Obviously, I never thought I’d say this, but I missed the 2,500 miles that I have to do in order to get to make that tour.

But just as ask you, American Association of State Colleges and Universities did some work, maybe a 10 or a dozen years ago about our kinds of universities, regional universities teaching mostly to the master’s level as stewards of place, and speaking to the extent to which they’re just the tied into their communities.

In obvious ways they create jobs. In some many cases in our system, they’re the largest employer in the region, but it’s not just that. It’s also those communities rely on those universities to create the next generation of leaders, healthcare professional, teachers, business leaders, that those communities themselves need to thrive.

So, those universities are doubly important and there are other ways in which they contribute culturally, et cetera, to those communities, and you see that in ways, which are just palpable when you visit. Our students are fantastic, where many of our institutes are largely open access institutions. And yet our students are as good and as you’d almost see anywhere and they are as diverse as Pennsylvania is diverse, which is also profoundly moving.

So, you have this and the communities themselves within the university, the staff and faculty, when you speak to folks, introduce myself, you go around a room or whatever. I always do an icebreaker name, how long you’ve been in your role and then some icebreaker question.

But in those conversations, staff and faculty routinely here for 15 plus, 20 plus years, and it’s not, I mean, we’re a great, I mean, I think we’re a great place to work, but it’s more than that. It’s a sense of mission and family, and of course, you’re seeing all this emotion resulting from that pour out into this consideration of integrating six or eight universities into two, but that testifies to an incredible strength that we have, and it try to say this publicly because it’s true, we change lives.

I think we save a bunch too, and when you see that sausage being made and you see it being made every day, it’s tremendously powerful. I think there are other things that folks don’t talk about, which deserve to be spoken about. I think our institutions, Pennsylvania state system, obviously universities, but others like ours are crucibles in which we’re watching region race and class collide in ways which are both powerful and sometimes very disturbing.

But which also again, talking, I guess to a one time social historian create the kind of energy which will drive our society forward in ways which are in incredibly productive and about which we will all be proud or not, and to look into that engine that is shaping our future and to recognize that how it functions today will have an enormous impact, not just on our socioeconomic health, but on our political culture going forward.

It is overwhelming, but at the same time inspiring. So, it’s one thing I haven’t mentioned, but we have a very important agenda to pursue, to improve the diversity, equitable outcomes and inclusivity of our universities and our chancellor’s office and those are more than just words. It’s a mission opportunity that will have an impact over the shape and feel of Pennsylvania going forward.

And I think that’s rooted in the strength of our communities and I drive optimism because of the strength of our communities and that optimism I think helped me overcome the sense of, oh, I feel when I look at the steepness of the mountain, we need to climb.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. I really appreciate so much of what you’ve just shared. Our campuses as places where region, race and class collide, and the profound diversity. Pennsylvania is a large state, as you said, the 2,500 miles for your circuit to get to these 14 campuses and the critical role that these places have as anchor institutions.

They very much are centers of economic activity, of educational activity, of healthcare in many instances because of the synergies and they’re having lived in the Commonwealth Pennsylvania now for the last 20 years and there, I say, is there a Pennsylvanian who’s not been touched by the graduates of the PASSHE system.

And Dan, thank you so much for joining us here on leaders on leadership. We’re really glad to have had you and for you to have found and made time during this incredibly ambitious period that you’re living through. I am grateful for you sharing your insights and wisdom about leadership with us and welcome a final comment from you.

Daniel Greenstein:

No, well look, thanks for having me. It’s obviously really important series. I think one of the biggest challenges higher education faces today is that we don’t cultivate our leaders in a formal way. We have some great leadership program, development programs.

Here at Shippensburg University has one, has now had it for a few years and others are following, but there are tremendous opportunities in leadership in higher ed and it’s an area I think we all have a great deal, more to do. So, any effort that contributes to that common good are very welcome, and I appreciate the opportunity to contribute what I can.

Jay Lemons:

Well, very, very much in your debt. Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for leaders we might feature in upcoming segments. You can send those to leadershippodcast@academicsearch.org. You can find our podcasts anywhere you can find podcasts.

So, Leaders on Leadership is brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. Together, our mission is to support colleges and universities during times of transition and through leadership development activities that serve current and future generations of leaders in the academy. It’s been a really special pleasure for us to host Chancellor Dan Greenstein on our show today. Dan, thank you for your leadership and for your generosity today.

Daniel Greenstein:

Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you.

Daniel Greenstein:

See ya.