Effective January 16, 2018, I left administration and returned to full-time teaching in the school of music at my university. Except for the sudden adjustment in salary (a 50% reduction with one week’s notice), the move has been very good for me. As I have told a number of friends, after nineteen years in higher education administration I finally get to return to doing something that I really know how to do. I am very content with teaching three classes, instructing a number of voice majors, and assisting with the opera production as diction coach. In these areas, I really am an expert and it is fun to spend my time doing things like this.

My time as an administrator was good. I was relatively successful and relatively happy with the work. As with any job there were downsides. I did not like having to defend actions, policies, and decisions with which I did not agree. I did not like working for people who were misleading and manipulative, people who acted as if their primary duty was to keep their job, people who at times had no clue. But I believe that I acted with integrity and in the best interests of the students and faculty of the university. We persevered during some difficult times and we made progress in helping faculty and students accomplish what they needed to do. We added degree programs and facilities and provided support for professional development. All in all, it was a successful time.

Likewise, my years as a full-time faculty member prior to my administrative appointments were very successful. And I have no doubt that the coming years back in that role will be quite good — for me and for my students. It feels good to work directly WITH students rather than on their behalf. The payback, while sometimes still delayed, is generally much more immediate and much more practical.

I am more convinced than ever that higher education, with the challenges it currently faces, can thrive only if administrators are successful in clearing away the distractions, obtaining the necessary resources, and ensuring the conducive circumstances for faculty members to engage in the teaching and learning processes with their students, utilizing research, scholarship, and creative activities that involve students. Administrators must find ways to reverse the trend toward compliance as the prime goal. Failure to do this ensures a slide into irrelevance for higher education as we have known it.

It can be pretty exciting to attend a higher education conference these days.  Change is in the air!  New personalities offer new insights.  New technologies offer new solutions or pieces of solutions.  Everything is put on the table for consideration as higher education struggles to respond to the myriad of challenges that have presented themselves during that past several years.

Many of the presentations offered at such meetings deal with the process of change, how change (or more popularly, transformation) is managed, directed, or led.  And from the titles of many sessions and from the tone of more than a few, it seems that the consensus is that change has never needed “leading” as desperately as it does now.  It is almost as though no one has thought of this before.

Of course those of us who have been in the business of leading higher education at the college or university level for some time are quite aware of the “process” of change.  Folks have been thinking about it and writing about it and studying it and talking about it for a long time.  But it is all the rage right now to dive into it as though it is something radically new.

A recent publication, Change Leadership in Higher Education – A Practical Guide to Academic Transformation by Jeffrey L. Buller, is one of the many books currently weighing in on the topic.  Buller cites a number of prior publications dealing with change in academe, singling out a 1999 report for the American Council on Education, On Change, by Peter Eckel, Barbara Hill, Madeleine Green, and Bill Mallon, as “the most informative of these earlier works.”  He then explains that because of the new “landscape” of higher education a new approach to leading change is needed.

From 1995 though 1999 the American Council on Education (ACE) ran a study project, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, entitled “Leadership and Institutional Transformation.”  The project leaders chose twenty-six institutions of higher education from across the country (out of some 110 that applied) to participate in the program.  My university was chosen as one of the twenty-six.  I had the good fortune to be a part of the project team on my campus and for four years we engaged in planning, study, activities, processes, and local projects on our campus, all the while reporting to the American Council on Education on the process and the substance of these change initiatives.  We met with the project teams from the other twenty-five institutions once or twice a year for extended discussion and debriefing with Madeleine Green, Peter Eckel, and others from the project administration team at ACE.  The tangible result of this project for ACE was the report cited above, On Change.  I was able to watch the pieces come together from the very beginning of this project.

The tangible results for the participating universities, including mine, were varied.  Mostly for us, the benefits resulting from the project included leadership development, increased campus dialogue and awareness of important issues relevant to us, and a series of small scale but effective initiatives.  Most of the momentum from the project was lost in the change of administrative leadership that accompanied the departure of our president in 2000 and, a couple of years after that, our vice president for academic affairs.  Consequently, the larger issues addressed in the local project were stalled.

However, for those of us who participated as members of the project team, there were quite a few memorable “take-aways.”  Among them:

Institutional change must be believed in, embraced, and championed by the upper administration.  This means the president.  Continually.

Institutional change must be grounded in the grassroots and must engage personnel in all areas and at all levels.

Institutional change must be consistent with the values, mission, and vision of the institution.

Institutional change is utterly dependent on transparency, trust, and communication.

Leading change is leading people.

None of this is new.  None of this is revolutionary.  The American Council on Education project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation afforded me the opportunity to see it “up close and personal.”

Despite the “changed landscape” of higher education very little has changed in terms of how one leads the change process, Buller’s thoughts notwithstanding.  Leading change is only partially about structures and processes and current trends and fads.  It is overwhelmingly about people.

Leading change is leading people.

The focus is always blurred; there is always a lack of clarity, to some degree.  A lack of certainty.  If one is certain, one is making some stuff up.

When I think about my dad these days, I think of the challenges and struggles he has been dealing with over the past five years, since the death of my mother. We had only a hint of the memory problems he was developing before her passing because she took care of him. It wasn’t that she hid his forgetfulness; it’s just that it wasn’t very consequential while she was there to remind him of things.

Since she’s been gone, the challenges were exposed and have increased enormously, exacerbated by his grief at my mom’s death and his subsequent depression. And his physical challenges have accelerated at the same time.

In short, when I think about my dad now, I am sad because he is not in good shape and I know that he will not get better.

What I should think about is further back, some things only a little further back. Like our last visit to a local Longview diner.

Or his last visit to the legendary Morning Call Coffee Stand, once in the French Quarter of New Orleans, now in Metairie, where he and my mom would go when they were dating.

Or him standing with Mama in front of our house at 111 Kate Street.

Or countless other scenes from the past 62 years.

There are many, many great things to think about and all of them together are his life – not just the present situation. He has led a wonderful life. He was a great husband and father, a model college professor, an exemplary university administrator, and a faithful friend. He was a master storyteller.

He is my dad.

   I have been thinking about the fact that over the past ten years quite a number of good friends, several from my childhood, have died.  This shouldn’t be all that surprising.  I am sixty-two years old, a senior citizen.  That’s the time of life in which lots of people die.

I’ll have to admit that the reality of becoming a “senior citizen” has sort of sneaked up on me.  At every turn I am amazed at how some public figure, a singer perhaps, that I admired at the beginning of my teaching and singing career is now . . . (how else can I say it?) . . . elderly!!

It is very hard to deal with the reality that I will never see Bill Byrd or Dick Stagner or Scott Tyra again in this life.  We weren’t finished with one another.  I hadn’t spent enough time with them, in person or virtually, in the past many years.  That makes the pain of loss quite a bit greater.

It drives home the words of Wilder:

       “It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another . . . . Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you . . . . Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?  No.  The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.”

   We’ve got to do better in the time we have.  At least I know I need to do so.

“Stuck in the middle . . .”

This is the way it happens: after the job change, almost no one that you have worked with for the past eight years will have anything to do with you. It’s not just that you are no longer working in close proximity; there is a noticeable avoidance of contact – going out of one’s way to keep from having to communicate, from having to interact.

This is hard to understand. It is difficult to figure out why.

But it is not difficult to notice.

I’m always looking back.  Well, not always but frequently.  Here’s something to think about.

And, then, this —

Nice to think about.

It’s time to get started again.  Big changes. Life goes on.  I’ll catch you up, little by little, maybe.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking again about roots and heritage and what’s important. Today, as you may know, is the birthday of John Lennon.  He would have been 75 today.

Take a look at this tribute, recorded by Peter Noone:

Pretty nice!

I’ve been at this a long time.

I learned to be a pretty proficient singer and a passable actor.  I worked very, very hard at it.

I started teaching in college thirty-seven years ago.  I’ve taught at a small private university, a major state research university, a mid-size private university, and at two mid-sized state universities.  I learned to be a very good university professor.  I am a very good classroom teacher.  I am a great studio voice teacher.  I had good teachers as models.  I understand learning styles.

It is a lot more difficult to live life effectively.  There are many distractions.  When my mom died, it put me off the path.  I haven’t been able to find my way.

It is a continual job.  It will never end because one can never learn enough about how to live.

There are quite a few reasons that I have been very happy working in higher education for the past 36 years.  One of the primary reasons is that one is given the chance, on a regular basis, to “start over.”  Every new academic year — indeed, every semester — one gets a fresh beginning.

I often wish one had that opportunity in life.  Sometimes you just want to start over.  But, it can’t be done.  There is just some baggage you  have to carry all your life.

“Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight, Carry that weight a long time . . . .”