A peer to peer discussion with the Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel T.A. Croson, the chief academic officer of the University of Minnesota.

“One piece of advice for aspiring deans who want to be provost or presidents, is…” offered Croson.

In this latest episode of Deans Counsel, Dr. Croson shares her personal journey into academic administration, offering valuable insights for those considering a similar transition. She discusses the deliberate choice to move from research to leadership, the effective use of metrics in higher education, her perspective on promotion and tenure, and the evolving landscape of higher education.

“What helps the institution advance doesn't always align with those inherent incentives,” said Croson.

Dr. Croson also reflects on her experiences as an administrator, sharing lessons learned, challenges faced, and advice for those aspiring to leadership roles. She discusses the importance of preparation for the role of provost and offers guidance for current deans on working effectively with their provost.

Join us as we explore the critical role of metrics in academic leadership and how they can align with institutional values and mission.

Learn more about Dr. Croson here.

Photos courtesy of UMN

Dave 0:13

Welcome to Dean's Counsel, a podcast aimed at supporting university leaders holding one of the more critical jobs on a university campus. Your panelists, Ken Kring, Jim Ellis, and Dave Ikenberry engage in conversation with highly accomplished Dean's and other academic leaders regarding the ever complex array of challenges that Dean's face and one of the loneliest and most unique jobs in the academy. In this episode of Dean's Counsel, you're hosted insights and advice from a successful business school dean, who rose through the ranks and today is Provost of the University of Minnesota, Rachel Croson. During our conversation, we cover a wide range of topics. This includes Rachel sharing with us why and how she deliberately chose to move into academic administration helpful insight into how to and how not to lead with metrics, her views on promotion and tenure. Criticism we sometimes hear about the value of college education today, and the surprising amount of time she spends working with the University's Board of Regents. for those contemplating progressing to higher roles and campus wide administration. We also hear Rachel's recommendation to take on experiences which broaden one's exposure to campus wide issues. Interestingly, the second is the same recommendation Judy olien president of Quinnipiac provided when we interviewed her earlier this season, and episode 37.

Rachel Croson 1:42

We're here today with Rachel Crossan, Executive Vice President and Provost and Chief Academic Officer of University of Minnesota and its multi campus system, as well as being Provost at the Twin Cities campus. We won't recite your entire impressive resume, Rachel. But we do want to just bring to the attention of our listeners to the unique and broad perspective of your experience leading up to this role. Having been to time Dean both of Business at University of Texas Arlington, as well as College of Social Sciences at Michigan State University, but also having been a director at the National Science Foundation, having run a as a director of a negotiation Center at UT Dallas, and having been a tenured professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. So with a broad and terrific preparation for this fall, we would just really love to hear you talk some about your pathway, and what that journey has been like.

Thanks. Thanks so much, Ken. And thanks, everyone who's tuning in, I became interested in academic administration when I was a faculty member at UT Dallas. And something happened, which is I hit 100 papers on my CV. And if you're in like the medical profession, that's nothing. But I'm an economist, as an economist, that's a lot. And that really led me to start thinking about is there something I could do with my time, that would not only enabled me to publish paper number one, but when enable 100 other people to publish their paper number one on one, so I became interested in the idea of administration as a way to get that kind of leverage to, to kind of facilitate the work that I love doing so much myself. So I had the opportunity to go to the National Science Foundation for a two year rotation as a division director. And this was a great thing because it let me dip my toe in the water on administration. I got experienced with research administration, we prepared congressional testimony. I had an executive coach while I was there, which was really helpful. But the idea was, if I liked it, and I was good at it, I could go the administrative route. And if I decided it wasn't for me, I could go back to my faculty position. After two year rotation, no harm, no foul. So I decided I was good at it. And I did like it. And so I went on the Dean's market. As I mentioned, I'm an economist, but I spent much of my career in a business school. So I kind of could have gone either way to a more arts and sciences school, or to more business school. But I eventually accepted a position as Dean of the College of Business at UT Arlington, which brought my family back to the DFW area. And again, I really found the opportunity to leverage to spend time doing things that enabled many, many people to be more research productive, more creative, be better teachers, you know, do their jobs better. That was a part that was really great. From that seat, I saw kind of firsthand both the president's job and the provost job. And what was interesting to me again, was the scope of the As jobs they had that kind of leverage. But there was also the opportunity, especially in the provost role for enabling multidisciplinary collaboration for matchmaking among faculty who maybe didn't, wouldn't talk to each other otherwise or even between faculty and staff who might have synergies and for innovation, and those were all kind of in the Dean's role, but really stepped up a notch in the president and provost role. I was also at that time ready to get back to the r1 AAU space. All universities have pivotally important missions, and UT Arlington's mission was no exception. But I had a personal commitment to basic research and discovery. And that kind of pulled me toward a different Institute of institution that I was at. So I got the opportunity, the Dean of Social Science and Michigan State, that put me in what we called a core College, which gave me a broader perspective on the institution. And I could see from that seat, how some of the decisions I had made as a business school dean at a different institution, had ripple effects to other units that I might not have anticipated. And so when I decided that I was ready for Provost, it was really that breadth of experience, the National Science Foundation, the funded research side, the professional school, like a business school, and the core school like social science, that both enabled me to stand out from other candidates who would aspire to be a provost, but also to kind of understand what the totality of the job was. So one piece of advice I might have for aspiring Dean's who want to be Provost or presidents, is to think about how to broaden your experience. That doesn't mean you have to be a dean of another kind of college like I did. But leading an institution wide initiative, or maybe doing a stint in a central office as a faculty fellow, or something that kind of gives you a perspective beyond the confines of your school or your college. Because, of course, once you move into the presidency or the provost job, your responsibilities to the entire institution, not just one part of it. Thanks

Dave 7:16

again, Rachel, for, for being with us today. You see, you have a broad perspective of not only your university, but higher education more generally. One of the claims that we hear quite a bit is this whole debate that's emerged over the last 15 years, maybe the last five years in particular, is college worth it? How do you think about that problem? What's your How did we get here? How, you know, why are we having this conversation? And how are you leading your Dean's on this issue? Or are you leading your Dean's on this issue? And in a proactive or intentional way?

Rachel Croson 7:58

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. That's a That's a great question. And a really important question that nobody has the great answer to, I will say, but mine, and you can evaluate how good it is. So I think something happened kind of in the 80s, with the Reagan administration, where the view of, of higher education moved from higher education as a public good. That created economic mobility in the country that created economic growth, that kind of lifted all boats to private public into higher education as a private good, which enrich you which helped your family, which provided a career path. And of course, public education is both of those things. Higher education is both of the things, both public and private. Right. But the shift to a private good perception of higher education, led naturally, as you indicated to the question of what's the ROI, right, right is how much I'm gonna pay better than, you know, more or less than how much I will get out of it. Simultaneously, the shift from higher education as a public good to higher education is a private good meant a public disinvestment in higher education. Because if it's a public good that it makes sense for the public to invest in in, if it's a private good, it makes sense for the person receiving the private benefits to be the one paying. And so that kind of paradigm shift, I think, enabled a lot of Republicans to tutions a lot of states to decide they were going to disinvest or invest less and shifted the burden to the students and their families to pay because there would be a personal ROI that came out of the education. The good news is all the data that I've seen in any any kind of no matter how how much control and how many fancy regressions you want to run. Higher education has an amazing ROI. I mean, it's really phenomenal. Now that doesn't mean that every university has a good return or every major has a good return. Yeah, right, you know, there, there are variations there for sure. But, you know, overall, on average, getting college education 100% pays off, in and in the public sphere is really pivotal to creating what we think of as the American dream, for social mobility, and for advancement, and enabling people who are smart, who come from families that are disadvantaged, to really excel and to utilize their talents, again, not only to their own benefit, but to the benefit of our whole society. So I think we need as in higher education, we need to do two things. One is we need to better job to explain the private benefits from public education, higher education, right, the earnings and the ROI, and all those things. But we also need to do a much better job in explaining the public benefits to higher education, how the educated workforce advances, the earnings of the state, right, the success of the state or the country, how the fact that we have, you know, a civically engaged workforce will help protect our democracy, right, right. All those kinds of things are things that can be outputs for higher education. And while they can also be good to the individual, they can also be good for all of us, Rachel,

that's a terrific set of insights, I think we'd be interested in hate to hear you sort of drill down a little bit and give us a sense of how you're able to convey the related messages, right. model the behaviors, what are some examples of how your purview you're able to amplify those kinds of messages?

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And, of course, the the modality of your discussion, and to some extent, the content messages are different for different audiences. So you need to be a little, you know, nuanced about that. So for example, in our College of Liberal Arts, they've gone through a significant curriculum review, linking all of the competencies that come out of a liberal arts degree to job specific competencies, right, so two employment oriented things, so that you might not think that a degree in English, for example, is going to lead to a good job path. In fact, it does. And they can kind of demonstrate how the skills you're going to learn in your classes and through your major are ones that the marketplace is calling for. So there's kind of one set of communications for students and families that are really about what are the competencies you're going to get? How is that going to lead to a successful career and a successful life afterwards? Right? I think there's a separate set of messages for policymakers, legislators, and to some extent, members of the general public about how a university education lifts all boats, right, how it contributes to the economic stability and health of the state and the nation and the world. And those are our different messages. Those are a little more general than not very specific to a particular major or particular set of courses. But they're kind of global, and maybe more philosophical than anything else.

Dave 13:17

Right? You're looking at your CV a little bit in preparation for our session today. It appears you're a metrics driven person, maybe that's not surprising if you're an economist. Is that true? Are you a metrics driven leader? Is there an Is there a strategic approach to how you utilize and think about these metrics? How do you incorporate that in your leadership style?

Rachel Croson 13:41

Great question. So I am a firm believer in metrics, I think that, you know, we there's a saying that we count what we value, and we value what we write, right. And so I think that simply saying we have a value for something employment for our students diversity, you know, inclusion, whatever it is, without having a measure to demonstrate that you can that you've succeeded, you can take, do a lot of stuff, you can have a lot of activity without having a lot of outcomes. Now, there are absolutely things that are hard to measure, or sometimes impossible to measure. And it doesn't mean that we don't do those things, or we don't count those things. We don't value those things. But I think for many things, even if it's a rough, imperfect measure, having at least a feedback loop to know that you're going in the right direction, is incredibly, incredibly useful. So, so I'm definitely a data driven type of leader for sure. But it's not but I'm also a firm believer that the people doing the activity have to be the one setting the metrics, okay, so these metrics don't come from on high they come from down below. It's the people who are doing the recruiting work, who set the goal goals that are realistic, but ambitious for the diversity of our student body, for example, or the socio economic, you know, first year retention for different socio economic levels, or whatever it happens to be, it's very easy if you're disconnected for the work to set a goal, that's either way to way too easy that like we're already meeting, or just theoretically impossible to achieve. And so you really need for the people who are going to be responsible for delivering on the goal to be the one setting the goal with appropriate oversight and benchmarking and all that kind of thing. So that you know that it's ambitious, and not unachievable. And then they're invested in meeting the goal, because they're the ones that set it. So again, a golden post from above, I think, can be very problematic. But a goal that is mutually agreed upon by the individuals who are going to be doing the work and the leaders who are supervising them is, is the right way to proceed. Right.

As Provost, you've had an opportunity to hire and do performance reviews and do professional development for a whole array of individuals, including Dean's, and the interesting to hear your thoughts on sort of how do you convey these kind of messages around performance and insights around? How you manage? Yeah,

great question. So hiring and evaluating Dean's is probably one of the most important things that I do, maybe second only to the promotion and tenure process, which is also really pivotal. When I when I think about hiring a new dean, and we have our interview, I talk about three main parts of the job. The first part of the job is leading your unit to success, whatever success means for that unit, that can be rankings, it could be enrollment, it could be graduation rates, and we talk for each unit, they have an individual kind of definitions and what they're trying to achieve. So you got to kind of be successful in leading your unit. And then we talk about managing out. So collaborations with industry. And they're or, or alumni and donors. And they're kind of depends on the what the colleges, so if it's a business school, we expect them to be connected to, to, you know, corporate engagement, if it's a school of music, we want them to be connected to the kind of performing arts community, right. So whoever their communities are, both locally and nationally, being a leader and be seen as a leader in those spaces is really important. And in that managing our time, kind of section, I also talk a lot about collaborations with the other Dean's and the other senior leaders, that I don't want each Dean to be connected to me independently and me to be connected to each Dean, I don't want to be the center of that social network, I want this to be a connected wheel, where they're talking to each other. And if they have a conflict, they work it out with each other. And if they come up with an opportunity, they reach out to each other to try to explore it, rather than having the provost having to mediate everything that goes on at the university. And so one of the things we do to try to encourage that, and this is something that I stole from Michigan State. So kudos to Terry curry, is we run new dean school about every other year. So the set of new deans we all get together for dinner about once a month. And each time we invite a different vice president. So the vice president for HR, the chief legal officer, the Vice President for Information Technology, and we just have a conversation about what their office does, what how they interact with the deans, what and most of it is q&a from the deans. So that gives them a chance to kind of get acclimated to the whole university. Many of them haven't haven't been in a role where they've had exposure to that scope. But also they form relationships with each other. And they go out to dinner together, and they go and do things together. And then they get to know each other. And that's a really important kind of community building experience. And then the third bucket I think about for Dean's as I want them to be part of my senior leadership team. So when we have a major university decision to make, I want them to be able to take off their college hat and put on their university citizen hat and advise me on the benefits and downsides of a given decision. Not from the viewpoint of will this advance my unit, but from the viewpoint of Willis advancing institution as a whole. And that's something that for some Dean's they need to grow into. But I have found with the deans that I've hired, that's been really, really effective and that is guided me and our prayers our interim president, previous president, our interim president and our incoming president in in making the decisions on behalf of the whole university.

Dave 19:55

Rachel but that new Dean's program sounds remarkably Interesting. Kudos. Kudos to you for that keeping on this kind of theme of, of Dean's and Dean actions. What are one or two behaviors or actions that you wish Dean's would not do? Are they all perfect angels? I'm assuming they are. You hired them, right?

Rachel Croson 20:22

I hired a lot of our Dean's I think 13 out of our 18 Dean's I will have hired by this July. It's it's been a time and I think that is not unusual. For many universities. It's been just a huge turnover as as a result of COVID. So maybe, maybe I'll kind of highlight two common mistakes are calling mistakes, but common, you know, ish things that Dean's do that cause issues, right. So one thing is I kind of mentioned is, I expect Dean's to be advocates for their unit, but also to be university citizens. And not switching hats fast enough is sometimes a challenge. Sometimes the university makes an estimate a decision that is good for some units and bad for others. And sadly, that's simply the reality of the world. And, you know, continuing to fight those decisions, trying to gin up public interest or faculty outrage about it, that's never a good sign a good thing for a dean to do, right, they should absolutely express their input, they should make sure that the person making the decision understands the full potential costs of the decision or the implications of the decision. But once the decision is made, we sort of expect Dean's to, to get on board and to do that. Right. The other I think, mistake that I've sometimes seen Dean's make is being too insular, especially about the teaching and the research of their faculty. So we had Minnesota have a very strong RCM budget model, we developed that model, we adopted that model very early. And other universities who have adopted our CMS have adopted more moderate versions. But in Minnesota, 100% of the tuition and the state money is distributed to the colleges, they then pay a tax back centrally to fund central offices. But as a result when faculty want to, for example, co teach a class, that revenue would be split between the two colleges. And sometimes colleges look at that and say, well, that faculty member could be teaching a class and I could get all the revenue. And so I don't want to do that, because now I have to give away half. And so kind of being able again, to put on their university white hat, and to say this is going to be a good thing for the university as a whole for the students for the faculty themselves. Right, that we need to say, Okay, some of this money, we're gonna get less money this year, because we did this thing, but that's still a good thing.

Right? Wondering, Rachel, we're there, despite being as well prepared as you were for the role. Were there things that either surprised you that you needed to stop doing? And things that surprised you that you needed to start doing when you stepped into the role? Yeah,

that's a great question. So I think the biggest thing that surprised me about the provost job is how much time I spend with the Board of Regents. And part of that might be because I also have a system role, right. And our system is not like the UC system or the UT System where I spent some time where there's a separate system office, right, so but I have I have a committee that I'm responsible for at the with the regents, which is actually Committee of the Whole so all the regions serve on this committee. We spent a lot of time communicating with the regions making sure they're not surprised, handling their questions, giving them advance notice about things that might come out in the press, there's a lot of time and energy spent tied up in there that I had not anticipated. The thing that I think I miss the most from being provost is lack of direct interaction with the donors. So as dean, I spent a lot of time with our alumni and donors, and that was joyous, joyous work. I mean, they are so happy and so successful, and so grateful to the institution and that is just, you know, unadulterated fun to spend time with donors. Even with the donors are unhappy in this day and age, sometimes they are, they are unhappy because they love the University. And that's just, you know, that's so inspiring. I do do some development work still. But mostly I am now a coach for the deans who are dealing with challenging donor situations. And you know, leading the university wide initiatives like, you know, adjustments around SCOTUS and those kinds of things rather than having direct one on one interactions with donors. And so I think that's the that's the part I missed the most in the transition from Team Got provost. I also, of course, Miss research. But I kind of gave that up when I became a dean. That's that's been a while now. It's a scab rather than open wound.

Dave 25:13

Rachel, a few moments ago, you mentioned promotion and tenure. Talk a little bit about your engagement in that process. Obviously, you're the chief academic officer, which means you carry a big stick. But how do you? How do you exercise your authority? How do you think about that difficult decision of intervening? kind of share a little bit about that? Behind the curtain activity?

Rachel Croson 25:39

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. So maybe I'll talk broadly, and then I'll talk a little specifically about the peace process. Yeah. So there are inherent incentives built into academic life. So for faculty publishing, and top tier disciplinary journals, is key to their advancement. But it's also key to their broader marketability. If they do that they can go get outside offers, and they can be mobile. But what helps the institution advance doesn't always align with those inherent incentives. So for example, you think I'm a I'm a, I'm an economist, but I'm an behavioral experimental economist. So I'm a big believer in multidisciplinary problem focused research, that that is how science is going to progress. And that is what we as a country need. And that's a reason institution need. But those aren't, that's not always the kind of research doesn't always get published in the kind of outlets that will align with the inherent incentives of a discipline. And so my job is to kind of put my thumb on the scale there to ensure that incentives for work that advances the institution are enough to get that work done. Right. So I see you see that in the in the kind of research publication space. But we also see that in service, so when a faculty member does service to the profession that's incentivized and recognized and will help them advance and get promoted. But we also need faculty to do service to the university and to their departments. And so for example, one of the things we did recently is we instituted a set of service awards, focused on faculty service to their departments. So every department could nominate a faculty member who did outstanding service to the department in that year. There's an automatic kind of $500 award, if you got nominated. And then we look at those nominations. And we select a set of, you know, the top award, which I think is $10,000.03 $5,000 awards, and maybe a couple $1,000, or there's kind of a cascading thing. But we need to sort of think about what we can do in our role to incentivize the kinds of activities whether it's multidisciplinary research or service to the institution or whatever do public outreach that will enhance the mission of the university and again, lead to greater discovery and other kinds of things. With the specifics of the promotion and tenure process is a little bit complicated, especially because we have five campuses, and each campus runs its process slightly differently. For for the kind of the, the exemplar unit, right, there's a college vote, the department vote, the department chair writes a letter, there's a college vote, the college dean writes a letter comes to my office for faculty and academic affairs. Most of the cases are pretty clear cut one way or another. And my role is really to do some triage, and dig deep into the ones where there are mixed votes, mixed decisions, some substantive disagreement. And so that's kind of where I spend a lot of my time on that on the edge cases. But you know, our goal, we want all of our faculty to succeed, we want all of our faculty to get tenure. And so we also spend a lot of time and resources on helping that happen. We run writing hunkers, we do professional development for faculty, we help them with getting grants, kind of thinking about things that we can do before the tenure decision to have a higher probability of success.

Rachel, thank you for the fascinating conversation of perspectives and insights you shared with us today are really very, very valuable and appreciated.

Of course, thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful to chat.

Dave 29:28

Our pleasure, Rachel, thank you

Rachel Croson 29:38

What do you think?

Dave 29:39

I really enjoy that conversation. There's just so many really positive nuggets of information she shared with us, you know, her use of metrics and how she thinks about them. Her perspective on this question about the value of higher education today I found that interesting. She She pegged the lipid if you will, during the Reagan administration during the you know, early to mid 1980s, I've actually would agree with that timing. I like her perspective that it may be due to the switch from a public good to a private good that higher education is fulfilling. I also wonder, though, if there's more to it, whether perhaps we took our eye off the ball in terms of student success, but I really like, you know, I think I think she's right about the defunding of higher education may have certainly played a role and therefore, cause this ROI question to emerge more and more, but overall, what a great discussion and and a lot of takeaways for us Dean's to think about I that was my takeaway.

Rachel Croson 30:47

Yeah, very, very comprehensive insights, and really willing and able to go deep and yet to, you know, to also sort of share some of the perspectives on some of the trends and issues at play that really force the need to adapt and, and think more positively and more creatively.

Dave 31:07

Yeah, of course, what an accomplished person, Rachel is, you know, to write 100 papers, as a young person. She was understating it when she said, that's a lot. That is a lot for an economist. Yeah. So kudos to her and she's, she's just what a great career path she's on right now. She's also

Rachel Croson 31:29

it's true. And she also, when she made the switch, she made it very deliberately and without right, you know, if there was ambivalence or ambiguity, she didn't manifest it. She, she took on the wheel and took the priorities of each role that you stepped into.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Deans Counsel. This show is supported in part by Korn Ferry leaders in executive search. Deans Counsel was produced in Boulder, Colorado by Joel Davis of analog digital arts. For a catalogue of previous shows, please visit our website at Dean's council.com If you have any feedback for us, please let us know by sending an email to feedback at Dean's council.com. And finally, please hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you can automatically receive our latest show