Bending the Curve of Adaptability

On this episode of Digital Squared, Tom talks with Maria Anguiano, Executive Vice President of Arizona State University’s Learning Enterprise. Together they discuss her unique journey from a challenging upbringing to achieving success in the higher education sector, and her role at ASU, emphasizing the university's innovative approach to inclusivity and lifelong learning through various programs and partnerships designed to democratize access to education. 

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00:00
Welcome to Digital squared, a podcast that explores the implications of living in an increasingly digital world. We're on a mission to inspire our listeners to use technology and data for good. Your host Tom Andriola is the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and data and Chief Digital Officer at the University of California at Irvine. Join us as Tom and fellow leaders discussed the technological, cultural and societal trends that are shaping our world. 

00:30
On this episode of the podcast, I'm talking with Maria Anguiano, executive vice president at Arizona State University's learning enterprise, a premier Lifelong Learning Global Education brand. Maria is also currently a member of the Board of Regents at the University of California and serves on several other boards, including the James Irvine Foundation, KIPP Foundation, and the Campaign for College Opportunity. Together Marina and I discuss her unique journey from challenging upbringing to achieving success in the higher education sector. And her role at ASU emphasizing universities innovative approach to inclusivity, and lifelong learning through various programs and partnerships designed to democratize access to education.

01:14
Maria, thank you for joining us on the podcast.

01:16
Thank you for having me,

01:18
I'd like to start with having you share with our audience your story and journey because it's a really interesting one. 

01:24
I don't know if I've had a non traditional journey or a little bit of a traditional one depends on what you focus on. But I'll start with my educational journey, which in many ways was very traditional, I graduated high school, I had a great GPA, and I went straight to college, right. But when you think about how I got to that moment, it was very non traditional. I grew up in a home with my mom, having only gone to sixth grade and really raising me and my siblings, three of us on her own, with having to move jobs all the time. And so we moved around a lot as kids went to six elementary schools. And actually lived in Tijuana for a couple years because we couldn't afford to live in the US. I would actually cross the border every single day to go to school, which was a commitment to education, for sure. I think that's made me very sensitive to the different journeys that people have in trying to get their education, right. And sometimes we would be late to school all the time, not because I was a bad student, but because the border lines were too long. And I would just be late, I was very lucky to have really amazing high school advisors who pushed me to say you are a great student, you could go to college, and really opened up my eyes of what was possible. And I was very lucky to get a full scholarship to Claremont McKenna. And what I also realized is that not everyone else was so lucky. There were a lot of students in my high school in San Diego at Sweetwater High who did not get to go to a four year program because their circumstances wouldn't allow it. And they were just as smart just as ambitious. So that's always made me want to think about how do you create more pathways for people. That was a little bit about my educational journey. And then my career has taken a lot of little turns and twists. I started my career as a as an auditor at Deloitte. That's because I had studied accounting in college, mostly because my mom said, that was a professional job. That was the only professional that we knew growing up. And so that's what she thought a professional should do is be an accountant. And even though I had lots of different interests, I literally didn't know what other possible jobs I could get post college and so I ended up as an accountant, and it was a good job. Definitely. I'm a futurist and literally one of my top five strengths as a futurist. So that was not the right time for me, looking at the past all day in the books. But I was able to shift and turn and went to business school, worked in investment banking, and then really transitioned to my dream career in higher education. been there ever since 14 years now. But it also in lots of different roles as well. And I think that early journey of moving so much and having to adapt and change made it easier for me to say okay, I'm I'm in this job now, but I want to get to the next step and that everything is possible. And so I started in finance. In higher ed, in fact, worked for the was Chief of Staff to the UC office of the president CFO, Peter Taylor. And now where we first met, which is where we met your search your I think I lead your search committee, I

04:31
think you're right. It's all your fault (laughter)

04:37
then went to UC Riverside to be Vice Chancellor planning and budget and now a little short stint at Minerva, actually, which I know you interviewed someone from there recently, and then ended up being the executive vice president of the learning enterprise at ASU where I now focus on accessible lifelong learning. So, so quite the journey so far. 

04:58
Yeah, we're gonna come back to the learning The learning enterprise in a few minutes. But I think one of the things is getting to know you a little bit and and watching your moves is, you don't think like a ladder climber, you think like a rock climber, you've had these different pivots in your career. And I'm sure along the way, each one of you is taught something that informs the way that you come to your next opportunity. And I've always admired watching how you've made these moves. We're recording this during Women's History Month. And I noticed recently you put a post on LinkedIn talking about some of the women who have influenced your thinking and your journey. Can you talk a little bit about some of those individuals and what it's meant to you? And then also how you think about passing that on? 

05:40
Yeah, that's such a great question. That was a very personal Post recently celebrating the women in my life. The first one was my mother. And really, I talked about her courage and tenacity. As I mentioned, she came to the US on her own. And just what she's been able to accomplish is really remarkable. And so when I think about her, it's not that things weren't scary. It's that they were scary. And she did them anyway. And so that, that that's my definition of courage. And so I celebrated that and that she instilled that in me. I did talk a little bit about Medela, no, Choa, who was my high school advisor, I mentioned that earlier today about how she was a woman that really paid it forward. Right, she was a PhD. And she was at Sweetwater High School, I want to say for 25 to 30 years. And every year, she encouraged student after student to pursue their dreams. And I think that sort of dedication to your community is also something that I hold very dear. And then finally, it was Monica Lozano, who was also a regent America. And she's always been, you know, a hero for me in the sense of being a vocal proponent of her community. And I think that's always, honestly, that's something that hasn't always come easy for me, I will say, is public speaking was actually something I did so poorly that I got sent to public speaking training in one of my jobs. All right, that's how bad I was at it in my mid 20s. I don't know it came from a fear of being rejected for what I said, and having a, I think, a mentor, and a visionary like Monica and hearing her advocate on behalf of our community with something that's always made me want to now do the same. And so I would say, paying it forward, focusing on serving your community, and being a vocal advocate of it is what I take away from that. 

07:37
Yeah, certainly, where you put your board time and those types of things, you are an advocate for making sure that education opportunities are there for everyone. Let's talk about higher education, right? It's a challenging time for higher education. Lots of stakeholder groups are, let's say, less than satisfied with what higher education is delivering whether you're talking to students, parents, elected officials, even employers, but ASU has really thought about this particular challenge differently. And you've been a huge part of that, since you've joined them. Can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking differently about the mission of higher education and bringing education to everyone? 

08:13
Yeah,  I'll actually come back to something you said earlier, because I think it's important to this next point, you said, Oh, I'm not a ladder climber, a rock climber, the rock climber has to see where they want to go, not what position they're in. Right? And so for me, it was always about where can I have the most impact? And I would make moves based on where could I work with a group of people where I have the most impact. And I think that's very much the case at ASU. ASU is not trying to climb rankings, the institution is very driven by its charter of inclusion, and trying to make education as inclusive as possible. And knowing that it's in the business of education and opportunity. And I think some of the reasons that it's been difficult for higher education, I think is we've a little bit as a industry, forgotten that we're in the business of education and people focused on the degree the stamp or the the rigid timeline. But rather, if we step back and say, what are we trying to accomplish? We're trying to accomplish the most inclusive way to get people to opportunities, and that people need additional learning post high school, not one person would tell you no, you don't need to learn post high school, right? They'll say, oh, is college really needed, but what they're really saying is a very rigid, four year residential expensive opportunity, what's needed? And that's not the right question. Right. The right question is, actually what do people need to learn to thrive in their lives and how do we provide them that and then that just allows I think, ASU and hopefully other educational institutions to think about their role differently and start innovating. Not for innovation sake, but to meet learners where they are, in the most the broadest sense possible. 

10:07
Can you give us some of the examples about things that ASU are doing that, let's say are outside the norm of what we see most of higher education?

10:15
Yeah. So one example of meeting learners where they are is our earned admissions program. And so our earned admissions program, this basically created because there was a woman in Afghanistan who had taken a few of our open online courses. And she emailed ASU and said, Could I attend your institution, I've passed all these courses. And we realized we had no mechanism to admit her. And here was a brilliant woman who had clearly been able to work at the college level, and there was no access for her. And just like her, there's many other people who, because research universities have these admissions criteria. But admissions criteria is based on basically what GPA you had when you were 18 years old, and what courses you were able to take from your high school. And it seems like that can't be the only way to prove that you can learn at a research university level. And so we created a pathway program called earned admissions where if you do take four of our open college courses, and you pass with a B, or above, we will admit you, we will create a spot for you and let you in. And I don't think many universities have that you can be an open enrollment university. But most universities with high admissions criteria, there's no other way to get in there. Once you've missed that one shot. And for me, that's a great example of creating a pathway and an opportunity for people that get that second or third shot, if that's what they need. 

11:51
I always talk about in leadership training, right, great leaders don't think in terms of or they think in terms of and, and one of the observations I've seen at Arizona State University is they bring that in thinking of more pathways more ways to get on ramp. And I love the meeting students where they're at, right, because student could mean an 18 year old falling traditional paths, it could mean a 27 year old who's had lots of life experiences and certain headwinds that they have to take it at a different pace. It

12:21
could be a 96 year old, I have a 96 year old enrolled in the universal Learner Program. 

12:27
Yeah, that's just amazing, right. And kudos to her for having the understanding of you're never too old to be a learner, right and to adapting, you talk a little bit about bending the curve of adaptability, right, the velocity at which life is moving now. You talk about tech enabled world more and more. Can you talk a little bit about how ASU is not just thinking about more pathways, but also about the adaptability that we need to build into pedagogies and learning cycles?

12:55
I think research universities are definitely in a special place in society and the fact that they are driving the literally creation of new knowledge every single day. And so I think we also have a responsibility to make sure that everyone in our society has that knowledge and is keeping up with the vast movements in innovation and an acceleration of change in our society. I had mentioned how it's always striking to me that big innovations in our society, when you think about electricity, you know, that took 46 years to get to a quarter of the US population and, and even the web took almost 10 years to get to a quarter of the US population. And now we're seeing innovations adopted, like chat GPT, at that same quarter of the US population took less than a year to get them to adopt, right, which means change is just happening so much faster, which means we as both I think institutions, but also as humans have to learn to adapt very quickly. And it can be scary. I am the first one, given all the changes I've had in my life know that change is scary. And it's hard. And it's difficult to want to do it. But I think it's our responsibility as institutions to help individuals keep up with that innovation and change and help them get those opportunities that they need in order to do that. And so, as part of ASU, we have a career catalyst portfolio, and we work very closely with our research faculty to produce as quickly as possible new content that's available to everyone, not just to the students, right. So there's a students in our degree programs and of course, that content is available to them immediately, but also to the general public. So as an example, actually, when Chad GPT came out, two months later, we had a course available for our students and for the general public that we were able to put out immediately to help people learn. 

14:51
That's an interesting story, right? Because you democratize something that in many ways, higher education institutions of saying the knowledge gets created here. We keep it here. For our students, and we do export some of it in the way of intellectual property, you just published it for the common good. And for every person in society, is that part of the DNA of who ASU is? Yeah. 

15:11
And it comes back to the charter of inclusion that I talked about earlier. It is something that almost every person at ASU that you run into whether it's a student success analyst to the Vice President's, everyone knows the charter, I lives by the charter of inclusion, and that I think, many times mindsets are just as important is tactics, right? The mindset of inclusion forces you to keep thinking and evolving of what it means to be inclusive. And so at first, we were just focused on degree seeking students, and there was a giant increase in the student population. But as we kept focusing, what does inclusion mean? What does inclusion mean was how do we reach everyone else in the community? We should make this available to everyone, right? And so it's really a journey that's led through a growth mindset.

16:02
Yeah, I think that growth mindset is something in my observations, higher education is really struggling with, it's been more of a fixed mindset, it's always got it's got to fit in the box fit a certain model restricted by current budgets. And I just you again, when I look at my experiences in other industries, breakthrough thinking is what moves companies ahead, or they get disrupted by the newcomer to the market. And you spent some time at one of the newcomers in the higher education market in Minerva University, which I think is a fascinating story. And in fact, you and I took a delegation there, and we freaked some of our colleagues out. But it's exactly the type of out of the box thinking I think you need in the growth mindset, the saying, we can always do more, right? And doing more doesn't always have to come with more dollars, sometimes it's doing more brings more dollars. And one of the things I was fascinated to learn is, you don't do this alone, you work with a lot of partners. Matter of fact, I think I heard you dropped a number of 2000 partner. And so talk a little bit about creating that ecosystem of partners and how it amplifies those principles that you've adopted. 

17:08
Yeah, I think all change right is done by a small group of dedicated people. I mean, it's not done by committee. And so finding like minded values aligned partners that want to see, you know, the same future that we want to see is been one of ASU strategies to grow. You can't just grow on your own. But when you partner with others that want to achieve the same things, we're able to grow much faster and achieve the impact much faster. I think I gave an example about our Starbucks partnership, and how Howard, the CEO at the time, had this vision of how do we help their Starbucks partners, which is what they call the people that work at the Starbucks, how do we help them thrive? Out of that came out the Starbucks partnership with ASU where any Starbucks partner that works, I think it's 20 hours or above, can get a free ASU degree, a free ASU degree, ASU degree. And obviously, through the partnership, and over 10,000 partners have graduated as of last graduation cycle, a few 100 More to come. And it's only been five, six years. And so there's no way we could have gotten as ASU to all the Starbucks partners. Without Starbucks, right? Even though it's the same population that we want it to serve. And so we have partnerships with corporations. But we also have partnerships with other nonprofits that want to achieve change. The MasterCard Foundation is another great example, getting educational assets out to African leaders, we have a bail Bab project with MasterCard that we're working on together to create a network of leaders across Africa and provide lots of learning content, and more importantly, this kind of community based learning for them. And again, that's another one that reaches 1000s of learners. And there's no way we would have done that by ourselves.

19:02
So use terms that are really unique for let's say, traditional higher education, and you just dropped two of them right there, right, getting assets out, right? Or open content. These are really unique concepts to higher education. I know this fits into kind of what the learning enterprise which you lead is, and it's not just about more pathways, right? But it is these also these concepts. So if you were to encapsulate in that elevator pitch of the learning enterprise, what is it and in what are the strategies that are putting fuel into the engine.

19:35
 So the learning enterprise mission is to create universal opportunities for learners at every stage in life. That's how I like to say, and so what that means is, and I think you mentioned that how higher ed likes to keep everything we have for our students, right. And so, the learning enterprise mission in many ways is to take down those forcefields and say at every research university He does have a variety of assets, whether those are courses, or textbooks or videos that they've produced, or even webinars, right, that solely have only been for kind of that smaller community. And so learning enterprise works across the entire university with every school and college to figure out how might we take things that you've already created and get that out to everyone in the community.

20:25
 You were in finance, I was in corporate venture capital, right? When your work with private equity firms, they talk about squeezing every ounce of value out of an asset. And that's exactly what ASU is doing. One asset doesn't have one purpose. But if we can find a second, third and fourth purpose, we create more value, right. And that's not necessarily measured in dollars, but measured in social impact, which is really an interesting way to apply a concept from the finance world, into higher education.

20:52
That's so true, maybe its my finance background that helps me think that way. And sometimes it's really about helping people see what could be possible. So I remember I'll give a short story is one of our ambassadors that that's a professor at ASU was going to give a short series of lectures, he was originally thinking it would be for the law school students on how to be an ambassador. And as we talked, I was like, why wouldn't we record that and make that available to everyone? And he's like, that's a great idea. Why didn't I think about that? And so part of it sometimes is just sparking that ability of what's possible to someone that wants to have impact, but maybe just didn't think that it was possible.

21:36
Yeah, that's a great story. So the other thing that we haven't touched on is this from zero to 100, lifelong model, talk that 120 to 120.  So as  longevity allows us to live longer, the learning cycle will go even longer. Yeah, so talk a little bit about bringing that into action at ASU. 

21:58
Yeah, it's so funny, I actually really is very specific to do 120. Because I believe that's the oldest human being that's that's ever lived is up to 120. And like I mentioned, we have a 96 year old. So I don't want to exclude her a couple of years from now, when she's still learning. But that takes many forms, we must have hundreds of learning offerings, because they're all tailored really specifically to the learner at that specific stage in life. And that's why I talk about stages of life. Because when you focus on what stage of someone's life, and you realize they need something slightly different than another point in time, right. And education is not necess. It's not a one size fits all. And it's not a destination. It's truly a journey. And we have offerings that, for example, our teachers college is providing for early childhood development. And we were providing it for our students that were in our early childhood development center. And now we're thinking how do we take that content those assets again, as he talked about Tom and offer that to all parents through technology. And so it's everything from that two Mirabella, which is our senior, I call it the Senior Living dorm, but it's basically a facility where people 65 Plus can live on campus, take courses engage in the campus community. And so I think our earliest learners a year and 10 months, and our oldest learners 96, and we see everything in between. And again, what that learning looks like is vastly different at each stage. And so I think in education, we need to head towards a hyper personalized learning journey.

23:32
And I think this is what society really wants from us, right? We talk a lot about, we're constantly now re-skilling and adapting and adapting as technology drives us for different tools, different ways that we interact, we struggle with the way things used to be and the way that we think the world works with the way that the world is working for our kids or our grandkids, right. And so we're all being forced to continue to adapt. The education system has to catch up to that change of pace to your point, electricity took generation to become standard. And chat GPT kind of drove us to do it in less than a year. It was it's been phenomenally for someone who was in the middle of that for the internet, to watch how fast these generative AI tools have captured not just our attention, but our imagination. Right? And whole industries are now trying to figure out how do we adapt to this? And how's the world going to be different? And who's going to benefit? And I always tried to tell people, let's make sure that it's for all, and not just for the select few, right, we've dealt with the digital divide for the last generation of those who've been on one side versus those that have been left behind. We have the threat of creating the next version of the digital divide with these AI tools. And I know in terms of some of the partnerships you've done, like with open AI, it's been about making sure everyone has access to these wonderful tools. 

24:51
That's right, and the only way you can create an equity driven future is to make sure that everyone's involved in creating, right so you've got to get everyone involved. All right from the very beginning.

25:01
So lots of work for us to do. Maria, I want to thank you so much for joining us on the podcast for sharing with us your journey as well as Asus journey to really make a positive impact in the world. Thank you so much for being with us. 

25:13
Thank you, Tom. Always great to talk to other innovative and forward thinking higher ed leaders.