SEASON 3: Ep. 6 The Elegant Experiment with Hilary Link, Drew University

In this episode, Drew University President Hilary shares how she is rethinking the future of higher education through bold, entrepreneurial leadership. From launching an experimental new college designed for real-world problem solving to challenging traditional academic structures and cost models, she offers an honest look at what colleges must do to stay relevant and sustainable. This conversation explores risk-taking, innovation, lifelong learning, and what today’s students truly need from their education, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of leadership and learning.

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.

Website: https://vivhied.com/ 
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Transcript

 Hillary. Hello. Welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really excited for the conversation.  Me too.  to start, I'd really just love to hear a bit about your path to the presidency at Drew and, along the way, what experiences have shaped how you think about higher ed leadership?

How you think about, the responsibility that you and, other presidents in higher education hold towards students today. So my story in a way integrates all of how I think, how I live, and how I lead. I always go back to the fact that when I was an undergraduate at Stanford University, I was both an art history and Italian major.

And that is because I always had these different interests that I was constantly trying to intersect. I spent my junior year studying abroad in Florence, Italy changed my entire life. I decided that Italian literature and language and culture and art. Was really where I wanted to focus my academic interest.

So it went on, got a PhD from Yale I was focusing on the intersection of art and literature, and I mentioned that because that has really been a huge theme in how I think about, What I learn, how I lead and how I think institutions which have become incredibly siloed academic silos, silos between work and learning silos between different types of education.

I think we actually have to do a much better job of finding those intersections. So my journey took me, I was an academic administrator at Barnard College of Columbia University for many years, and then had the opportunity to move back to Italy to be the Dean of Temple University's campus in Rome.

Oh wow. Picked up my whole family, three kids under the age of 10, and we moved everyone to Rome, and that too is hugely important to how I think and how I lead because we spent six years living in someone else's culture. And, I always say there is nothing like putting yourself out of your comfort zone and into somebody else's world where you are the other to really push you to think in much more inclusive and, holistic ways.

And so those six years were really fundamental to thinking about. Bridging different experiences, different viewpoints, and different life. interests. And so I came back from Rome in 2019. I became the first female president of Allegheny College in Northwest Pennsylvania. I was there for three and a half years.

COVID hit. It was, everything that you can imagine that was hugely challenging. but when I left Allegheny, I came to Drew University. And Drew has been, in a way, just a magical place for me to land because it has been a place that is really open to rethinking all of our traditional structures. And so my background as a cross-disciplinary thinker, as someone who believes that you have to step out of your own experience to understand where other people are coming from.

All of those things have really allowed me to think differently about what higher education needs to be. and the last thing I'll say is having spent those years in Rome Temple's campus in Rome is very much based on experiential learning. Students are living in Italy, they're learning Italian, they're experiencing studying art by standing in front of these masterpieces.

As we think about where Drew is heading in higher education is heading, that experiential piece is hugely important to what students want today. Amazing. Thank you for that background. And can you talk a little bit about Drew University and the types of students that you focus on as an institution and what you most love about the mission and the impact you're able to have as an institution?

So Drew is such a wonderful institution. It was founded in 1867 as a Methodist Theological Seminary. We still have our theological school. We have a small graduate school, and we have our College of Liberal Arts. College of Liberal Arts is about 1700 traditional. Undergraduate liberal arts focused, students.

It's a very diverse campus. We have a large international population, both undergrad and also in the theological school, which serves students from all over the world. so it's a very diverse campus, but it was really, the College of Liberal Arts was really founded. Not to be an elite institution, but to educate the young people of New Jersey.

' cause that's where we're located in Madison, New Jersey, who weren't gonna go to Princeton. That was like fundamental to its, founding and it's part of what I love about Drew. It is a very authentic. place where the students are the least pretentious of any cohort of students I've ever met. They are wonderfully excited about learning.

They're excited about giving back to the community, and they are students for whom the education they're receiving is truly life changing in terms of their own mobility, social mobility, and their families. So there's just this great sense of gratitude and appreciation, and I see that even in alumni from 50 years ago.

but it is also a place where change is not a bad word, and as you probably know from speaking to many higher education leaders, change is really hard So I feel really fortunate to be in a place where. I brought a real, desire to think differently about the future, and the campus as a whole has been much more open to that than other campuses I've been associated with.

That's great to hear. I mean, you weave together liberal arts and an access and that non pretentiousness that is I think, deeply rooted in many campuses like Drew, that is so valuable. it's a model that is so impactful and transformative and yet it's under threat and you are already kind of going there, right, in terms of the change that is necessary to make it sustainable.

so we are focused this season on entrepreneurial leadership and. Risk taking and, managing that uncertainty, as an institution and making sustainability kind of a big focus, but also for students and what they need from these institutions. So can you talk a little bit about, what leading entrepreneurially means to you and how you are anchoring that in what students need right now from their college experience?

It's such a great question and I love how you have framed it in the season, but also in this episode. so I have always thought of myself as an entrepreneur, who ended up in higher education. And as I said before, as you know, it's really hard to be truly entrepreneurial at the highest levels in higher education institutions that.

Have existed for hundreds of years, are very wedded to tradition and the structures that they have always had. One of my colleagues likes to joke, we still wear the medieval robes that, you know, universities were founded with.  Being entrepreneurial and leading higher education are not necessarily two things that come together often.

So that's partly why I am so excited to be at Drew. To me, this is a moment of true tumult and change and crisis in the higher education sector. And as you note, particularly the smaller, private, many liberal arts institutions like Drew, and I think of us as being representative of many, many, many similar institutions.

We don't have the endowments of the wealthier, bigger institutions. We're not publicly funded, so we don't have necessarily right as much support from state funding. We are also not elite in the sense that, we're not as wedded to how things have to always be. And because we are more existentially challenged in this moment because of demographic decline and real questioning over the cost and the ROI.

We actually have that real sweet spot of opportunity to be super entrepreneurial. that's a great mindset from which to lead. And I really appreciate the candor too about the existential challenges that exist. I think there's a lot of denial happening. The presidential level and, within boards and cabinets.

and that's why I said like we have done a lot of change management, thought leadership and just working to bring our community along, because change is hard. If you don't have to change, it is so much easier not to. But institutions like Drew do have to change because again, the structures that sustained all of us throughout the late 19th century, 20th century.

All of the circumstances have changed politically. Things have changed financially, things have changed demographically, things have changed. so there is a need to rethink everything now. The reality is we were founded in 1867. We're not gonna get rid of the amazing things, the history that Drew has always given, however.

We came to, what I keep saying is a somewhat elegant solution, which is to sustain the core of our operations, the three schools that I mentioned, theological school, graduate school, and college of liberal arts. Our board got behind this, and this is actually one of the most exciting parts. This past November, we launched a brand new college at Drew, which is really meant to be an experimental.

Entrepreneurial space and the way that we did that with the full support of the board is it doesn't have the same shared governance structure. Okay. It is not meant to have the regular curriculum committee where, you know, if we try to do something radically different.  and what was great about this is we kind of presented to the board look Drew as traditional and wedded to what it has always been as it is.

Drew has actually always been about creating new opportunities to address things that change. Being founded as a, theological seminary when it was, founded by itinerant preachers who thought, well, teaching people just men just in a church is not the way to do it. So they created a whole new way of doing it at Drew.

we started the College of Liberal Arts because they realized there was a need for an institution that was not an elite like Drew. So we founded that in 1929. Then they founded a small graduate program because they realized there was a desire for that. So we really framed it for the board as this is now the next chapter of saying what is the world asking for?

What are students wanting? And we have an opportunity to create a fourth school that allows us to figure that out. So again, we don't have the governance issues, we don't have the tenure issues, we don't have the curricular issues. So we have freed ourselves to create this entrepreneurial space where we can invite partners and tech partners, thought partners, and really work to iterate and prototype what the future of higher education for small liberal arts colleges can be.

I am sure that's inspiring to many who are listening because removing those constraints, I mean, there's a good reason shared governance exists, but it's also going to maybe decrease entrepreneurial, capability through, slowing things down, maybe decreasing risk tolerance, putting sort of very traditional, research method constraints on decision making, so.

I think a lot of institutions would love to do something similar.    I love also how you're tying what we call brand anthropology, where you're really looking back and you're asking what has this always looked like over history of the institution? And, we could bring something that has always been there into the future and root ourselves in that.

Like we're not drastically actually changing how we, how we do things here. So what have the outcomes been so far of this new college that you founded? And would you call it a success story? Is it too early to tell? what advice would you give others who maybe wanna do something similar at their institutions?

So, I mean, lemme explain first, there's a couple things that you said that I'm like, oh, I have to respond to that so we did this for a variety of reasons. One is that over the last two years, because when I got to Drew, I thought. if we do nothing, we are not going to survive and thrive into the future.

So we took a very honest look and we said. Where does education generally? I actually am not a fan of the term higher education because I think it sets a hierarchy that is not helpful to the vast majority of our society. But anyway, where does education need to go? The world is changing so fast. What's it gonna look like in five years, 10 years, et cetera?

So we kind of set that out for ourselves. And I spent about 18 months talking to every entrepreneurial leader I could find outside of higher ed, but also in education. And I had some of the most fascinating conversations, including, and I'll just cite one of them, but there are many. There's someone named Clark Gilbert, who, was for many years the president of BYU Idaho.

he's now the president of BYU Pathway worldwide, but he's also the CEO of the DESE News. he has a whole theory that I just became enamored with of dual transformation,  That. If you're gonna create something totally new, you have to do it in a separate space because the pull of the traditional model is so strong that if you don't create something totally separate.

It's going to suck it back in. That was so inspirational to me, and that's really what got us to the space of we have to create a separate entity because people say, well, why didn't you just create a new program or a new major? We had to keep this protected and separate while we do the iterating and prototyping.

Yes, so is it a success? So we literally launched this in November. And we spent the rest of the fall semester, recruiting or really just seeing the interest among current drew students who wanted to be part of the first prototype and help us design the future of education.

So for the spring semester in 2026, we have nine students, one faculty member, and we're three weeks in, so we keep joking. As of right now, it's a huge success. but we will see, so they are doing an eight. Credit intensive experience, the nine of them with this faculty member, and the model of the new experimental college is individualized pathways.

Are based on complex problem solving, applied learning, so pulling in real world experience using AI and technology, but really driven by that human mentoring. Piece. And so that is the experiment we are running as I speak to you. and at the end of the semester, those nine students will have the option of either saying, well, that was interesting, but I actually wanna go back to the College of Liberal Arts or saying This has.

Absolutely met what I have been looking for, and I'm gonna do my next two or four semesters because the cohort has sophomores and juniors working on this model. so we are literally in the process of launching this. Now is there some resistance across campus? Of course, but what's really helpful is that we are.

Protecting the core because to me, part of the risk taking that we were allowed to do was because we said we're not gonna take down the whole 160 year enterprise to do these experiments, which if we are truly being like a startup and entrepreneurial, some of them will fail. We didn't wanna risk the institution, so we're keeping it separate as we work through figuring out what works and what doesn't.

It's truly an experiment, which is another integral competency that an entrepreneurial thinker is going to bring. That experimentation. And I love that. If you look ahead and you assume this is gonna be a success or you're gonna run other experiments and it's something is gonna really succeed and make a big impact And you might even integrate things back into sort of the main operations of Drew, once they become successes. What do you hope ultimately, a student that has gone through that experience will say five to 10 years from now about how their experience at Drew was truly transformational and impactful and they couldn't have gotten it anywhere else.

You know, what would you hope for them to point to, and how it shaped their lives and their careers? So part of the reason why I love that question is that. What we are trying to do, and this gets back to my, like, I wanna get away from the immediate association that higher education means from the ages of 18 to 22 or 24.

I no longer think that structure of you go to college for four years and then you go off and have a career. I don't think it works in today's changing world because industries are becoming obsolete. Technology is changing almost by the week. we have no way to predict what careers or jobs we're preparing students for.

So part of what we are also doing as we rethink what education looks like is say it shouldn't be that you do K through 12 and then four years of college, it should actually be a 60 plus year. Journey. And so your question of in five or 10 years, if we are successful, what I hope students say is, oh, I'm actually still popping back in and out at Drew University as I upscale, or I rethink new career opportunities, or My passions take me in different ways.

One of the other things that we're really working to shift the mindset on is that. You do K through 12, you do college, maybe you do graduate work, and then you do career. The world is not like that anymore. And so we are trying to really create this whole connected ecosystem. One of the other, very entrepreneurial things that we are doing simultaneously.

We have a partnership with Alpha School out of Austin, Texas, where . We're their first ever higher ed partner, but we're creating, it's not an alpha school, it's called the Drew School, which is powered by their two hour learning, which is their ai educational. And so part of the reason we're doing that is that we wanna create this true, you know, K to gray, we wanna actually do that and make Drew a place where from the time you're in kindergarten until you're 80 or 90 or you know, now they keep claiming people are living into their hundreds and a hundred and twenties.

Drew will be the place that you will continue to move in and out of. What a great vision. That lifelong learning vision, and I don't know if that's a term that you like or dislike, it's, maybe the industry standard, is so front and center, I think for many institutions and yet. Actually making it happen and creating the infrastructure for people to pop back in and out, I think is not realized.

And it sounds like Drew is actually taking steps to, create new governance structures and new learning experiences that are turning that into reality, more so than maybe the average institution. So that's really inspiring to hear too. you know, it's so interesting because. AI in education is something everyone talks about nonstop, right?

And there's a lot of fear and we often think about it in a couple different ways. Like how is it impacting you know, the experience of students in the classroom and then how are we using it operationally? To me though, AI, there is an incredible power, which is that it enables this kind of. Connected learning, whether it's remote in person, et cetera, across generations and across disciplines, that I think that is a huge potentiality that AI offers us, that we all haven't fully realized.

So more room for experimentation as the technology matures too, and it gets easier to make those connections and connect student, experiences and educational needs is so exciting. as you think about students and the risks that we need to take on their behalf. To allow them to have meaningful lives, fulfilling careers, high earning potential, allow them to re-skill and upskill throughout their lifespans.

What are you thinking about in terms of just concrete risks that institutions need to take? I mean, decoupling governance structure I think is a risk and something that you're doing actively, but what else comes to mind? So I think the cost issue in higher education is probably the biggest risk right now.

private institutions, even though the reality is the actual cost for many students is far, far, far below what the sticker price is. But even just seeing the cost. Immediately, even mentally makes college not accessible or inviting to huge portions of our country, our world. but it also really then begs the question of is this a good investment?

And. It's become an even bigger question because in the last two years we've seen so much evidence and research of the fact that it is often in this phase where everyone's trying to figure out how do we use ai, how do we use it to be more effective, more efficient, et cetera, entry level positions. Are being paused or frozen or going away, and we are seeing that as a very real concern from young people.

I also say this as a mother of a graduating senior from college, and it's a really hard world right now. The other thing I would say is that. It's a hard world for these younger generations, not just because there may not be entry level jobs out there. Because the world is really complicated and hard and messy right now.

And so to me, we have an obligation not to continue doing things as we've always done them, because that's how we all were trained. That's what we've come to expect. But to really step back and say. What does this generation, gen Z, gen alpha, that's coming up behind them, what are they telling us they really need and want?

And what's so interesting is, you know, when, when we had these nine students raise their hand and say, yes, I wanna be part of this new, model, what they really were saying to us is, I wanna be doing while I'm learning. I don't wanna. Get my education and then go off and work. I wanna solve big problems.

I'm really worried about climate. I'm really worried about, you know, the next pandemic. I'm really worried about water sources. They want to be actively involved in being part of the solutions, even at age 18 or 20 or whatever it is. And so I think we in education have the responsibility to do is say what structures that currently exist are actually preventing students from having those integrated, opportunities and learning trajectories.

And then think, what do we have the power to do to facilitate that kind of learning? I love that. That's extremely timely. And I think you already tied into maybe what I was gonna ask you about too, which is, you know, for a Drew graduate, what is sort of top of mind right now and what kind of genuine opportunities do you see to improve their experiences or outcomes?

It sounds like really critically examining the cost structure, the experimental learning opportunities to make them more ready for jobs that are not as easy to replace by ai. And I guess, you know, just hearing you talk, it's really inspiring because you have a, very clear vision and you are able to take that vision into a traditional university or college context and, take actual steps towards it.

And so when you think about others listening who are presidents or provosts or at a VP level, they might think, oh, that's just not possible at my institution. who gave you permission to lead so boldly? I mean. Do they need permission? Do they need to give themselves permission?

What kind of advice would you give someone who's listening and thinking, I wish I could do that, but who feels that they can't? Gosh, that's such a great framing of the question. Who gives you permission? Right. I think people who know me would say I've always lived my life boldly. in my mid forties picking up and moving husband and three young children to a new country where we didn't know anybody in the city of Rome and rebuilding our lives.

Right? But I have always believed that, you have to think things through, but not so much that you are. Not able to make those changes because you could talk yourself out of any decision or risk. I think fundamentally it comes down to two things. Give yourself the permission to think boldly.

I mentioned earlier that I kind of put myself on this crazy 18 month journey of talking to probably 75 different people. nobody gave me the permission to do it. I decided I needed to learn. I needed to understand how disruptive innovators think and how they act, and. I didn't know I have been thinking about these issues since I was a graduate student .

And I actually think part of what we're trying to do at Drew Mirrors what the renaissance thinkers that I studied all throughout my academic career, it's kind of what they did. They didn't all go to universities. They learned, they taught themselves. They learned throughout their lives, they learned through apprenticeships.

I've kind of pulled in all of my experiences and thinking, and then I really gave myself permission just to learn. And every conversation did two things for me. One, the people I spoke to, were so generous with saying. You should talk to these two people, because that then led me to talk to people.

I never would've had the connections too. But each person kind of passed along. To other people. So part of it, it gave me those connections, but every conversation would kind of help solidify a tiny bit my thinking. and so while I had these vague ideas, when I started, every conversation led me to this place where it really became a true vision and.

Even though some of the people I spoke to had nothing to do with education, the lessons they shared about change, management, implementing visions, it all became super helpful. So I would say to anyone who's thinking, gosh, I wanna make change, but I don't know how. Start by having a conversation. I am personally happy to speak to anybody who would like to start on a journey because we say all the time, look, we are doing this at Drew, but we're not just doing it for Drew.

We're trying to figure this out for that, band of our sector. The smaller private institutions that have such a positive impact on students and yet. They're not as well endowed. They are not as well resourced, and they are truly at risk of not surviving long into the future.

You're trying to create like a proof of concept and a method that others can replicate. I mean, that's so amazing. I'm definitely hooked and I wanna follow along closely. ' cause I think everything that I've heard today, it's just so aligned with where the labor market is gonna go, what students are gonna need, the fiscal realities and the kind of concerns about sustainability.

All of that, you're wide-eyed about. so it's just really, really cool what you're doing and it's been an honor to hear from you directly, and, and to get you to share it with such candor and, and vulnerability. And I'm also hearing true curiosity from you still. . You know, what's possible, what are other people doing?

And I think thinking of entrepreneurial leadership that curiosity should never be forgotten about as well. as we're trying to build this model of long life learning, right? I am a constant learner. I mean, that's part of my, living overseas, engaging with people from radically different backgrounds.

Has given me this real sense of curiosity, and. I make decisions in a very iterative approach, and you only get that by engaging with lots of different people and failing. I'm a big believer that you do have to fail to figure out what works. the one last thing I would say though that I think is so important as people are thinking about, well, what kind of.

Innovative entrepreneurial change can I bring to my institution? What's super cool about this, and I give all credit to our, chief academic Officer so we have been building, working in kind of widening circles across campus. We started with a design charette. He's been working with groups on different ideas, and this is all coalesced, but.

At the design Charette, they started with four concepts that they thought really needed to ground anything that we did. and those were complex problem solving, applied creativity, building resilience for students, and then some dedication to a common good. But what was super cool is he went back to Drew's mission statement.

I found all of those phrases in there. Wow. Wow. And so what's so cool is to say, look, 10 years from now, a year from now, who even knows, given how fast things are moving, we may look very different. The space may look different, the modality, the structures may look different, but you have to hold on to those.

Fundamental values and mission. And so that's what I would say, like take. The structure that we are so wedded out of it and think, how do we do those values and those missions in a world that we can't even imagine yet? I think for anyone listening who's looking for inspiration, at least for me, that opens up a whole new way of thinking about change.

Absolutely, you're breaking out of that limiting belief system immediately by framing the question that way. And I caught how you said, life long learning, as long life learning, and I thought that was clever and I wanted to acknowledge it. So, higher education, you're questioning that term. I hear that.

And then lifelong learning to long life learning. I appreciate all these tiny little reframes that you've offered throughout the conversation too. Well, as a literature scholar, language matters. And so I think about these things quite a lot. Yeah, it shows. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today and for all the great insights that you shared.

I know this will be a really valuable conversation for people to have to listen to and go back to as they're on their own leadership journeys. Well, again, thank you so much for having me. Always happy to talk about this. Crisis is an opportunity and we've just decided to embrace the fun and the opportunity and the reinvention.

And so, I'm always happy to talk about it. Thank you so much.