SEASON 3: Ep. 11 Inside a First Year as College President with Brooke Barnett, Rollins College

In this conversation, Brooke Barnett reflects on her path to the presidency of Rollins College, sharing how an unplanned career that began in journalism evolved into academic leadership through a passion for storytelling, teaching, and amplifying diverse voices. She discusses her first year in the role as a time of deep listening, relationship-building, and community immersion, emphasizing the importance of hospitality and connection. Barnett also makes a strong case for the value of liberal arts education in today’s rapidly changing world, arguing it equips students with critical thinking, adaptability, and ethical reasoning needed in an AI-driven future. She highlights Rollins’ distinctive approach, blending a residential campus experience with access to the cultural and economic opportunities of the Orlando area, and introduces innovative initiatives like the “innovation triangle” that connect education, leadership development, and community impact. Throughout, she underscores the importance of balancing mission and financial sustainability in higher education and encourages aspiring leaders to stay curious, listen deeply, and lead with humility.

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/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/viv-higher-ed/

Transcript

 

Brooke, it is so nice to have you on the show. How are you today? I'm great. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. You are days away from your inauguration as president of Rollins College, right?

It's coming up this weekend. It is coming up and it's exciting. It's, daunting. it's like all these people you love from all your stages of life coming into, town for an event where you won't have time to talk to any of them. It's like a wedding. It's exactly like a wedding, Suzanne.

That's exactly right. but it is wonderful and it is a moment, Maybe a little bit more like being president at your own funeral, honestly. And you get to hear all the great stories and spend time with people, but it does have a little bit of a eulogy feel to it, I'm afraid. That's funny. so tell us about your path to becoming president at Rollins.

What does that look like? I know you have a background in journalism and storytelling. How did that shape your journey? So curious to hear about it. Sure. So probably like a lot of presidents, I don't know, maybe some people grew up thinking they were gonna be a college president. I surely did not. I've had an incredible and serendipitous career and I've planned for very little of it, and it's been a great joy.

So even the, the roles that I have been in, I guess I really wouldn't have anticipated or planned for any of them. I did begin my career working as a journalist. I was a documentary filmmaker. I. Created and hosted an interview show. I worked for a tiny bit in print journalism as well. And so that was wonderful and lovely.

And I did that work because I thought it was a way to amplify voices of, broad communities their voices weren't amplified the way. They might have liked and those stories weren't known in broader publics.

And I also loved, storytelling truthfully and doing that in multiple different modalities and thinking about the human experience and how you make sense of the world through that. Loved it. I was working as a public television news director on a university campus. That's where the public television station was housed.

And I started teaching and doing scholarship with a group of, faculty members and graduate students, and fell in love with teaching and doing scholarship. So I applied for a Knight Foundation Fellowship that. Was a funding mechanism for doctoral studies, for working journalists. Already had a master's degree, and so that's how I ended up in faculty life and then ended up moving into different administrative positions as a reluctant leader.

Almost every single time would invariably see something in me that I did not see in myself and say, Hey, you should do this. And so, I don't know. It takes me a while to sometimes cotton onto these things, and that was definitely the case in my career. I applied for one job as a college president.

It was this job, so I wasn't really sitting around saying, I definitely need to be a college president. Although I was honored that people saw that in me throughout my career and saw leadership potential. But I'd known about Rollins College for a long time and just found it to be a really special place.

And so this was the one for me, and I was lucky to be able to be in the job. That is really cool. And you've now been in the job for this academic year. I assume you started sometime over the summer, so it's been nine months or so yeah. what's that first year been like? it's, been wonderful.

I had been told in the interview process and experienced this a little, knowing some people who worked here that Rollins was a really warm and wonderful community, and it has surpassed my expectations. So it's been an incredibly welcoming community to join. That's been true of Winter Park in central Florida and broad Orlando, where.

Rollins is, and so that's been great. I've had broad listening tour and so in conversation with, faculty and staff and alums and students and community members all hearing about what's really great at Rollins and things they'd like to see improve and opportunities for that improvement. So I'm learning a lot and that's really what the first year has been.

Some community building, some learning. Getting to know an amazing cabinet team that, I was lucky to inherit and really figuring out the things that we wanna do together. So that's what the beginning part of the year has been, and it's been really wonderful. We made an, intentional plan. My husband is a faculty member here at Rollins.

He's in the anthropology department, and we're empty nesters and we are living in this beautiful home on campus. And this is our first time living on campus. We've been in all kinds of different roles at universities, but have never lived on campus before. So we wanted to invite every faculty and staff and student to our home, and we did so this year.

And that was a really wonderful opportunity to get to know people in our house.   we really believe in, in hospitality and breaking bread and being in community. And we had a lot of opportunities to do that in addition to. Foundation leaders and community leaders and alums and lots of other people, entertaining in our home has been a real bright spot and we've enjoyed that.

And it means that when I walk across campus, people say hi, and I've seen them in spaces. And so I am really starting to feel like this is my community and this is my home and I'm excited to do some things together. That's awesome and, just imagining learning everyone's name in and of itself, you know, because I'm assuming it's a community like many small liberal arts colleges are, where that's really important that you know people and then you get to say hi to everyone on campus.

That's really cool. Tell us a little bit about Winter Park. What makes it special as a location for a college? Oh, I think we had a little bit of that, kind of the Goldilock situation, just right. If you think about the three little Bears story, We have a, beautiful residential campus and you know, we have a three year residency requirement for our undergraduate students who are in the College of Liberal Arts.

And we also have a number of commuter students who live in the surrounding areas with their families and come to campus for that program. And then we have undergraduate and graduate students in, something called the Hamilton Holt School, which is attending to adult learners, which we've been doing for decades here.

And then also, a suite of MBA programs in graduate business education. So all of that together, is really interesting because you have, again, that residential campus. We're in the very charming winter park just north of Orlando, which is, almost like New England has come down to Florida. So founded by a bunch of people from New England who created a lot of the feel and look of New England, here in Florida.

And it's just this really amazing, charming City. and we also get the benefits of the metropolitan area of Orlando. So for students in this residential liberal arts undergraduate, for example, a lot of times those things happen in places that are kind of in remote areas, in rural areas, and we have the benefit of that feel of the campus.

But a block off, and you're on a street called Park Avenue that has amazing restaurants and shops. culture and we have an on-campus art museum, but there's incredible art and culture in Winter Park and two really stellar other museums, but also in Orlando, big sports sector and scene in Orlando.

Obviously hospitality is another big area and the arts and culture that I just described, so we have amazing. Theater and art and culture and museum on our campus. All of those things in Winter Park and all of those things in Orlando. So I think it's just right in that perfect kind of combination for our students.

The Goldilocks zone. They can, they can experience all three, even in the same day. Well, how are you thinking about the role of the liberal arts right now in this moment where we have, demographic shifts, headwinds coming from the international and domestic space families, questioning the ROI of higher education and the emerging role of ai, which may or may not push students back toward the liberal arts.

You know, that's kind of TBD. how do you think about the liberal arts and, and liberal arts at Rollins in a context of the current moment? I'll take that in all three ways. I'm bullish on higher ed, I'm bullish on liberal arts is a way of doing higher ed and Rollins specific way of doing the liberal arts.

So all of it, I love it. I do think the liberal arts has a public relations issue and a public perception issue and not an evidence issue. We have tremendous evidence, about the value of the liberal arts, so the enduring values and the value of a liberal arts education. All of that's really clear.

And so the liberal arts, foster, independent, critical thinking, intellectual flexibility, ethical reasoning, they prepare students for these evolving workplaces and careers rather than a particular job. So the liberal arts is really fueling right now for us at Rollins across all of our programs, undergraduate and graduate, the ability to grapple with practical and ideological and ethical and environmental impacts of ai.

Thinking about durable skills that you learn here at Rollins across all those programs. They're gonna allow students to navigate and succeed in an AI world. So that's discernment and agility and problem solving and creativity, and the ability to think deeply. We're gonna double down here on what makes us human and where you're seeing AI doing functions and picking off particular jobs.

It's in the more narrow functions, They're done quite well by ai, but they're a whole host of human discernment and judgment and other things that we're gonna need human beings to do and to do really well. So, working alongside with, and even critiquing AI and other emerging technologies, that's a skillset that somebody, working in a deeply grounded liberal arts environment is gonna do quite well.

If I think about my own experience in college, when I went to college. There were no smartphones. we went to a computer lab after handwriting a paper that we then typed into a computer. We didn't write and think and process on a computer. So those two technological advancements, were post my college experience Really?

And I I studied in a liberal arts environment. And studied literature and communication and theater. And I've adapted in all kinds of ways to new technologies and other societal changes because I could transfer knowledge from one context to the other. And I really learned to think and how to apply that.

And so I think the liberal arts student is the student who can say, I don't know how to do that yet. But I'm gonna figure it out. And they do. And I guess I wanna, celebrate how that plays out for us in all kinds of ways. So for our business graduate program, they uhanswered a call.

NASA had a, a patent remix competition. Take one of NASA's patents for one thing and apply it to a new thing. And a Rollins, MBA team of six students won that competition nationally. There were many things that made that group, a strong team, but they had all these liberal arts and varied undergraduate degree backgrounds that came into play as they thought about this problem and taking a technology meant for one thing and turning into something new.

It's a perfect illustration of interdisciplinary thinking, of drawing on those different backgrounds to solve problems. Gosh, we've got a lot of problems to solve and a lot of creative approaches that are gonna be needed to move forward as a society on multiple fronts. And I'm still betting on the liberal arts.

what at Rollins do we do particularly well? I'm really proud of the way we do the liberal arts when it comes to our gateway. This is just our framework for thinking about. The high impact practices that we know are best for student learning. They've been studied in all kinds of context. How we deliver those through this framework, through curricular experiences and co-curricular experiences, experiential education.

It's all to what end. So what is your purpose and how are you gonna do meaningful and great work to make things better in the world? And we take that really seriously and I'm proud of that. on another end, we really think about location and how we think about the liberal arts. And so we are on a series of lakes.

On the campus itself and also in Winter Park. So we do a lot of really creative and interesting work with freshwater. You might imagine that with environmental studies, which we do, we have one of the oldest environmental studies programs in the southeast. We also do it in dance, in literature, in music, in anthropology.

So how are you thinking about freshwater as an topic in an area in multiple disciplines? Because we're right here on a series of lake systems. Let's take advantage of that. Obviously you can also excel in, sports where people can excel outdoors in a place like Florida, including, when you're on a lake, you have great opportunities for sailing and crew that you might not have at other campuses.

So we do really try to kind of think about the location we're in and that intersection and what that means for topical courses even within the liberal arts that might really draw into that location. What I love about your answer and the bullishness that you expressed about the liberal arts within this current context is it kind of breaks that maybe false paradigm between mission and market that we've held falsely, possibly for the past 20 or so years, right?

Where the liberal arts were sort of placed in opposition of market aligned skills that people needed to succeed in their careers and your point, maybe that's been a public relations issue all along and it hasn't been true, but they're in this current moment where skills are just gonna get outdated so, so quickly.

If, if all they are is technical, I love how you're talking about the skill sets around navigating uncertainty and reinventing yourself throughout your career and. Responding to these forces in the market that are very much linked up with the liberal arts and have been all along. So that's cool. And how you're tying in place  because it's a differentiator what you're able to give to your students based on where you're located and the problems that need to be solved in the community and in the region.

Can I pick up on a couple of things like that? I, I love the way you framed and talked about that, so I'm gonna tease out just a few pieces if possible. one is Just to say, I said that there's a PR issue and not an evidence issue globally and overall, and that's true for the value of higher education as well.

Higher education is still a very good investment for a whole host of reasons. Also, we wanna make sure that the liberal arts are the liberal arts in action, and that they're relevant and they're dynamic, right? And so it's not the classical education that began at Rollins College in 1885. It's not, and we take that really seriously and how we think about that.

And I think it is important that this is evolving and changing despite the enduring legacy of that work. So at Rolls. we've had kind of innovation and particularly pragmatic liberal arts at our core the whole time. So, uh, we were the first college in the state of Florida and in 1931, John Dewey was a famed, educator at the time.

Chaired our, kind of conference on the liberal arts. And lots of well-known educators came at to Winter Park to Rollins to have this discussion. And it moved into a more, Conversation based form of the liberal arts from the more rigid reading of the liberal arts, but also very narrow categories of it that had originated, at Rollins at the beginning.

And that evolution just has kept happening with very serious changing of the general studies and core curriculum. And I think a real dynamic and relevant change in not only pedagogical approaches, but also curricular approaches, which continues today. So even though I say it's an evidence problem, it's not an evidence problem.

It's a public relations problem. We also have to make it dynamic and we have to keep thinking about what it means in 2026 and evolve and change. And so I don't wanna make it sound like it's static. I also do wanna note that when you think of institutions that have lasted hundreds of years, those are colleges and universities.

There are many businesses that last that long. So there is something enduring and important about what we do and changing To continue to make it relevant is really important on the margin mission conversation and also liberal arts and careers. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact, we do know that liberal arts students fare well.

They fare well in jobs and in the marketplace and in salary and a whole host of things. And we still have a, a, c and u studies that are showing us that hiring managers and CEOs are looking for the skills that liberal education produces. We are a business in higher ed and we are a sector, and sometimes we function like we're neither one of those.

We're not a business like every other business. But in our nonprofit educational business at Rollins College, if we don't have a margin, we can't deliver on the mission period. And so I think we have to understand that what we're doing is making sure that we have the resources to deliver on an amazing student experience for our students, but also that we are attending to our faculty and staff who deliver on that experience.

So. We wanna have a margin to be able to deliver a high quality, seamless student experience and to be a great place to work to deliver on that initial mission. So I just refuse to see these in opposition. I think this is part and parcel of a well run organization. You wanna be financially flourishing so you can spend your time on the things that you do best.

Start faculty thinking about the classroom experience, thinking about their scholarship, which informs that experience and generates knowledge for the world. Bringing students into that scholarship and our staff members who do a whole host of things to create the student experience. Some of them directly student focusing, some of them doing marketing and communication functions so that our brand is well known and students come here, some of them attracting students here, some of them making sure the campus is beautiful inside and out.

  attending the students who are living in our residence hall. All of these things are part of that experience. And so I do think in a compromised moment, particularly in our sector where the business model is really tough, we wanna keep arguing for the ability to deliver on that mission. And we wanna be a well run organization financially so we can do so.

Yeah. I think saying that higher ed is a business is more of a taboo than it should be. Right. And um. I think you laid that out really well and maybe another conversation someday around, you know, then how do we not pass those costs down just to students? How do we make it also more affordable than it has been?

But having that margin is absolutely critical. And, and I guess that leads me to, maybe I wanna dig into a little bit. as you're nine or or 10 months in, sort of how are you bringing the faculty along and the staff along in that mindset and in feeling bullish about the liberal arts and maybe aligning with what the job market is gonna be looking for, what students are gonna need in their careers and in their lives from the experience that they're having at Rollins?

Absolutely. So thinking about, we start from a great place in higher ed in terms of. One of the best preventive measures you can have for workplace burnout is that what you do matters and it's meaningful and that box gets checked easily. I think for everybody who works at Rollins College, 'cause we know what we do matters and we understand and see within our students how it's meaningful.

When I talk about being a business it, it's an odd thing because we are a high end, desirable. thing that people are trying to access. And we also know it's a societal good that we know people need to be able to have access to who can't necessarily afford it. Yeah. And so very output.

The other business, it's different than any other business. And so, higher ed has to be thinking about both. The, ability to pay for this thing that cost money period. And also the willingness to pay and see the value in it for people who are able to pay. And we will think about both of those. And when we think about diversifying revenue streams, it's about multiple forms of revenue that can help with that experience. And so philanthropy's a big part of that. You know, you wanna raise endowments. Endowments are getting beat up a little bit right now in the, broader public understanding. They're not slush funds sitting there doing, who knows what.

Most of our endowments are providing student aid, so students have an opportunity to come to our institutions. And so endowment is important for the longevity of our institutions. And we will pay attention to that. We also need annual funds to be raised right for the budget every single year, and not put into an endowment that spends off a smaller amount in perpetuity, but a small amount every year.

and we think about philanthropy in terms of donors. We also think about philanthropy in terms of, foundations. there are lots of ways we wanna think about support that could come to the college. even, deferred gifts, right? So people who put us in their will, that's a huge gift, right?

So we have an alum, who just passed and is in her nineties, and what an amazing legacy she's leaving to her alma mater because she has had a relationship. For all of those years with us and felt that her resources that she had amassed in her lifetime post her death would benefit future students.

So. We are trying to think about the issues of affordability and access, and also frankly, having enough money that comes in to provide a good student experience. And so what you don't wanna do is balance that where all your money goes out to scholarship students to come to your institution, and there's no money left to deliver on the experience for them.

And so we really wanna stay in that space, that there are the resources to provide the experience of value. And we're also very aware of the need for scholarships. For students to be able to come and also scholarships that award students who are really academic stars and have choices and options.

That's the market we're in right now in thinking about students as well. Staying at multiple fronts at the same time and trying to, increase access while also increasing the, quality of the student experience and not seeing them as contradictory. That makes a ton of sense. I think back to, I think it was last summer that Tufts.

University, kind of followed suit with another, I think a set of Ivy, Ivy plus schools saying, you know, at this point if your family makes less than, you know, X amount of money, your attendance will be free. And I loved how they framed it around. Thanks to the generosity of generations of donors, you know, very clearly linking it to the endowment.

and I think that was an educational moment for many people to understand how is this even possible that we can provide that to students. Everybody has, you know, their own sort of sense of where they are in that continuum. I am delighted that that is happening and I think it's an important part of the sector that institutions are able to do that and those income levels for.

Some of the most well-resourced institutions, those could be $250,000 a year. Not particularly the income level. Does create an interesting moment across the rest of the continuum for places that cannot afford with their endowment to be making such offers. And what's that? It's making it an even tougher competitive landscape.

That's a really good point. Yeah. It's And great for students and I'm happy for that part about students. ultimately. Our goal is to have as many students get the best possible educational experience they can and that's gonna always be my larger goal in any role that I'm in. And yet I have a competitive spirit about having as many of those amazing students come to Rons college as possible.

I get that. Yep. No, it makes sense. And sometimes, you know, it, it's more of a PR play anyway, because it's already been like that at those institutions. I just like the. Framing around things to the generosity of generations of donors. I do wanna talk to you about, an initiative at Rollins, that I'm really curious about, and it's the innovation triangle.

Can you tell us what that is? Yeah. This is so fun. It's, Basically the lesson, I guess in some ways is try to think about how you can take existing assets and do something new and synergistic with them. And so we have, for more than a decade now, we have the amazing ALP Fond in, which is in Winter Park. It is owned by Rollins College, and the net profits from that end go directly to student scholarships. So you have every day. Before I came in here, I was talking to an Alfon scholar on the sidewalk.

Who is Phi Beta Kappa going to an amazing graduate school, has been a star all across campus. The resources from that inn have provided him a scholarship to be at the institution. We're very proud of that business model. But even if you didn't know anything about the business model, you would love the Alp Fund Inn 'cause it is a beautiful inn that is a living art museum using our contemporary art collection, the Alpine Contemporary Art Collection from our museum on campus.

So you are walking through a living art museum and a beautiful inn that has two wonderful restaurants and a spa, and then you'd find out later the bonus that all the money goes to scholarships. So that was one asset. We made it the innovation triangle by adding two more that are being built right across the street.

One is the museum I already mentioned, the Rollins Museum of Art.   We'll move to that location so people can come right out of the. Go over to this amazing free art museum and see this wonderful collection. And right beside the Rollins Museum of Art is The Rick Goings Institute for Management and Executive Leader. and it forms the third part of the triangle. This will be non-credit, executive leadership and high end business consultancy that will bring leaders from across sectors. So in the corporate space, NGOs, the military, government.

Nonprofits all here to Winter Park. They'll be eating in the local restaurants and going to the museum and being all around in Winter Park. And they'll come together for these high level sessions on things that matter most right now to, leaders across those sectors. And all of it is grounded in the liberal arts.

So it really taps into existing strengths we have with a new and expanded audience of executives. So we have some really great partnerships with organizations that will be, doing all of their executive level training for those organizations, but we will also bring people in around constructs.

So, AI readiness, what's it look like to be AI forward in your organization? How are you as a leader gonna be leading in that space? Then how do we help consult with your organization on what the readiness is and what that's gonna look like to kind of, you know, move that up as some other examples that are happening in that space that are upcoming.

One that previously happened was around executive presence. And we tapped into an improv faculty member in theater to work with executives about how do you think on your feet and how do you hold a room and how do you adjust? And that may be a stockholder meeting. If you're a Fortune 500 leader of a publicly traded company that may be with your own board.

If you have, you know, a board that you're reporting to as a leader, and that may be with your, , shareholders or, or stockholders or with your customers. So that was one that we just did, a couple that are coming up. We've been working with psychology faculty members here on the psychological and behavioral principles that are research based about giving hard feedback.

Leaders need to be able to give feedback that is sometimes difficult to their teams. So people can improve what evidence do we have from psychology about the best ways to do that so it can be received and productive at the same time. It allows a chance for some cultural humility on receiving feedback as a leader, and how you can invite that and get that in more clear and helpful ways.

And then a third example is we're doing a multi-generational family business weekend. This will be an invite only weekend that's happening here in the fall, but this is about multi-generations in one family business, not about protecting or even generating wealth. How do you think about generational wealth in terms of values, in terms of philanthropy, in terms of reinvestment in the company and evolving within a company?

And multi-generational family businesses have specific things they're working through and they often work through them within their own family, but it helps to look across families and businesses and sectors to see what you can learn. So those are some examples of what will be happening in the Rent Goings Institute.

Some of those people will be, again, staying at the end, going to the museum and then going to some educational programming, at RGI. That is amazing. And, they're so mission aligned, all three of them. , the executive training is so fascinating to me because I think it feeds into another thing that's happening where higher ed is thinking about.

50% of people who are alive today are gonna live till the age of 105. We're not gonna have the clean retirement age anymore. People are gonna need to reskill and upskill and reinvent themselves. Seems like this is gonna help you all , through like alternate revenue streams that weren't previously part of your p and l, but also be really mission aligned in keeping people coming back to Rollins and attracting new audiences later in their lives that you get to, make part of your community as well.

And really the magic fairy dust of that liberal arts grounding, which again, in an age of ai, we're seeing a renaissance around thinking about what makes us human and we have a chance to intersect that in this space. Which I think is gonna be really, really important. The magic fairy dust of a liberal arts education.

I'm gonna seal that. That's good. Well, you're in your first year of your first presidency, so let's think about others who are listening, who are maybe thinking about one day I'd like to be, where Brooke is now. What advice would you give them for their first year? You already mentioned community building and learning, but what else would you say?

Listen as much as you can as part of the learning and community building part of that, and also understand that you may have had and likely did lots of previous experiences, maybe multiple institutional context, multiple roles. to use that carefully and judiciously, right? So you're trying to figure out even what you know in the environmental landscape around higher ed broadly, and what you're learning in those spaces.

All of it is gonna be contextual to your own environments. So playbook from. One place will not translate to be a playbook from here. And also you don't wanna keep doing roles you were in before when you're in this role. So I don't want a provost as president or Dean as president. I want a president as president.

And I wanna empower the people that are in those other jobs to do a really great job. I wanna ask, hopefully good questions, be supportive, help them sort of think through things, but empower them to really do those roles. And so those are things I think that are a little bit on my mind, and I go back again to the love letter of the liberal arts.

but for me, it's about, you know, I often talk about kind of a good life. Thinking about a good life and a part of a good life is a great career. and that's important. You need to be able to do meaningful work and support your family. But if you think about it in a classical way, we thought about, you know, the good life in terms of the way philosophers thought about it is doing things that matter and emphasizing values and acting with integrity and, thinking about developing potential and changing perspective.

And it's kind of a continuous pursuit. Of wisdom and excellence and not just kind of thinking about pleasure and joy. Not that those aren't part of it. I've always thought about my career in that way as well, that I'm trying to think about this as part of a broader understanding of where can I do something that matters and is meaningful.

Where do I have talents that I can share? What do I care about? What does an organization need? And, you know, a little bit of it is the cheesy line that's true, I think, is you're kind of trying to live for the eulogy rather than the cv. So for me, I wanna, come to Rollins and I want to make a difference in a way that is helpful to this community, and we'll do that together and collectively.

But I hope that I'll be able to have some impact that will matter to the community in things that matter most to Rollins. There's a lot of humility in that, which, I love, and I think it, there is a real risk , in higher ed where people take roles at multiple institutions that they think they know higher ed so well, you know, nothing could surprise them.

And they sort of try to grab the same ideas out of their idea toolbox over and over again versus showing up kind of with that beginner's mindset and saying, I wanna learn this community and what value I can add here and how I can be transformed by this experience myself instead of just. Leading from this sort of tired set of, ideas, , makes a lot of sense.

It's important to be a novice and so although I have experience in lots of roles, I'm a novice in doing anything at Rollins. And so we ask our students all the time to be a novice and to go into a new place and to figure things out. and that's important to do as well. You know, it's hard in your fifties to pick up and try to make all new friends in a community.

It's even harder when you're the president of a, college that's in a relatively small, you know, city, right? And, and so, It's good to remember. What it feels like to always be learning and figuring things out and understanding and meeting new people and learning names and, and all those things.

I tried to give myself a break early on 'cause I'm like, there's only one of me and it doesn't take too long to figure out who I am. Although people all the time are like, are you the president? So they're figuring it out and there's a lot more, even though we're a small environment, there are many more of them than of me.

And so I'm trying to give myself a break because I want to to know people in the  community and that's important to me and that's an important value. Thank you for sharing your, wisdom and the enthusiasm that you're bringing to this role. we'll be cheering you on and Rollins, , over the coming years and, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Susan. It was lovely.