BU Virtual Connects

BU Virtual Connects - The Power of Innovative Partnerships – Creating Pathways to Sustainable Success

• Boston University Virtual • Season 1

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In this episode, Karen Markel, a longtime educator and academic leader currently at the College of Business at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, is drawing upon her years of experience in higher education, business and human resources management to drive transformation and to create opportunities for dialogue and exchange across a community of educators.  P3 EDU, which she and her business partner James Sparkman launched a few years ago, is now a vital forum for higher education leaders to learn from one another, and to effectively drive more impact for all.  Throughout her years in academia, she has witnessed the lack of basic business skills in higher education leaders, often experts in their disciplines, but often missing the training or experience in strategic planning, managing budgets, or how to be an effective leader. In her own words: “I think we need to take this moment and say this is an opportunity for us to reshape and rethink what we do.”

Wendy Colby:

This is Wendy Colby, vice President and Associate Provost at Boston University and the host of BU Virtual Connects. It is my pleasure to welcome Karen Markel, professor of Management at the College of Business at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has over 25 years of experience in higher education and she is perhaps most sought after for her work as a leadership coach, human resources practitioner and scholar. She has served as Dean of the College of Business at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and also the Dean of the College of Business and Public Policy, colorado at Colorado Springs, and also the Dean of the College of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage At Oakland University in Rochester, michigan, where she spent nearly 20 years. She served as a department chair and faculty fellow, working on projects related to faculty diversity.

Wendy Colby:

I came to know Karen for her work in facilitating P3EDU, a higher education public private partnership leadership fellow program that Karen and her business partner, james Sparkman, launched a few years ago. It was a privilege to be part of the inaugural fellowship cohort. It came at a time when I was just starting my work at BU and I found it incredibly valuable to be part of a community of leaders steering innovation on their campuses. I continue to enjoy being in the presence of P3EDU colleagues and I have greatly appreciated the commitment, wisdom, empathy, understanding and esprit de corps that Karen brings to the work she does. Welcome, Karen. Hi there, Karen, I'm so excited to have you here with me today and I wonder if we can just dig in Sure. So let's start off by talking a little bit about your role as a professor and dean for the College of Business. What role does business education play in our society, particularly in changing times, and how did this inspire the work you're doing today to support leaders in higher education?

Karen Markel:

Well, my interest or path to business education started as an undergraduate student at Washington University in St Louis. I have an undergraduate degree in business and that's actually my only business degree of all of my degrees, but it laid the foundation for the importance of this knowledge in really navigating my own career, as well as my interest in business education. Right from undergrad I worked in consulting for a while and then I got a master's degree in sociology, but I was really interested in doing research around employment and human resource issues. I had a terrific mentor while working full-time at a research institute while getting my master's degree and they really helped guide my path towards moving to get a PhD in labor relations and human resource management at Michigan State University. So they were really instrumental in helping me understand what the path could be and, based on my interests, how I could be most successful in getting there, on my interests, how I could be most successful in getting there. And then, you know, after I got my first job at Oakland University, I rose through the ranks of a tenured faculty member and while rising through the ranks, I had these amazing opportunities to take on different leadership roles in support of not only the College of Business but the broader campus at Oakland University, and this really sparked my interest in pursuing even more responsible positions. And, like so many things in higher ed, you often have to move or relocate or find an institution for those opportunities, and so I was at a time in my career where I was ready to jump in and become a dean and moved into that role at several institutions.

Karen Markel:

For me, business education plays a really important role in our society, particularly in these times of rapid change. In my opinion, and as I mentioned before, basic business skills are a necessity for not only managing your own life but in your organizational role. Learning about everything from basic accounting, investment management and your rights and responsibilities as an employee are important for navigating employment, leadership and skills to teach future generations. So I kind of practice what I preach in that I tell students, whether they plan on owning their own business or whatever careers they might pursue, that these are skills that will help them in navigating successful lives.

Karen Markel:

As a professor of human resource management, I always see the importance of continually developing leaders in all industries, and I've seen this in my over 25 years of teaching across all levels, whether it's undergraduates, graduate students or those in executive education programs and after moving into my leadership roles, I started to realize that the lack of basic business skills for higher education leaders. These are experts in their disciplines from across the university institution, but they may not have had training or experience in strategic planning, managing budgets, managing people or understanding how to be an effective leader appropriate for the environment that they're in. For example, as somebody who's a lifelong learner in business leadership and human resource management, I realized there was a gap in developing a skill set in performing the work for public-private partnerships.

Wendy Colby:

Karen, that segues beautifully, I think, into the next topic of our conversation. I love what you've just described there, right, Because you and I have talked a lot about this too. I certainly see this in the work I'm involved in today, and it's why I was so excited to talk to you. That business background you bring and how you inculcate that now into higher ed, especially in these changing times, I think, is just really something we need, and so P3EDU right has become a widely recognized forum for higher education leaders who are looking to navigate innovation and change, and so I wonder if you could describe for us you know some of the goals of P3EDU, what led you to establish this program, what you see as some of the main benefits and what's been most noteworthy for you about the program.

Karen Markel:

So what's really interesting about P3EDU is in I guess 20 years into my career, I had never heard of it. As a business dean, as a business faculty, I was engaged in a lot of different associations, institutions, different associations, institutions, opportunities for professional development, but I had not yet heard of P3EDU. And part of that was it was originally created as an invite-only event for university executive leaders, so those really at the top presidents, provosts, cfos and, as I mentioned earlier, I had been a department chair, I'd been a dean, but I really wasn't in this invitation network and the goals are really to share best practices around a wide range of public-private partnerships. And so, while it was an annual forum started about seven years ago, I had not been in the sort of invite list. However, I started working with my partner, James Sparkman, and he invited me to attend the conference, which was amazing. It was very different than anything I had experienced. It was a smaller network. There were great opportunities to learn about innovation in higher education, which I was really passionate about.

Karen Markel:

But I said to James I said you know, it's terrific that we have this convening of executive leaders, but no offense, you know, sometimes they're not. They're the visionaries and then those who might be more in middle leadership are performing the work, and wouldn't it be great to give them some tactical, practical skills around doing this work. So James, who's an innovator by design, said, okay, karen, if you're willing to help me think about this, let's do it together. So we put our heads together. We started thinking about you know what would this look like.

Karen Markel:

I had a lot of experience with other leadership and professional development programs to build from, and James had the expertise and the experience with bringing the private partners to the table as well as thinking about how we could engage those private partners actually into the curriculum. And so we built this curriculum of learning in how to navigate building these partnerships, complemented by a dedicated leadership development initiative or executive coaching that helps every fellow think about how to bring this work to their campus. So it's got a broader component of a curriculum complemented by individual coaching to help fellows think about the opportunities and the challenges around partnership. So we cover everything from finding the right partner, skills for contract negotiation, developing the necessary financial analysis and understanding of how to hold these partners accountable after a partnership is established.

Wendy Colby:

Wonderful, wonderful. Again, as somebody who's been through the program, it's all resonating, it's all coming back to me, especially the time that you and James and others took to do, you know, that sort of personal coaching and consulting with us. And one of my other key takeaways is the opportunities we have to work more closely together across the higher education community. This is something we've been talking about throughout this series in our podcast and it's one of the things I have to say I love about higher education is the collegiality we do find right. So you know, as you think about this moment in time we're in, Karen, you know, what do you see as some of the key challenges university leaders are facing today? Right, and now you've invited more into the room, as you say, and where do you see our greatest opportunities for collaboration and focus and how can we foster an ongoing dialogue?

Karen Markel:

Well, I think you know, P3 and the fellow program is really designed to build a community of support across institutions, and James and I have been very intentional about bringing fellows together that often don't reside in the same state or geography so that people can really be transparent in the challenges that they're facing. But I think what we're going to see more and more of are really engagement across institutions, really engagement across institutions. We're really reflecting on what are the important relationships that we have to think about and what can we do on our campus. What are, say, we, really strong in? What are we known for? And then thinking creatively about maybe partnering with other institutions or private partners to bring in expertise that we might not have or that we might not want to develop, and those are basic business strategy activities that we really haven't had to think about in the way we have to think about right now. Did I answer your question, wendy?

Wendy Colby:

You did. No, I think it's perfect right. It's sort of that opportunity to bring together leaders across different institutions who can share what the challenges and opportunities are right and then together look at ways in which you know, through various strategies or partnerships, they can expose each other and drive this broader learning community, I think, as you're saying, karen. So, karen, you're somebody who's also studied leadership, human resource management, and you're out now also providing leadership coaching services as well. You shared a quote with me, I think, in the bio. You shared life never goes as planned, and I coach leaders to be nimble and pivot to achieve growth in challenging times. Two words I love there nimble and pivot. I think now this is particularly true in this moment, and so I'm wondering if you can say more about your approach and philosophy and share a couple of examples even if they're generic ones of challenges you see our community facing and the kinds of strategies or techniques you advise.

Karen Markel:

Sure. Well, I love that you centered in on this nimble and pivot and I think really the crux of what I want everybody to sort of take away is that you have to be ready for bold changes period. We've seen that most often coming from outside of our institutions in terms of examples. So when I arrived as dean at the University of Alaska, anchorage, within six months of being there we'd had a large earthquake Literally I am somebody who has never experienced an earthquake and had absolutely no idea what to do A change in state leadership, which was another kind of an earthquake, because this individual had a very different perspective on investing in education in Alaska and also a revolving door of senior leadership. We can see this across our institutions, that the average tenure of a president or a provost is shortening, and we can count on, especially if we are more in middle leadership, that there will be changes in leadership while we are serving our institutions. For example, while serving as a dean at two different institutions, I had six provosts in five years. So you have to be ready to figure out what are your core values, what drives you? How can I continue to make progress when there might be these exogenous or changes that I don't see coming. But yet I've got to be ready for, for me, what drives me and my core values are doing meaningful, interesting work that I can feel like I'm making a contribution, and so the kind of work that I've been able to do with the P3 fellowship program and my executive coaching are really I love to see people develop, thrive, learn new things, connect, make new connections that can help them in their career and professional progress. That's super exciting to me.

Karen Markel:

I think people also have to be excited by change. We cannot sort of resist it. We have to say I'm ready, what's coming, how can I best prepare, or how can I be ready for what I don't even know is coming? And then, inherently, we have to continue to learn and grow with the new skills needed. We want our students to do that while they're attending our institutions, and so we have to lead by example.

Karen Markel:

So, of course, a recent example is embracing machine learning, and AI in higher education is a must, in my opinion. We can't hide from what is happening. Our students are using it, organizations are using it, and we need to set the tone for how to be a leader in embracing AI and thinking about learning about other models of innovation that we can bring to our institutions. So a lot of this is really being open, being nimble, thinking about opportunities that I share this with my students that you don't even know are going to exist. But you've got to be ready to think about how to embrace these new technologies or new ways of thinking or new innovation. Um, you've got to be ready to embrace it and think about it.

Wendy Colby:

Yeah, I love what you've shared there, karen. You know that sort of call to be bold, to expect the unexpected right and to be excited about the change and so that might lead into and you've talked about this a little bit already but you know the future of higher education right, and many are saying, given all going on nationally, that we are even in an existential moment where the fundamental business model of higher education is broken. When you think about rising student debt, changing student demographics, how do we bridge the gap to a new model? And, again, based on your business experience, here as well, what role can leaders play? Role can leaders play.

Karen Markel:

Well, I think we need to take this moment whether we call it existential, whether we call it unprecedented, whatever we want to title it and say this is an opportunity for us to really reshape and rethink what we do. I'm a big believer. I've always worked at regional, comprehensive universities that often play a transformational role in students' lives. We have a lot of first generation or nontraditional students and we need to serve them in a way that's different. These students are not coming to our campuses only from nine to five on Monday through Friday. They want to progress and learn in different ways at different times, and so we need to be saying, okay, what can we do to meet individuals where they're at and what they want to learn and how they want to learn it?

Karen Markel:

Some institutions are rethinking the role of a degree versus competency-based education, partnering with industry for workforce needs, thinking about certificates, some alternative ways of credentialing education that's meaningful to employers. We really want to just be creative and be open and even, in some cases, have the flexibility to try something and maybe it doesn't work, but we're learning from that experience. I think as academics, we are really committed to our scientific process of testing and maybe, if it's not a significant result, we don't talk about it, but we can learn from those unsignificant or failures in a really good way. So having that openness to experiment, I think, is amazing.

Wendy Colby:

Absolutely. You know, as you're talking, I'm also just thinking about the sheer necessity, right of strong leadership to steer through uncharted waters, and I've compiled my own short list recently. I happen to be speaking at an event this week and it has words on it, like you know communicate, communicate, communicate right, and plan for the short and long term and focus on your core values and help others lead and engage with purpose and humility and create order from uncertainty and know when to pivot and look outward and demonstrate greed and you talked about this too exude optimism, right, and so maybe just put a fine point on it for me what words stand out to you as a leader, and when you look outward, what do you discover? That's often something I'm really encouraging my teams to do here, too, is look outward, not just inward.

Karen Markel:

Well, I think I've done a lot of self-reflection on what's important to me in the work that I do, so thinking about those core values. And then, throughout my career, I've always enjoyed helping others rise in whatever way that looks like, whether it's finding a new opportunity that may or may not be at our institutions, but seeing others really move into the roles and be ready for those roles, whatever that might look like. And again, I think there's so much opportunity in new and novel ways, especially in higher education. If we're to even look in the last five to 10 years of what our positions are called right, we have vice presidents or vice chancellors of innovation, of strategic thinking, of economic development, working at our institutions. Working at our institutions, that's exciting, that's innovating, that's having innovation intentionally infused into our institutions of higher education.

Karen Markel:

And then I just personally, I engage with purpose and humility. It's just sort of how I think about the work that I do, and humility, it's just sort of how I think about the work that I do. I think part of that is just working, spending my career in institutions that serve a student population. These are, I'm often humbled by my students and what the experience that they have in my current institution. So many have served in military careers and the experience and the knowledge that they bring to the classroom is humbling. So it's really, you know, I get as much out of it, hopefully, as the students do in terms of learning from them, and I have a very collaborative approach to the classroom environment.

Wendy Colby:

Yeah, so looking outward is as much looking inward at your own student population and sort of deriving from that you know actions and expertise you can take forward. I think that's really, really helpful, karen. So P3EDU right, and we're starting to come to a close here. You know known for fostering partnerships, as you said, between academia and industry and others, and to me, and maybe to all of us, it is becoming even more vital to look at where we can deepen these collaborations, for instance, to ensure we have more workforce-ready opportunities, or global partnerships that expand reach and mission. And I'm wondering I know you work with a lot of partners, but are there particular kinds of partnerships you see gaining traction? What kinds of partnerships are the most common today and where can we learn, lean in more, going forward and you talked about this too, karen you know, what should universities continue to do well internally and where do we have opportunities for growth and expansion? And I'm sure this will continue to evolve, but I'd love for you to give us a lens into that.

Karen Markel:

Well, partnerships with employers, I think, is where higher ed is going. There's just this expectation about accountability and what can I do with my college degree, my college certificate? There's a lot of credentialing around all types of competencies that we are delivering at our higher education institutions and our student population is clamoring for that credentialing or badging, whatever that looks like for the different skills that are being developed. We see this you know P3EDU as a key, not only to provide value to students, but as a differentiator in recruiting new students. Students are looking for institutions that can help them be successful in navigating or securing their initial career opportunities. If you look at those universities that are growing fastest around the country, they have significant ties to industry.

Karen Markel:

We expect workforce partnerships to just continue to grow in depth at scale. There's private partners who are really entrenched in this work that institutions can partner with on the CFO side of the house recruiting students online, international student success and there's continuing to be new private partners who are developing new opportunities as institutions have broader reach, responsibilities and level of service for students. We see some early stage partnerships around AI, as I've mentioned earlier, and expect this to grow, and two areas we're covering right now are partnerships around university athletics and the trends towards more university consolidations and affiliations. We're already starting to see this happening in the last few years post-COVID and will likely continue to see in these challenging times. So you know I would welcome the opportunity to connect with anyone who's interested in learning more about P3 or the fellowship program as well.

Wendy Colby:

Partnerships are here to stay. I think that's the message, Karen, right? I mean, you've touched on so many elements that surround our ecosystem inside of the university and how this is evolving and changing. Right, and we can't be good at everything inside a university, so that's just going to continue to be important. So P3EDU is the place to learn more about partnerships. There's my little plug for P3EDU as well. Thanks, Wendy and Karen. Maybe you know. Just finally, right, someone has been deeply immersed in our industry for a number of years, you know. Maybe just a bit of advice on what advice you give leaders and then, similarly, students and I appreciate you've spent a lot of time talking about students here too how do they see the future of higher education and how do we meet them where they are? So maybe just some closing words of inspiration.

Karen Markel:

Sure Well, I think for leaders, you know we can reflect on, these are challenging times, unprecedented times. These are existential changes. Regardless, jump into your role, don't be afraid to be bold, your institutions need it and if you exude confidence and knowledge in navigating this environment, that will go very, very far in helping to move your campus forward. Being ready and acknowledging this change, rethinking assumptions, thinking beyond our traditional silos, both internally and in leveraging outside entities, whether that's private partners, other institutions really being creative and innovating in your role and you know we are often judged by the pace of change in higher education I think it might also be time to reflect on not disregarding the importance of shared governance, but thinking about what that looks like for today's institution. I think that's really, really important For students the same really Be bold, be ready for opportunities.

Karen Markel:

I tell my students and my kids you know you've got to be ready for something you don't even know what's going to be and be excited about it so you can be prepared for today's job. But with technology and industry changes and geography, all the things that are evolving, just be ready for what exciting thing might come your way. Personally, I never thought I'd be a dean. I never thought I'd be leading a fellowship program so many. Never, never, never. I graduated from undergrad and I told my parents I'm never going back to school, and now I have had a life and a career in higher education. So never say never.

Wendy Colby:

Wow, that's great, karen, and that, I think, is a great place for us to end. Never say never. Seize the moment, amplify those partnerships, be bold. All of that, I think, is really good advice for our listeners. So I want to thank you again, karen, for joining me today. It's been a wonderful conversation, so thank you, karen for joining me today.

Karen Markel:

It's been a wonderful conversation, so thank you. Thank you, wendy, for extending this invitation, and I'm excited to share my thoughts and what led me to this point.

Wendy Colby:

Thank you for joining us for this BU Virtual Connects podcast. Special thanks to my colleagues at BU Virtual and to our media team who produces this podcast under the leadership of our studio director, George Vago. To keep up with our BU Virtual Connects series, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. You can also learn more about our portfolio of online programs at BU Virtual by visiting bu. edu/ virtual.