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Greetings, it's my great pleasure
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to introduce Kent Syverud,
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the 12th Chancellor and President of Syracuse University.
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Looking back at Kent's decade of leadership at Syracuse,
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there's so much that underscores his commitment
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to leadership excellence and the principles espoused
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by Father Hesburgh.
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He has stewarded Syracuse University
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through transformational change
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and progress that includes hiring of hundreds
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of new faculty members,
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expanding scientific research in emerging fields,
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fostering innovation in online degree programs,
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and spearheading student-focused renovations
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to Syracuse's historic campus.
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Chancellor Syverud has helped make Syracuse one
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of the best private universities for veterans
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and military-connected students,
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as well as a global leader in inclusive higher education.
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Kent's impact can also be felt strongly across
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the central New York region.
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He has been a leader in attracting top employers
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and major investments to the area,
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bringing substantial economic growth to the local community.
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He has raised more than $1.4 billion
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towards the largest campaign in university history.
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All of this and more
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has put Syracuse in an enviable fiscal position,
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poised to make deep investments in strategic priorities
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while continuing to attract an increasingly diverse
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and accomplished student body.
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So Kent, hearty congratulations on this award,
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and thank you for taking the time for this conversation.
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So let's get started.
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Oh, thank you so much for the award, sir.
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Absolutely.
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So here's my first question, Kent.
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Let's begin by addressing what leadership,
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leadership excellence means to you,
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and what are the most important traits needed
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to be a leader, especially in higher education today?
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Boy, today I'd say the traits really needed are humility
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and a willingness to take risks.
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And by humility, sir, yeah, I guess I mean two things.
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I mean, like you recited all those things that have happened
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at Syracuse in the last 10 years,
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but humility is partly realizing,
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no, I didn't do those things.
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A whole bunch of people did those things.
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And it's not about you.
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It's about all the stakeholders coming together
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and doing them.
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But it's also, humility is, for me anyway,
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is also about constantly reminding
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yourself what you don't know,
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and that there's so many wonderful people around you
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who know things you don't if you listen to them.
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I guess the other one I said was willingness to take risks.
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And right now in higher ed,
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there are no risk-free choices in so many areas
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that at least I'm dealing with.
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And sometimes the most risky thing of all is to not decide,
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and to just wait and hope somehow the challenging issue
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before you will go away.
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And really learned in many settings this academic year
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in particular, that sometimes waiting to see
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what other people do
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or what other people say is the riskiest thing of all.
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Indeed, the world is changing so rapidly
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that both assuming one knows everything
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or standing still are both risks.
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So I appreciate that answer.
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But I'm also thinking, Kent,
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a lot has changed and a lot is changing.
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So if you just look back a decade, let's say 10 years,
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it would be interesting to hear a perspective
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on what has changed
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and what are those new leadership requirements
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in that 10 years?
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So when I started as a president,
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I'd been a dean for a long time,
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but never been a university-wide responsibility.
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I guess I'd say
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I think I'm able to face things now
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because in the last 10 years,
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I faced so many things in series.
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I faced very contentious politics,
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very challenging pandemics,
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multiple pandemics at Syracuse.
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I faced protests
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on all sorts of issues.
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And I think that experience makes it easier now
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for me as a president.
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I'd say what's changed is it's so much harder to start
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as a president now than 10 years ago,
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because all those things come at you at the same time,
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often calling for decision-making
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and communication that's very nuanced
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and very effective that you've never done before.
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So, I think it's a much more challenging job now.
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Very interesting.
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In fact, in my opening remarks, Kent,
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I mentioned that you had led
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this amazing transformation at Syracuse,
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and it would be wonderful to learn
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what advice you have for new leaders
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who are driving transformation themselves as well.
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Well, yeah, I guess I'd say what I've learned most
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of all is that it's really important
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to pick your first victories
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as ones that are both achievable and differentiating.
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So in the first year or two is not the time
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to do the impossible things,
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but to do something that builds confidence
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that you know what you're doing
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and can pull something off.
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And it's got to be enough differentiated
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that people can clearly and briefly say,
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wow, that has happened because she is here or he is here.
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I think there's a lot of such opportunities.
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They aren't obvious, but I need to spend the time
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before you start listening to people and identifying those,
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and doing those in the first year.
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The advice I got for transformational leadership
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when I came into the job is basically do nothing for a year.
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Just go around and talk to people and listen.
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And I think that was good advice back then.
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I think it's probably disastrous advice now
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because people aren't that patient now.
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Oh, terrific.
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So excellent advice on driving transformation.
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I'd like to switch to a little bit
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of your background now, if I could.
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You have a background in law, which I find very interesting.
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I would love to learn how
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that has shaped your leadership perspective.
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Yeah, so I'm a recovering lawyer.
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I was a practicing lawyer and a law dean
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and law professor for many years.
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The most helpful thing from the legal experience
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has been really believing to my core
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that I need to understand,
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truly understand the best possible arguments
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for every side of a question,
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even if they're not the sides I necessarily agree
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with going in.
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That's been really good instinct
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when I don't know everything about an issue,
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which is almost always the case.
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But I'd also say that having a legal background,
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it can be a liability because it's easy to fall
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into the notion that the legal aspects of the problem
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are the most important or defining aspects of the problem.
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And in higher ed right now, they're always relevant,
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but most of the time, the academic aspects
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or the economic aspects,
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or the ethical aspects are much more important.
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And if you, I found that in my early years,
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if I fell back on legalistic answers to questions
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or justifying decisions
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because some law somewhere required it, I got in trouble.
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And that's certainly been borne out in recent,
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in this past year.
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So I'd say legal training is great as long as you are aware
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of the liabilities that go with it.
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Yeah, so the leadership decision-making
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has a number of complex factors of which legal can be one.
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But I do have a follow-up question on this.
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I wonder, because you have this training in legal thinking,
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and argumentation, that if you're able to listen better,
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because you're looking at arguments as an objective,
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so if somebody is making an argument
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on an opposing point of view,
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you're able to listen better given your training?
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Yeah, I think so.
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I mean, certainly, law, when I learned it,
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I was frequently assigned
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to make the best arguments possible
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for a position that nobody in the class agreed with.
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And in the course of it,
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convincing people there were aspects
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they hadn't appreciated
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and the issue was more complex than appreciated.
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I do think today that's harder to do, right?
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So in most of the hot-button issues we face,
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it's harder to get people to suspend disbelief
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and put themselves in the position
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of making the best arguments possible
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for something they disagree with.
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And yet, I think that's part of a great education
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and part of good decision-making.
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Totally agree.
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Kent, I am genuinely excited to ask you this next question.
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In reading your background, we identified this,
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that you were clerking,
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and you clerked for Supreme Court Justice
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Sandra Day O'Connor early in your career,
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and that you remained friends
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with her until her passing last year.
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We would love to learn about leadership,
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what you learned about leadership from Justice O'Connor.
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Yeah, sure.
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So she was a great woman, a great justice in my view,
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and I worked for her very early in her time
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on the Supreme Court and worked
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with her for many years thereafter.
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I guess I'd say in my current job,
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the most important lesson she taught me
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really was how to make decisions
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and particularly how not to agonize over tough decisions.
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And she taught me that in the context of a capital case
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where a prisoner was to be executed in the morning,
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and she and the court needed
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to make a decision whether to stop that execution or not.
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And we worked incredibly hard on that case, and we lost
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and the prisoner was executed in the morning.
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And I came in at 8 o'clock that morning after working most
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of the night, and she was exuberant and cheerful,
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and talking about wonderful things
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that were gonna happen that day.
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And I thought, I confronted her on it.
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I said she was callous,
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and how could she do that after somebody
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had been executed that morning?
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And she had the courtesy to sit me down and say,
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basically, I've got 10 more
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impossible decisions to make today.
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And the time to agonize over a decision
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and what you could have done
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or what you should have done is before you make it.
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And so you spend every minute you can.
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You don't decide before you've really informed yourself.
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But afterwards, if you agonize about it,
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you're doing a disservice
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to the next impossible thing coming at you.
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And in my current job,
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and I think the job of most academic leaders today,
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that's our life, right?
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That we make tough decisions.
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We're academics, so we're used to thinking them
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through and thinking about them a lot.
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But you got to move on.
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And she taught me that moving on is just a necessary skill,
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which she did with the poem.
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Powerful lesson, which is there's the second
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and the third and the fourth
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and the fifth decisions that require equal vigor
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and attention.
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So I really appreciate that.
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If I could, Kent, I'd love to bring you
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to TI Institute business for a second.
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Sure.
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One of the areas that we're focused on is the fact that,
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as a human society, we're living longer.
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And the United Nations has declared this decade
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as the decade of healthy aging.
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And I wonder, from your seat and from your perspective,
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if that topic resonates with you.
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Of course, it does.
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I mean, what TIAA is is kind of
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a miracle because, of course,
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historically it was created
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because so many people working in education
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in this country retired and had nothing to live on
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and were destitute,
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and were the subject of charity appeals.
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And TIAA came into existence to assure stable income
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throughout life for the people given
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their careers to nonprofits and teaching, and so on.
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And it serves that function spectacularly.
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But now people are aging so much longer
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and around so much longer.
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And we've largely abandoned pensions in the United States
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in favor of not annuity contracts,
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but other forms of savings,
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with the result that a very large number
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of people I see are reliant on Social Security for decades
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and on having made really good decisions
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about their investments in defined contribution plans,
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often when they were very ill-informed and young.
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So what resonates with me as people are aging longer
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is probably a need to revive the original focus
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on the annuity, as has to be part of your planning,
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part of your portfolio planning.
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And again, most of us don't have time to think
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about that or aren't informed about that.
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So how we structure it the way it can be structured
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so it just happens automatically.
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I think about that for obviously for people outside
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higher education or education,
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but what I see today is many staff in higher ed
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have had an opportunity to save,
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but have not done so in a way that really guarantees
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that income when they're in their 80s and 90s.
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Absolutely.
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I'm genuinely delighted that this topic resonates with you.
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Another implication, and I want to bring this question
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to campus of us living longer,
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is that there could be many generations alive.
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There'd be many generations in the workforce.
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And as an educational institution,
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are we both Syracuse and education
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in general paying attention
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to this multi-generational aspect?
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Yeah, it's a daily experience
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where I am because, of course,
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we rely significantly on our own students,
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for also for our workforce,
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and multiple generations of staff and faculty,
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and our students themselves come
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from all sorts of generations.
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So what is produced is a kaleidoscopic workforce
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with very different needs that often need
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to be carried very carefully,
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mapped onto the unbelievable breadth
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of occupations we have at the university,
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which is more like a city than a school in some ways.
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I'm trying to think of an example of that,
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what I experienced day to day,
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which is that so our talent strategy
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has to be much more sophisticated now
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because of the different generations working
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and the different solutions
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that are not the same across all
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occupations at the university.
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So our work-from-home strategy needs
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to be very different for student-facing jobs,
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and for IT and advancement, for example.
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Yes.
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And we're used to having a one-size-fits-all all solution
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for all these areas.
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And if we really want to be fully staffed
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with highly competent people,
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it's got to be tailored much more.
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Totally agree.
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It's a fast-changing world, including demographics,
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that organizations need to adapt to.
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That brings me to the topic at hand,
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Father Hesburgh.
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And so let me ask this question.
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So Father Hesburgh, as we know,
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was a leader in our country's
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civil rights movement in the 60s,
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and was steadfast in his commitment
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to social justice for all.
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And under your leadership,
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Syracuse has also demonstrated a deep commitment to equity,
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to diversity, and to inclusion.
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So we would love for you to share some
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of the things you're doing at Syracuse
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and why this work is so important for you.
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Well, it is important to us
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and has been since our founding in 1870.
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We've always been a university that's tried
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to be welcoming to all, including when others were not.
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And of course, Father Hesburgh
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was born and raised in Syracuse.
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And so his legacy matters to us as well as to Notre Dame.
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I think what we've done,
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tried to do to differentiate ourselves in this area
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in the last 10 years has been to emphasize a couple
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of very diverse populations that some do less so
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and that we think we can excel in.
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And that includes veteran
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and military-connected students
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who now number about 6% of our student population.
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And unbelievably diverse,
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a large fraction of whom didn't go to college right
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from high school, but enlisted,
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which creates a whole different set of ways
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of creating belonging and inclusion.
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We've also focused very much on students
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with disabilities and being,
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making a university welcoming to all,
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include welcoming to those on the autism spectrum
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and with all sorts of disabilities.
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And that's required us to change a lot of our practices
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and create some fairly exciting new programs,
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including an inclusive year program
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that gives autistic students a chance
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to be fully immersed in all aspects
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of the college experience.
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And then the last way,
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I guess I'd say we've tried to
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follow Father Hesburgh's model
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is with our indigenous population.
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So we, particularly with the Haudenosaunee,
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which is the traditional six tribes of upstate New York,
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the Tuscarora, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Oneida,
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the Seneca, and the Mohawk,
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we've tried to create a welcoming environment
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for students in undergraduate and graduate programs
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on our campus and to have a very significant population
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of indigenous students.
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And we've learned a lot from that as well,
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that being a university welcoming
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to indigenous students really has called
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on us to change some practices or assumptions
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that many of us had.
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Obviously, diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility,
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they've been evolving right now
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and the professionals in this area feel very much
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at risk in the United States.
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So I think the other thing we're trying to do is
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to make clear that at Syracuse,
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this commitment is not going to waver
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and existed long before these particular terms
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became fashionable
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and as part of what defines us back to 1870.
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So hopefully that's going to make us a place
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that people want to come to and feel welcome
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to no matter what happens in the world
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or how the politics evolves.
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Thank you so much for this very powerful answer.
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As you were describing this,
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especially when you're talking about autism and so on,
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I was reminded that most recently at the Institute,
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we published a study on mental health
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and we connected mental health
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00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:09.630
and financial well-being,
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where one could imagine if there's financial stress,
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there's an impact on mental health.
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But we also established the reverse connection,
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that if you had mental health challenges,
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it could lead to erroneous financial decision-making
426
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and financial stress as well.
427
00:20:24.380 --> 00:20:26.970
So, we appreciate you throwing a light on that topic.
428
00:20:26.970 --> 00:20:29.060
Yeah, I assume that's true.
429
00:20:29.060 --> 00:20:30.240
I need to study this.
430
00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:33.719
So, we certainly are seeing anxiety
431
00:20:33.719 --> 00:20:36.240
about financial issues as well
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00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:39.420
as the economy is doing overall.
433
00:20:39.420 --> 00:20:42.480
We're seeing the cost of higher education cause
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00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:44.880
incredible stress to a significant fraction
435
00:20:44.880 --> 00:20:47.700
of students applying to colleges.
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00:20:47.700 --> 00:20:51.210
So anything we can do to alleviate that would be great.
437
00:20:51.210 --> 00:20:54.060
The greatest mental stress right now comes
438
00:20:54.060 --> 00:20:57.210
from the federal financial aid application,
439
00:20:57.210 --> 00:21:00.000
which has put us in a situation right now
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00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:03.360
where a large fraction of students are not sure
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00:21:03.360 --> 00:21:05.520
about whether they'll be able to afford to go
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00:21:05.520 --> 00:21:07.080
to college this coming cycle.
443
00:21:07.080 --> 00:21:09.330
I know that folks have been making
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terrific efforts to fix that,
445
00:21:10.800 --> 00:21:14.670
but I'm hearing a lot of stress,
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00:21:14.670 --> 00:21:17.100
not just from students applying to college,
447
00:21:17.100 --> 00:21:19.260
but students already here whose circumstances
448
00:21:19.260 --> 00:21:21.420
may have changed in the last year.
449
00:21:21.420 --> 00:21:22.590
Thank you so much for shining a light
450
00:21:22.590 --> 00:21:25.980
on this very important and looming topic as it were.
451
00:21:25.980 --> 00:21:28.830
In closing, I have one final question for you.
452
00:21:28.830 --> 00:21:31.350
Thinking back over your life and career,
453
00:21:31.350 --> 00:21:33.820
what would you tell your younger self
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and what advice would you offer to the next generation
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of higher education leaders that might help them
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become the kind of leaders we recognize
457
00:21:43.770 --> 00:21:44.970
with the Hesburgh Award?
458
00:21:48.120 --> 00:21:51.000
Well, I mean, I'm not trying to be funny,
459
00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:53.430
but first I'd say I'd tell my younger self
460
00:21:53.430 --> 00:21:55.269
to pay more attention to sports
461
00:21:55.269 --> 00:21:58.380
because I was not a jock by any means,
462
00:21:58.380 --> 00:22:03.150
and today I find myself like most college leaders
463
00:22:03.150 --> 00:22:06.220
spending a lot of time on sports issues
464
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because of just the changing landscape
465
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for amateur athletics in the United States.
466
00:22:11.430 --> 00:22:15.830
So, I wish I'd paid more attention to that earlier.
467
00:22:15.830 --> 00:22:20.830
I guess I'd say the lesson that I wish I'd learned earlier,
468
00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:24.660
and would say to new leaders right now,
469
00:22:24.660 --> 00:22:29.660
is that I grew the most and benefited the most
470
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from not doing things that I thought would be helpful
471
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to my career,
472
00:22:35.850 --> 00:22:38.070
but from doing things that needed to be done
473
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that other people didn't want to do.
474
00:22:41.040 --> 00:22:42.600
That's pretty vague, but I'll say that.
475
00:22:42.600 --> 00:22:47.040
So, the two probably things I've done that have taught me
476
00:22:47.040 --> 00:22:49.470
the most and helped me the most were things
477
00:22:49.470 --> 00:22:51.900
that people told me I shouldn't do
478
00:22:51.900 --> 00:22:55.233
because they didn't make sense for my career.
479
00:22:57.559 --> 00:23:00.210
So when I was a dean at another university,
480
00:23:00.210 --> 00:23:03.010
the political science department was,
481
00:23:03.010 --> 00:23:04.560
I was a dean of a law school
482
00:23:04.560 --> 00:23:06.900
and the political science department was in meltdown,
483
00:23:06.900 --> 00:23:08.010
and dysfunctional
484
00:23:08.010 --> 00:23:10.950
and as a favor to the dean of arts and sciences,
485
00:23:10.950 --> 00:23:14.670
I agreed to be the interim chair of that department,
486
00:23:14.670 --> 00:23:16.650
which was not my discipline.
487
00:23:16.650 --> 00:23:19.927
And people told me I was absolutely crazy and it would,
488
00:23:19.927 --> 00:23:21.870
you know, and indeed,
489
00:23:21.870 --> 00:23:24.960
the professors in political science regarded me
490
00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:27.363
as a alien invasive species.
491
00:23:28.270 --> 00:23:30.540
But I learned so much from that experience.
492
00:23:30.540 --> 00:23:33.360
I learned so much respect for arts and sciences
493
00:23:33.360 --> 00:23:34.800
and the challenges it faced.
494
00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:37.230
And I, you know, in a little scale,
495
00:23:37.230 --> 00:23:40.260
I learned about leadership and transformation,
496
00:23:40.260 --> 00:23:44.100
and that was so much helpful later in the career.
497
00:23:44.100 --> 00:23:47.760
And I guess the other example of that is, you know,
498
00:23:47.760 --> 00:23:49.650
when I became a new president,
499
00:23:49.650 --> 00:23:54.450
my athletic conference is in the Atlantic Coast conference
500
00:23:54.450 --> 00:23:55.830
had real governance issues,
501
00:23:55.830 --> 00:23:57.210
and somebody needed to go in
502
00:23:57.210 --> 00:23:59.910
and overhaul the governance of the conference.
503
00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:03.970
And I did that against the advice of some wise elders
504
00:24:04.830 --> 00:24:07.323
because of the enemies that could be made.
505
00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:11.837
And again, I learned so much from dealing
506
00:24:13.500 --> 00:24:16.830
with governance issues and from working
507
00:24:16.830 --> 00:24:19.500
with stakeholders that you didn't control,
508
00:24:19.500 --> 00:24:22.050
but that you had to persuade.
509
00:24:22.050 --> 00:24:24.180
That's been so helpful.
510
00:24:24.180 --> 00:24:28.290
And I do think it's helpful also to that conference
511
00:24:28.290 --> 00:24:30.360
because it was able to get through the pandemic
512
00:24:30.360 --> 00:24:32.049
and through some
513
00:24:32.049 --> 00:24:33.780
of the exciting things going on in college sports
514
00:24:33.780 --> 00:24:36.990
with a governance model that was much more sensible.
515
00:24:36.990 --> 00:24:40.290
So I just, so just coming back to that,
516
00:24:40.290 --> 00:24:44.610
I'd say when people tell you to do something,
517
00:24:44.610 --> 00:24:46.920
because it's in the interest of your career,
518
00:24:46.920 --> 00:24:49.200
my experience is it's more likely to be in the interest
519
00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:50.033
of your career.
520
00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:52.890
If you take on something that really needs to be done
521
00:24:52.890 --> 00:24:55.260
because people will remember that it's differentiated.
522
00:24:55.260 --> 00:24:56.400
Very valuable advice.
523
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:57.513
I've learned a lot.
524
00:24:58.360 --> 00:25:00.990
I'm sure leaders coming up will take a lot of value
525
00:25:00.990 --> 00:25:02.580
from their advice.
526
00:25:02.580 --> 00:25:03.600
So thank you again, Chancellor Sybarud,
527
00:25:03.600 --> 00:25:05.670
for sharing your time and your wisdom,
528
00:25:05.670 --> 00:25:06.990
and welcome to our family
529
00:25:06.990 --> 00:25:09.450
of distinguished Hesburgh award winners.
530
00:25:09.450 --> 00:25:11.213
Thank you so much, Surya.