A Slice with 'Dice
A Slice with ’Dice is a weekly podcast exploring leadership, talent development, and the human side of high-performing systems. Drawing on decades of experience in gifted education and public leadership, host Corey Alderdice examines how institutions identify potential, navigate change, and create cultures where people can thrive. Each episode blends thoughtful reflection with practical insight for educators, leaders, and anyone interested in how talent and transformation intersect in real-world settings.
Episodes
169 episodes
The Most Telling New Product in Higher Education
A Facebook advertisement for a legal subscription service for college students seems like an oddly specific product—until you realize it makes perfect sense. Sometimes the newest products tell us less about the companies selling them and mor...
Seeing the Whole School (Part 1): The Work Outside Our View
Every person in a school sees something real. But no one sees the whole school alone.Corey Alderdice, a national voice in talent and transformation, opens the Seeing the Whole School series by exploring how every role in ...
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When Excellence and Opportunity Collide
Every summer, America seems to have the same argument about New York City's elite specialized high schools. But what if the real debate isn't about admissions at all—it's about asking one kind of school to serve two fundamentally different e...
College Before College (Part 9): Can Arkansas Become the National Model for Early College?
Arkansas may be emerging as one of the nation’s most ambitious laboratories for early college. Through the ACCESS Act, expanded concurrent-credit funding, a statewide goal for more students to earn associate degrees in high school, stronger ...
Coming Soon: Seeing the Whole School
Each August, schools begin again. As a new year opens, it is worth asking not only what our own work requires, but how that work connects to the responsibilities carried by others.Corey Alderdice, a national voice in talent and tr...
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Belonging Is Not an Accident (Part 4): When Belonging Became Political
Belonging may sound like one of the least controversial ideas imaginable. Yet in recent years, even the language of belonging has become politically charged in schools and institutions across the country. Why?Corey Alderdice, a na...
College Before College (Part 8): Not Faster—Fuller
Curiosity isn’t disappearing from higher education—it’s being squeezed by cost, structure, and the pressure to get it right the first time. But what if the very tools designed to accelerate students could instead give that curiosity room to ...
Cook Out, Chaos, and Why Students Need A Bigger Menu
A bizarre internet meme about Cook Out and its legendary tray menu sparks a surprisingly thoughtful reflection on schools, identity, and the environments that shape young people. What begins with the question “What if a main entrée was a sid...
College Before College (Part 7): The Economics of Acceleration
As dual enrollment and concurrent credit continue expanding across the country, public conversations often focus on what students and families save through accelerated college pathways. But beneath the promise of affordability and access sit...
From Tiger Moms to “Beta Moms”
Parenting today can feel less like raising children and more like managing a complex, always-on operating system. Between achievement pressure, emotional labor, enrichment culture, and the invisible logistics of modern family life, many pare...
College Before College (Part 6): Access Is Not the Same as Success
As dual enrollment and early college programs continue expanding across the country, educational systems often assume that academic readiness and institutional readiness are largely the same thing. But a recent
Intellectual Sparring: When Debate Skills Become Leadership Blind Spots
For many former speech and debate students, rigorous disagreement doesn’t feel hostile. It feels energizing. Collaborative. Even connective. But what happens when the communication instincts forged in competitive forensics collide with leade...
College Before College (Part 5): Talent is Wider Than Opportunity
Dual enrollment and early college programs are often associated with already high-achieving students, but some of the strongest research findings suggest acceleration may have its greatest impact on students who historically have had the lea...
The Debate Skills We Teach Are the Ones Society Is Losing
Americans still celebrate debate as a cornerstone of democracy, yet healthy disagreement feels increasingly rare in modern life. As algorithms reward outrage, certainty, and performance over curiosity and persuasion, the ability to thoughtfu...
College Before College (Part 4): What Should We Actually Measure?
As dual enrollment expands across the country, the conversation is beginning to shift from simple access and participation toward a more complicated question: how do we determine whether acceleration is truly working? A newly released resear...
How a Personal Pan Pizza Motivated a Generation to Read and Why It Still Matters
A free pizza for finishing a book may seem simple, but it was part of a larger effort to spark reading at a time when literacy was a growing national concern. Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, re...
College Before College (Part 3): The Blurring Line Between High School and College
As more students complete college-level coursework during high school, the traditional boundary between secondary education and higher education is beginning to blur. And that raises a much bigger question than simply how many credits studen...
When Good Isn’t Good Enough Anymore
Some students begin searching for something different long before anything appears “wrong” from the outside. The grades are strong, the friendships are there, and yet a growing sense of mismatch can quietly emerge between what students need ...
College Before College (Part 2): When Achievement Becomes Accumulation
Students today are accumulating more credentials, more transcript hours, and more visible markers of achievement than ever before. But as acceleration expands, an important question sits underneath the surface: are we beginning to confuse th...
The "Former Gifted Kid" Problem Starts Earlier Than You Think
Gifted students are often the ones adults worry about the least. They make the grades, meet expectations, stay productive, and appear remarkably capable. But beneath that competence, many are quietly learning how to manage pressure, conceal ...
College Before College (Part 1): How Dual Enrollment Became Mainstream
Earning college credit in high school was once viewed as a specialized opportunity for a relatively small group of students. Today, acceleration has rapidly become mainstream, reshaping expectations for students, families, schools, and highe...
This Wasn't Your Best Work
A single sentence can challenge us, motivate us, or make us feel small. The difference often comes down to trust.Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the delicate balance between candor and care...
Why Demonstrated Interest Matters More Than Ever in Selective College Admissions
As selective college admissions continues to shift, strong students and families need to understand not only how to build a strong application—but how colleges interpret genuine interest.In this jumbo-sized episode, Corey Alderdic...
Tulane Killed the ‘Why Us?’ Essay. That Matters More Than You Think.
Why did Tulane drop its “Why Tulane?” essay—and what does that tell us about where college admissions is heading? The change may seem small, but it points to a larger shift from what students say about fit to what thei...
Coming Soon: College Before College
Dual enrollment and early college programs have rapidly shifted from specialized opportunities into a defining feature of modern American education. Students are earning college credit earlier than ever before, but the rise of acceleration i...
