Higher Ed Leaders: The Entrepreneurial Campus sponsored by Viv Higher Education
Welcome to Higher Ed Leaders, hosted by Suzan Brinker, PhD, of Viv Higher Education. This podcast is for college and university professionals seeking actionable insights to amplify their impact. This season, we’re focusing on entrepreneurial leadership in higher education—exploring how to accelerate decision-making, navigate imperfect data, and focus on initiatives that truly align with institutional goals. Join us as Suzan and a range of leaders, including presidents and VPs of enrollment, advancement, strategy, and more, share their journeys and leadership strategies.
Higher Ed Leaders: The Entrepreneurial Campus sponsored by Viv Higher Education
SEASON 2, Ep. 12 The Joyful Administrator with Karlyn Crowley, Provost of Ohio Wesleyan University
In this episode, we delve into the transformative journey of Karlyn Crowley, Provost of Ohio Wesleyan University, exploring her profound impact on higher education. From her early experiences that solidified her belief in the liberal arts to her innovative leadership during the challenging times of the pandemic and beyond, Karlyn shares insights into fostering inclusive environments, navigating difficult conversations, and leading with empathy. We discuss her pivotal role in establishing the Cassandra Voss Center, her strategies for program prioritization, and her philosophy of "administrative joy," revealing how she effectively drives change while maintaining a deep commitment to student and faculty well-being. This conversation highlights the power of liberal arts education and the importance of creating spaces where meaningful dialogue and learning can thrive.
This podcast is sponsored by Viv Higher Education
About Viv Higher Education
Viv Higher Education is a Boston-based, female-owned comprehensive marketing agency specializing in higher education. With expertise in strategic planning, creative asset development, and media campaigns, we focus on enrollment-centric initiatives. Our approach is grounded in industry best practices, ensuring precision in reaching target audiences. We have extensive experience in marketing to diverse groups, including high school students, Hispanic, military, LGBTQ+, international students, and online learners. Navigating the complex landscapes of university environments is second nature to us, and we prioritize fostering collaborations that yield mutually beneficial outcomes. With a personable, nimble, and highly responsive approach, we deliver tailored solutions to empower organizations to achieve their objectives.
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Hi, Karlyn. I am so excited to have you on the show. How are you? Thrilled to be here. You and I go way back. We've known each other for almost 20 years, which is insane to say.
And we have a big story together, which we'll tell. But first, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about your higher ed journey and where are you now? Great. I'm the provost of Ohio Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts college in the Ohio Five, the Great Lakes College Association, the Annapolis Group. We have about 1500 students and we are right outside of Columbus, Ohio and Delaware, Ohio, and we're in the beloved book Colleges That Change Lives, which is actually one of the ways I chose my own undergraduate school. And so it's really an honor to be the chief academic officer at a school in Lauren Pope's book.
I'm in my fifth year here. I consider myself like in Harley Davidson parlance, a ride or die liberal arts person. I began at Earlham College also in the Great Lakes College Association and a college that changes lives.
This is what education feels like. This is what learning feels like. I just couldn't believe it. I was so overcome. I'd come from a public high school in Bloomington, Indiana. That was fine. But someone called me by my name, asked for my opinion wanted to see me in office hours, taught really compelling work, created a classroom community, it just was a life changing experience. When I went to graduate school to the University of Virginia for English and Women's Studies, I went into graduate school knowing I wanted to teach at a liberal arts college, which was very different from most of my peers who I think often thought about a research one.
I then taught for 18 years at St. Norbert College, small liberal arts college outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin in De Pere, and had a number of faculty and then administrative roles before I became the provost here, and I'm in my fifth year. And we met at St. Norbert College in 2006 when you were I think at the time, I think you were already tenured.
And I had a similar experience to what you just described at Earlham where I was in your classroom and thought, wow, this is what education is supposed to feel like. I think the first class I took with you was like a survey of American literature.
And as a German international student, I took contemporary ethnic fiction, which is a class that actually changed my life. I've posted recently a little bit about that on LinkedIn because you helped me understand my Turkish German heritage and helped me transform that from what was probably always baggage into something that I now consider a superpower and a gift.
And I'm just so grateful to you. The story got bigger from there. I had a roommate, Cassandra. Who died in a car accident in May of 2007, after that semester, during which I took that course with you. And I'm just beginning to publicly speak about this. I haven't really said much about it in the last however many years it's been 17.
But I'm recently speaking about it more because it really ties into my higher ed story, which is that I got such love and support on that campus, including from you. That I think I was just inspired to always spend my life on college campuses and try to. give people a similar sort of home and not just from a nurturing and love and care experience, but also the experience that I had in the classroom.
So I think what I'm doing today really roots back to that year during which I met you and during which that tragedy occurred. But that car accident also set your life and career on a little bit of a different path because you then six years later became the founding director of the Cassandra Voss Center at St. Norbert College.
Can you tell us about that center and the work you did there? It's just incredible. I would love to.
I have goosebumps just hearing you talk about that again. It's amazing when we think about the person who was Cassandra Voss. And how profound an impact that she had on people at that time, but then subsequently which is that she affected both of our paths because you ended up not going back to Germany and staying at St. Norbert. And then the story that you asked me to tell is that I helped start women's and gender studies at St. Norbert College. And that was really important to her. And when she died in the car accident, her father said, I want to build the most beautiful gender equity center in her honor. And I went on a journey with him as the primary donor for those seven years to help envision what that center would become.
And I was very clear as a faculty member. That I was a scholar teacher. And so I wrote the job description for the director, the founding director of the Cassandra Voss Center. And when I went to see the president of St. Norbert at the time, he called me into his office and I thought, Oh that's nice, but a little odd, but I don't know why, it must be something about the Cassandra Voss Center.
And he said so Karlyn, you're going to be the founding director of the Cassandra Voss Center. And I said, no, I'm not. And he said, yes, you are. And I said, no, I'm not. And I I adore Tom Kunkel and Jeff Frick, the then provost who's also had a key role in my life. I said, we believe you are. And I said, but I, I wrote the director's job description for someone else, and I was teaching Sheryl Sandberg's lean in at the time, which is It's not a book without its complications, but very profound for many undergraduate students in terms of shaping their own leadership. And my best friend, Kim Roberts said, this is your moment to lean in and you need to take this job. I had a two year old at the time and I thought, how will I do all of this and manage this new chapter of my life as a mom having a baby later in life.
And I decided to lean in. And so for me, the thing that was extraordinary about that experience, and I've written some about that Cassandra Voss Center experience, is that the institution at the time And the president and provost said to me, you can create whatever you dream, that is, you can build it entirely from scratch.
And that was what captivated me the most. And so, building the core values, the mission, the staff philosophy, which I totally changed, how student workers were onboarded, and then their roles, and the philosophy. The philosophy of the center related to marketing and communications.
The experience is a very different kind of place, and my deep awareness, having been at women's centers my whole life, and in the field of women's and gender studies, that I wanted to do something distinctly different. I wanted to lead with joy, to have to really operate from non scarcity mindset, to lead intersectionally, which was the only way I really understand women's and gender studies, so it really centered voices of color, experiences of color, And I wanted it to feel relevant to the community and be based in a story of dialogue across difference, which is how we really conceived of the father daughter relationship of Kurt and Cassandra Voss.
And so within a very short period of time, we had wild success wild success, nationally recognized. Major figures, Bell Hooks then became a partner with us in this work and the Bell Hooks Institute at Berea College became a sister center to Sandra Vos She spoke with Harry Kondabalu and Gloria Steinem and Parker Palmer and a number of people who came through the center at that time.
The 2000 student college in Northeast Wisconsin became an epicenter and a national leader In doing equity work differently. And I think the last thing I'll say is I really blew up the model of centers. And I especially was interested in corporate partners and business partners. And so rather than having a kind of purist approach used, these are fortune 500 companies like Schreiber, which is one of the largest dairy manufacturers in the United States.
They make a lot of the dairy products for McDonald's. They were partners with us or us or Humana Insurance. I wanted for everyday people in the city of Green Bay to feel like they could be equipped with language and approaches and communities that would help them have difficult conversations and be aware of how to, Really create spaces of belonging and that the college would be at the epicenter of that.
Yeah, and the bell hook story in and of itself is just so incredible because she ended up coming to campus and becoming really good friends with Kurt, which is in and of itself, just incredible because Kurt and Cassandra were always quarreling about their views. And Kurt was a little bit more conservative and Cassandra was, very into Women's and Gender Studies and a very strong feminist and Kurt befriended Bell Hooks and hung out with her on occasion. It was just this incredible story all around.
How did you get from there to becoming the provost at Ohio Wesleyan? So part of what I discovered in starting that center is that It was really empowering to be a builder. I've always wanted to be a builder and a starter of things. But that one of the ways to transform lives at a different level was actually to move out of the classroom, which I had a little bit of grief about.
And people were like, you can never leave the classroom. And I felt like I was interested in making change on a different. more sustainable scale. So I moved from that role to being the interim assistant provost or vice president for academic affairs at St. Norbert. And then right as the pandemic was starting, I was hired on at Ohio Wesleyan.
And what you have done there for the last, is it four years as you're going? It's four years. Yeah, I'm starting my fifth year. Your fifth year, what you have done there is just incredible. I looked at some of your thought leadership that you've published about your work there, as well as your CV, and just a few things that stood out to me.
The incredible increase in transfer students. The The improvement of retention rate from first year to second year. You overhauled a gen ed curriculum for the first time in 50 years. You're the first woman provost, which is also interesting to me. And you you did so many other things. One of, One of the other ones that stood out to me , you did a program prioritization initiative, which is also really interesting because I think that's top of mind for a lot of liberal arts institutions right now is to really think about, what programs do we move forward with? How can we be more market aligned and at the same time mission aligned, right? How did you bring your love for the liberal arts into this new role as provost and how has that fueled you and everything you've done in that role? Oh, I love that question. I've been honored to work with amazing people.
People say that, if you ever get anything big done in terms of change, people call it change management, but it's change leadership, which is really the new role of the provost. The provost is no longer a make sure the trains run on time kind of job. And if somebody is in the role in that way It's really doing a detriment to the institution.
I feel really privileged to have been working with all along, amazing people to help get these initiatives done. And I'll talk about that a little bit. I joked that I would have a special button called COVID Provost because I began in July of 2020, both with the murder of George Floyd and the height of the pandemic.
It was a time when people really thought we might die, right? People were dying and we thought we would die. And so how could we manage with a great amount of grief and stress that I was experiencing through zoom. I did not actually see faculty in person at large gatherings until May of 2021.
So I led the entire academic year as a brand new provost behind the screen. And because of that I, in fact, I remember one of my first zoom meetings as provost, the second day was students of color, especially talking about their experience of being at a predominantly white institution and their grief and disappointment about things that they wanted, and that I tried to listen to and receive and then eventually. Try to act on. So I think as the first woman provost and because I have a love for the liberal arts, I started immediately by talking about how we might speak to one another and care for one another and treat one another. And for me, that's rooted in equity.
It's rooted also in hearing voices that are critical to the conversation, right? This notion of shared governance that's critical to higher ed, but it's also as the first woman leading and making hard and bold decisions and a moment that I felt really called for them, even when they were unpopular, but trying to do so with care with thoroughness.
Trying to explain why those decisions were made and then to use language around emotional intelligence and how we might care for one another was not necessarily something that I had experienced before at a public setting from provosts and I thought that was something that the moment called for but that I also felt like my role as the first woman Couldn't act.
And so one of my first faculty meetings, I think the second one I told the story of Cassandra Voss even and that what it was like to be on a campus and to have to manage grief or even death of a student. And how I understood that in COVID and in the wake of George Floyd, that people were experiencing a lot of grief and fear and distress, even in their homes, having to manage and work in an online environment.
And so I think as hard as it was, and sometimes when I go back to thinking about that historical moment, I can't believe we all lived through it if we did. I can't believe that we're where we are now, and I want to remember it in a way because I don't want to take for granted.
Today is the first day of classes at Ohio Wesleyan.
I spent the morning walking around, giving faculty high fives, asking how they are, how their summer was trying to make them feel welcomed, and, this is one of the most important days. It's the best day. And I got to do that without a mask and without fear. And so that's really critical. I did come in knowing I would have to help finish program prioritization.
It had started before me. And in fact, I know this community even wondered, would somebody choose to be provost? I it was in the job description and the position profile for Ohio Wesleyan. And I decided that as difficult as it would be, I knew it was coming for everybody. And that I would actually be on the front end of doing it and be able to grow and build from that.
That was the hope, as opposed to what I'm seeing now it's happening almost everywhere. Ohio Wesleyan was early in doing program prioritization, relatively speaking, and I actually feel like the way this community, faculty, and administrative staff did it is also a model because faculty voice was so involved in that process.
📍 Wow. Yeah. Do you think that the emphasis on difficult conversations forced into place by COVID and the crisis and the racial reckoning, but also by you were bringing that as a strength, into the role. Do you think that set you up for managing the program prioritization in a different way than you otherwise would have if you hadn't had that context to start with?
Great question. I do in that a couple of things. One, because I've always taught both literature and also race and ethnic studies or women's and gender studies, I have had years in the classroom managing difficult conversations overtly. That was part of my teaching practice. So I actually was a real practitioner.
I'm really not very afraid of difficult conversations. And because of that background which is part of why they were also interested in hiring me was my equity and belonging expertise. So I could bring to the role. I think it did make me more attuned to what helps manage a difficult conversation.
And I also. On zoom was very willing to be vulnerable and to say which I did, you don't know me. I'm brand new and you don't know whether to trust me. And I imagine that must be really difficult. And we're about to go through something really difficult together. And here are the things I hope for us.
I was in many zoom calls with people in tears and in meetings with masks on with people in tears. And having to hold the container of that for a community is really critical , Ron Heifetz, who's one of my main sort of thought partners, who's still alive at the Kennedy School who talks about leading crisis.
It's critical that you create what he calls a holding container so that people's emotions have a place to go. And then you can hopefully move on from them. Difficult conversations, I think, are also becoming something that you're emphasizing now. You just launched a new initiative around that. Are you thinking of that as a key differentiator for the institution more and more?
Yes, I love it. So we're the lead story inside higher ed today. And we decided to be an all in partner with the Constructive Dialogue Institute because I was really disappointed and horrified that all the women leaders of Ivy League institutions, however you felt about their performance in front of those hearings, that they are no longer president, right?
And we were at a moment since only 30 percent of presidents are women and take half of that are people of color in higher education institutions was so excited for that moment. And it was so disappointing to see that we know students statistically are feeling like they can't talk about difficult issues.
And so we have this polarization around students feeling uncomfortable to talk about things. whether that's in the classroom or the dorms. Meanwhile, we have roiling protests. So there is not this third space. We need to occupy this third space, which is simply equipping ourselves with some tools for managing hard conversations.
And we had our first large faculty development day with 80 faculty and some staff in the room, and it was a five hour training with the Constructive Dialogue Institute. And the last hour we were putting these skills into practice, and people were stunned at how hard it is. It is very hard to manage people openly arguing, disagreeing, having it get heated, and knowing how to bring that community back together.
Manage it in some kind of sustained way and then close so that people return to the classroom and feel like it's a productive space. And I said in Inside Higher Ed as well and in the press release that I believe we can lead in terms of democracy and this is what local arts colleges do best. They actually equip students to not only be nimble thinkers and moral actors, but we can't actually have a thriving democracy if people want to fight every time they disagree. I even wonder if this feeling that both of us had when we first encountered the liberal arts setting around, this is what education looks like had something to do with that idea of we get to have difficult conversations here in a healthy way.
And if it needs to be really front and center in any liberal arts institution, if not all of higher education going forward as a key differentiator versus true, like skills based education that just really ties to career outcomes and earning potential, which is a big thing. a big direction that the industry is going in, right?
I love what you're saying. And part of private or independent higher education, which many liberal arts colleges are independent higher education institutions, I think they are the jewel in the crown of American higher education. They're often , like you, Suzan, are the perfect example, when I've had international students come into the classroom, they're like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know this is what it was like.
They're emulated globally frequently because the outcomes are so profound. And so, to me, it is actually going to really devastate democracy. If we can't figure out ways to sustain these kinds of liberal arts colleges, which are the best in education, I think that the U S offers and the idea that, It's really hard to be a laboratory.
I call us an exquisite teaching laboratory, but a laboratory for practicing difficult conversations, unless you both have the tools, the space, the commitment and the mission to do it. And it's, many institutions just have other priorities. Yeah. As you think through some of those key initiatives that you've led, you've made change effectively and incredibly fast, has there always been buy in?
Has it always been easy because you set up this tone at the very beginning about empathy and difficult conversations being welcomed? Or have there been hurdles? And if so, how have you navigated those? There have been extraordinary hurdles. And at moments, I would say in every big initiative that I've either overseen or worked on with another vice president like the student success or transfer work, there have been moments in which I thought it might fail.
And to speak very honestly about that like the full faculty handbook revision. Was another one of those moments, which feels sounds like the most unsexy sort of large change initiative. I joke that people can read the faculty handbook if they want really good bedtime reading and insomnia.
But faculty handbooks are guidebooks for life right policies off of poetry is in policies. I work with an executive coach who has companioned me on this journey and been essential. And I chose one in part because I knew I was entering in profound crisis at this institution. And he, Steve Titus said, academic search has been essential.
But he said to me, for instance, in the faculty handbook revision he said, can you find poetry and policy? Because your literature scholar and teacher by training. So I do think that People have to know. In fact, I think a lot of times there's so much fear up front because they imagine failure at the end as opposed to success and the success has Dependent on many different things.
Heavy, heavy consultation, the things you would expect, consultation, transparency, or in the case, having an amazing team in my office. So there was a project manager for the handbook. Faculty member and a family group who really led general education in terms of its content. It was a profound revision.
Or something like the transfer process or student success. It took people believing in it, it took accountability, it took support, and it did take difficult conversations in the nadir or the most difficult moments when the initiative seemed like, okay, this is going to be really hard.
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to ask about some of that pushback and I'm sure you have empathy to for the pushback that you received or that came out. Was it around speed? Was it around the actual policies? And how can you create win wins and build bridges across opposing views that have some legitimacy on all sides?
Both speed and content. I'm trying to think which of these things I can talk about. So let's say transfer students, right? We have historically and more selective liberal arts colleges, frequently around the top 100 have had , less interest in cultivating and recruiting very robust transfer student pools and relationships with community colleges.
And It's often the systems and the policies that make it more difficult for students to transfer from a community college. First of all, how could we work on that? How could faculty and faculty were really helpful and amazing have these agreements for each major, right? We had a few and we built out to 18.
So that students could quickly see a path through a major and then working with the VP for enrollment, he really raised the question, what if we could do free tuition. And what would it mean for us to really create a culture of welcome and belonging for transfer students? So this fall we have 42 transfer students when we've almost always had under 10. We have had a few spike years but We have had a few spike years but This is the largest class ever, and they're coming from, Columbus State Community College, and they're so excited to feel like they get to have a liberal arts experience we have a signature experience that has endowed money that they can use to do something experiential and profound, perhaps they're able to play sports, they get to be a part of this beautiful place and they get to be a part of our small and very high touch mentor forward community.
And so they too will get to have a change your life experience at Ohio Wesleyan. Amazing. You have written about administrative joy and in those articles that I've seen, you definitely acknowledged how hard it is to be a higher ed administrator at this time. So my question about, has it always been easy was of course rhetorical one, but what, how do you take care of yourself and how do you make sure that joy stays in the work for yourself and teams that you work with?
And. What advice would you give someone who's either on a cabinet right now or wants to be on one in terms of just retaining some of that joy and some of that mission focus that initially got us into this work? I'll tell you, writing that opinion editorial, the op ed Friends at Higher Ed called Administrative Joy.
I wrote it with one of my closest friends, Jay Roberts, who's the provost at Warren Wilson College. And we have what we call Dean's Club, which is part of how I. Maintain my administrative joy. We speak every Saturday morning at 8 a. m. for an hour. We have for four years, almost every Saturday. We both started as provost in COVID and we've known each other the bulk of our lives, but we actually talked through this article and it was a little hard to write because we thought people would see it as ridiculous.
I had the privilege of doing the Harvard Institute for Educational Management. Seminar two years ago and someone talked about joy and some people in the room got really angry and they said, you can't feel joy because right now higher ed is in such crisis. It's such a dumpster fire. As people now say, you're not allowed to feel joy.
That actually was a little cost stir. So I decided to create a lunch table conversation called administrative joy. And I stood up and there were about 80 people by, vice presidents from across the country in different roles. And I said, if anybody wants to talk about administrative joy, you can have lunch with me today.
And a provost at a very prestigious liberal arts college said to me as we were walking to lunch, Karlyn, don't you think joy is just too high a bar? And that, and I said, So first of all, after I recovered from my shock, I said, Can I quote you in an op ed? Because I already knew I was going to write about it.
Because it hit such a nerve, even at that higher ed institute. We were two weeks really in person talking about higher ed challenges. I was like, this is hitting a nerve, we have to write about it. So part of the way I already mentioned friendships and community, I rely on that so deeply. I have a cadre of provost friends, especially where it's the biggest role and I can strategize with them and they're there for me.
The other is my executive coach, which I've already mentioned. I can't imagine having done this without being able to have somebody who again is a holding container for these challenges and you can create that. I know some people obviously, there are ways, different ways to do that.
So today I very purposely blocked off this morning at the start of classes to walk around. And to see students going to class and to see several of them lost and to say, Hey, can I help you find your way? I had a faculty member say, I'm still feel after all these years. I still feel a little jittery.
And I said, when you don't, it's time to retire. So these moments where. Jay and I think about joy as a barometer. It's actually an intentional practice. It's not an accident. So it's not like you feel joy if you're out of school with a billion dollar endowment and you feel no joy if you're at a school with hardly any endowment.
That's actually not how it works. It's a spiritual and intentional practice and like a barometer you can adjust it and you have to seek out the things Every day or weekly, and I found a number of them that remind you why you're doing what you're doing, and especially you have to have a lot of fortitude to not be bothered by other people's opinion about you or your leadership.
Which is also an emotional intelligence skill that takes cultivation. Yeah, this has been absolutely amazing. I know how grateful I am for you and the role you've played in my own liberal arts education, but just you're such a gift to everything in higher ed right now. And just epitome of what we need in liberal arts institutions from a leadership perspective.
And so thank you for sharing some of your world and heart with us today. And you know how much it means to me. I'm sure everyone listening will also get a lot out of it. It's been an honor. I feel so humbled. It's such a privilege to be able to be in this role. It is a privilege to be able to lead people.
And I'm an imperfect leader as we all are. But I'm so grateful to work with people who are really dedicated to students every day and it is beautiful liberal arts way. And I also can't tell you how emotional it is for me to have you as a former student. And such a you were such a good student anyway, but just to see who you've become and the human you've become and the family you have and the problems you're solving that higher ed needs to be solved.
I'm just so proud of you. And it's really an honor to be here today. /
