Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott Allen

Dr. Carla Ortega Santori & Dr. Dennis McCunney - Elevating Leader Development in Higher Education

September 18, 2024 • Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 245

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Dr. Carla Ortega Santori is the Strategic Initiatives Manager at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders. Prior to this, she developed learning and development strategies at a leading healthcare company in Puerto Rico. Carla has worked as an Executive Recruiter and volunteered as an AmeriCorps VISTA.

She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Carlos Albizu University and a B.A. in Psychology from Villanova University. Her doctoral dissertation studied the psychometric properties of the Passion for Work scale in a Puerto Rican population.

Dr. Dennis McCunney works in the Center for Student Success at East Carolina University and serves as an adjunct faculty member in political science and adult education. He started at ECU in 2012 as director of the Volunteer and Service-Learning Center, where he expanded the center’s scope to include leadership education, global learning, and civic engagement programming. He led ECU’s first effort to become classified as a Leadership for Public Purpose university through the American Council on Education. 

His professional and research interests include public service and leadership development, organizational development, intercultural/global learning, and campus-community partnerships. He serves on the leadership team for the NASPA Spirituality and Religion Knowledge Community and on the board of directors for Amizade, a fair trade learning nonprofit.

A Quote From This Episode

  • "HigherLed is a learning network that creates the conditions for continuous improvement in the areas of leadership education and development (Led) in higher education to help create more and better Leaders for our society."


Resources Mentioned in This Episode

 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Register for ILA's 26th Global Conference in Chicago, IL - November 7-10, 2024.


About  Scott J. Allen


My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have two guests. The three of us have never met before, so I am excited about this conversation. I'm excited to learn today. I have Dennis McCunney, and he is the Director of Intercultural Affairs at East Carolina University. And I also have Carla Ortega Santori. She is the strategic initiatives manager at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University. And they have been on an adventure, and we're going to learn a little bit more about that leadership adventure and our time together today. But I was saying before we started, I've never done this before. You're going to introduce yourselves today. So Carla, maybe share a little bit more about you with maybe a fun fact in there somehow, and what do listeners need to know? 

 

Carla Santori  0:50 

Of course. Hi everyone. My name is Carla Ortega Santori, but Carla is just fine for today. I have been at the Doerr Institute for around four or five years. I've really enjoyed my time there thinking about how to elevate the leadership capacity of Rice students and also elevate leader development as a whole in higher education. My background is in I-O psychology. Way back when I did my dissertation, I studied the passion for work, so that was a great exploration. In recent years, I've been focusing more on leader development. I am a mom of a two-and-a-half-year-old who's obsessed with ‘Thriller,’ the Michael Jackson song. He loves zombies and skeletons, so Halloween is coming up. Great timing. He's loving the decorations, and we're expecting baby number two. I work from Puerto Rico, which is my home. And a fun fact about me, I don't know, I guess something really weird is that I hate ketchup. I deeply dislike it. I just can't.

 

Scott Allen  2:01 

(Laughs) I just can't. 

 

Carla Santori  2:03 

Yeah, my son will never know ketchup, coming from me. I will never offer it to him, but if someone else does, then I'll deal with it. 

 

Scott Allen  2:10 

Oh, that's awesome. And ‘Thriller,’ that's so much fun. I remember the days. Gosh, it might have been, what, like 1984, 1985? I'm 51, so we would wait for ‘Thriller’ to show on MTV live because you couldn't stream it. You just had to wait for it; it was like 7:00 P.M. on Friday night ‘Thriller’ would show. And, oh my gosh, it was a big… It was a Friday night. It was a whole Friday night.

 

Carla Santori  2:31 

It's every day for me now. I listen to the song, I watch and dance it. I watch the YouTube. It's everywhere. We've seen all the versions of ‘Thriller,’ monkey, Lego, kids, everything.

 

Scott Allen  2:47 

And Dennis, why don't you introduce yourself, sir?

 

Dennis McCunney  2:50  

Sure. And Carla, it's great that you're keeping the ‘80s alive with your son. So, proud of that. Hey everyone, and Scott, thanks again for having us. Dennis McCunney, I'm at East Carolina University in intercultural affairs. Also, I work with student success initiatives here on campus. I've been here since 2012, so in my 12th year here. I also teach in our College of Education and Leadership Studies program, so I have a lot on my plate, lots of great stuff. My background started in campus ministry, and then Jesuit higher education, and then I slowly got more involved in experiential education, community engagement, and leadership education work. In the past couple of years, I have helped oversee a number of leadership academies here at ECU. I work with community members and senior leaders, faculty staff and students, as well as our military population, to help them transition from military-style leadership to civilian leadership. So, I love what I do. It's a great, great opportunity. Feels like a vocation, and not so much work most days. And, fun fact: I fancy myself as a bit of a runner, not really a fast runner, but I'm doing a 210-mile relay race in the Blue Ridge Mountains in a couple of weeks with some friends called the Blue Ridge relay. And so we'll be exploring that area and suffering a little bit through the night, but we end up at a brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. So, I'm excited about that challenge, and the inspiration, and suffering, and maybe leadership lessons that I'll be thinking about at 2:00 A.M. in the middle of nowhere during that adventure.

 

Scott Allen  4:24 

Oh, I love that part of the country. We've spent a little bit of time in Boone, North Carolina, or Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Just a beautiful area, the Blue Ridge Mountains. So, you'll have an incredible view as you suffer through. That kind of rhymed; that was pretty good. So, Dennis, we're here because of you, and maybe we'll start with you quickly. You said, “Hey, I have a suggestion for an episode,” and I wrote back to you right away. Even before we got on live, I told you that I just loved this project, the podcast, because it really systematized my learning. And I don't know a whole bunch about what we're going to discuss today, so I know that listeners will be interested in knowing more as well. So Dennis, you're the impetus, so why don't you bring listeners into kind of what you were thinking when you suggested this topic? 

 

Dennis McCunney  5:12  

Sure. Yeah, I've tried to follow the topics on your podcast for quite a while now and have really been inspired by the folks you profiled. And thought there's this huge effort that Carla has been at the helm of for the past couple of years now, through the Carnegie Foundation and Rice University, to help universities enhance their leader development on campus and make it more systematic, recognize their resources, which has materialized into this new classification through the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation as a way to help campuses be more rigorous in their own self-study of what it means to be an institution committed to leadership for public purpose. Not what we say here at ECU; we have a strong service mission, and we're not trying to develop leaders who are only interested in their own career development, only interested in personal success, only interested in their own advancement, but are trying to be leaders for the public good, leaders who are making a difference in their communities. So, we thought we would maybe talk about this topic because it seems like it's been really helpful for campuses, especially since I speak for my own campus, ECU, to build on this narrative. We are training leaders to make the world a better place in broad strokes, and we are thankful to the Carnegie Foundation and the leadership of Carla and her team for being able to help put that into action. And it's been a great boost for our institution now that we've received word that we are a classified institution back in June. So, it's been a great opportunity for us to build on that legacy of leadership here on campus and keep telling the story that we think is a strong one. 

 

Scott Allen  7:00 

Awesome. Well, I'm excited for this conversation. I had General Kolditz on the podcast, gosh, maybe a year and a half ago. And he had kind of started talking about maybe some of this, it might have even been a couple of years ago, talked about this a little bit, but Carla, maybe bring us back and tell us the story. And then, Dennis, I know that you've gone through the process, so maybe we can go to you to kind of talk a little bit about the classification process that you went through. And congratulations on being awarded that in June. That's awesome. So, Carla, tell us the story. Take us back. 

 

Carla Santori  7:32 

Of course. So, one thing that we learned at Rice is that… At the Doerr Institute, specifically, we have a measurement team or research and evaluation team, as we have rebranded recently. But Dr. Ryan Brown, who is our social psychologist, has done a lot of studies and research at Rice and how we are developing our students as leaders and stuff. But one of the main findings, and one of the most surprising findings, I think, was that undergraduate students did not become effective leaders simply because they attained their degrees. Going through these four years of a great undergraduate education does not inherently develop them as leaders. They don't develop leadership skills. They don't spontaneously think, “Wow, I'm a great leader now, now that I have this degree.”

 

Scott Allen  8:24 

Yet, every institution basically says, “We develop leaders in their mission and vision,” correct?

 

Carla Santori  8:32 

More than 800 universities and colleges are in the United States. There's a study by Austin, and I forgot the reference, but there has been a study done on how many universities say that. So, what we found is that students need to engage in opportunities that are designed to develop leadership skills and knowledge. Intentionally develop those. And, as you said, universities will claim they develop their leaders, but they have no way of knowing if they do it because a graduation rate is just not an accurate measurement of that. So, that's where the rigorous part that Dennis was talking about comes in. We're thinking about how we could think about and measure this commitment at the Doerr Institute. How can we make sure that folks are considering this and really implementing evidence-based practices? How were others measuring this? Because we weren't curious about how to measure it ourselves, which is where the Carnegie elective classification for leadership for public purpose came in. And that's a mouthful, but it's this great framework that the Carnegie Foundation came up with, an optional self-study that a college or university will go through, where they will examine their mission, their communications, policies, practices, curricular and co-curricular activities to look at how it is that they are developing leaders, how they're developing leadership abilities in their students, their faculty and their staff. And as Dennis said, this process is meant to help institutions improve and celebrate their efforts to develop leaders. So, while there are a number of sections and a lot of evidence they have to provide to prove this commitment, let us know that they are investing in this and working towards all these things. There is room for some continuous improvements to identify areas where they still don't have a plan or have implemented something but are planning on addressing it in some way. The classification is awarded by the Carnegie Foundation, but it is managed by the American Council on Education. They oversee the day-to-day operations, and then we at the Doerr Institute are like the shepherds for the classification and the day-to-day administrators, and that's how we work together to bring this classification to life. Conversations around this started back in 2020, when we came together with a bunch of scholars and practitioners to lay out the application and what this could look like, and it's evolved into us launching the first site goal in 2022. Institutions submitted their applications; they went through a really tough process. So, I can't underscore how much effort Dennis has gone through to get this application in and all the hard work that has paid off. So, congratulations are certainly in order, and it's a big accomplishment. But yeah, that's how it's grown and evolved, and we're prepping for the next cycle that's supposed to launch in January 2025. It's when applications will be coming out, and we will welcome a new set of institutions that are applying for this classification.

 

Scott Allen  11:42 

Great. Well, Dennis, I do see a little bit of gray in your beard. So, talk about the process. Talk about how you got involved, how you got engaged, and maybe paint a little bit of a picture for listeners about, and even maybe what you learned through the process. I think that'd be a lot of fun, too, but let's get some insights there.

 

Dennis McCunney  12:00  

Yeah, and maybe some of that gray hair both from Carnegie and my children. But we'll take Carnegie for today: battle scars. Ms. Carla was talking; I was thinking about a couple of summers ago when we decided to undergo or go through this process. Our previous chancellor, who had been teaching in our Honors College for a while, was really dedicated to leadership education and had written several books on leadership within public higher ed; in particular, came to some of our leadership team and said, “We could really apply for this, and this could really be beneficial.” And, as senior leaders, they want to see the prize, the award for the effort. Ultimately, what we found is this year-and-a-half process of assembling a team, coming up with our working orders and our timeline, and saying how we gather all this evidence that the classification is asking of us. How do we tell kind of a narrative that makes sense to make sure it all flows? At the risk of sounding a little bit crunchy, the journey is the destination in these processes because what we learned along the way is that we think we have a compelling story. It's never really been packaged, and we've never actually gathered the evidence. And then, we also have never really identified the gaps because, at a large institution, about 29,000 students with all sorts of complexities, there's never really been a systematic way of saying, “Okay, so our College of Business does this project particularly well, and infuses leadership in their curriculum in this way in their MBA program, and our College of Nursing does it this way, and our leadership studies minor,” and so on and so forth. But then, how do we kind of bring it all together, and what are the unifying things that link all those efforts together? And so, now we're at a place where we have a team that started at about 20 people and then slowly grew to 35 people around the campus who are contributing to this application. And that team has been empowered to say, “How do we build on this momentum to continue to look for new opportunities that we may not have been aware of before doing this application? New opportunities for scholarship or new collaborative opportunities that kind of exist here?” And so, that's kind of been exciting to say, okay, yes, this makes for a good press release. This will make for a good discussion at our Board of Trustees meeting. Absolutely, right, our alums are excited about this, but now how do we build on this to keep it going? 

 

Scott Allen  14:24 

Well, I think it sounds like you discovered probably even some synergies through the process by getting those people in the same room. I imagine that just even some of those conversations were impactful. Is that accurate? 

 

Dennis McCunney  14:37  

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Because I think that we wouldn't necessarily have had those conversations; for example, how many of our courses have some sort of leadership learning outcomes? We don't have a systematic way to actually examine that, so we brought in our IR folks and our institutional research folks and said, “Is there a way to identify this?” There was an easy way at first, but we examined the data that we did have in all our different systems across campus, and it was incredible to see how many courses actually had leadership learning outcomes and how they were being measured. We just weren't really collecting that information systematically. And so, that was like a moment of, “Wow, we can really build on this,” which was exciting to see. 

 

Scott Allen  15:27 

For sure. Carla, so what have you seen? As you're kind of looking at this from a 40,000 foot perspective and interfacing with some of these individuals like Dennis, I imagine, all over the world, what have you noticed? What are some things that have kind of stood out for you in this process?

 

Carla Santori  15:44 

It's been amazing to review all these applications. I was able to personally read through all the applications that came in for this 2024 cycle. So, I was able to buy some trends and themes that reappeared throughout the cohort. And what Dennis is mentioning has rang true for, I think, so many campuses. When they were able to assemble this team to put together an application, it first of all forced folks to sit around and come up with a common definition of how we define leadership education, leadership development, or leadership for public purpose. How are we approaching this? What is the framework that we're using to develop our students? What are the concepts that are common throughout? And looking at it in so many different parts of campus, so courses like Dennis was talking about, was a big thing. Folks were emailing deans to see If this fits. Do you have courses that fit this description?” “This is how we're defining leadership courses. Does this fit with any of the courses that appear in your department?” And I think a lot of folks are planning for and moving towards defining what a leadership course is, even taking steps to designate them or track them throughout campus, to understand the depth and breadth of curricular activities throughout the campus, to understand how it's impacting students, how it's showing up, even in transcripts, etc. The same could be said for co-curricular or extracurriculars, all the activities that are happening that I got so many questions, I think, in all of our Q and A sessions, and just emails back and forth with folks who are trying to define, what should we include here? Do we consider just every co-curricular because they have a leadership structure, so there are leaders in each co-curricular? Does that count? And I was like, “It's a really tough question. You need to define what you think is a leadership co-curricular. What does classify as something that develops students' abilities to be more effective leaders?” Another big thing that we noticed was, and I think the section that folks most commonly struggled with, defining or itemizing what a budget for leadership and public purpose looks like and defining that. And it's really hard to understand where it resides, where it doesn't reside, how we're investing money into it, because there's no itemized list of things normally, because there's not a campus-wide approach to it, maybe, usually. The other sections that were tougher to address were the assessment sections, so understanding where your campus is measuring impacts and outcomes, yes, at an individual, programmatic, and institutional level. All those levels were really hard for folks to understand. I did not understand, but I could grasp how they were doing it because so many things were being done on campus. So many great things are being done on campuses, and so many great things are not being measured. When we want to go back to boards of trustees or your presidents or your provost and say, “This is really working.” “Okay, How do you know that?” “Well, this is the evidence that we have. This is why we need to invest more money, or we need more leadership centers, or we need a vice president of leader development at our campus to oversee everything.” So, that was interesting, and a lot of folks are making concrete plans to address these issues. They are coming up with mechanisms to measure and track. Some folks already have some mechanisms in place that are just being revamped or looked at more closely now because of the classification process. So, yeah, it was really exciting to see and a lot of visibility, I think, for folks in leadership centers or all this great work. So, more visibility with their leaders at their institutions to be able to see and recognize this great work and have that seal of the leadership for public purpose classification is great. 

 

Scott Allen  20:12 

Wow. That's awesome. Well, I imagine that Dennis, throughout this process of getting these groups of people together, wrestling with some of these questions, is there a part of the application that really stood out for you as a major insight or learning that, as you reflect on the experience, you just say, “Wow. It was this section that really just helped us as an institution leap forward in how we're thinking about our work.” Did something come to mind? 

 

Dennis McCunney  20:45  

Yeah, that's a great question. I think one of the questions that talk about campus culture and context is question number two, and it really kind of gets at how you are aligned. How are your leadership activities and initiatives aligned with your funding, your mission, your organization, etc? And that was really inspiring to read that. I personally didn't write that question, but the team that did write that question, I think, did a great job of actually saying that we are actually aligned with the historical roots of our institution, and we've been trying to build on this idea of being a leadership university. Our former chancellor calls it. We used to refer to us as the leadership university, and we would say, “Well, how do we define, how do we prove that we are the leadership university? Like that sort of the upper echelon or the pinnacle leadership. But I think this helped us to gather that evidence and to say that we do have a compelling case for that tagline. I was talking with our current chancellor a couple of weeks ago at an event, and he said that he'd occasionally toss out some tidbits of some university news to our board of trustees to keep them in the loop and various other stakeholders. He mentioned this new classification and shared the press release that we put together. And he said he hadn't gotten that much energy and enthusiasm back from some of those stakeholders in a long time, and it was sort of unexpected. But it goes to show that it's building some excitement, especially around a time when higher ed is being critiqued more than ever to say how graduates are making a difference in our local communities. This helps universities make that case. And I think that's really important, especially when we're talking about applied learning. I think that that particular part of the application helped us tell that story. Yes, we are actually making a difference. And yes, our institutional story is important. Our presence is important for all sorts of reasons, and we're only trying to kind of build on that history.

 

Scott Allen  22:48 

That's great. Well, Carla, how do people learn more about this process? What are some resources that you can point people toward as we begin to wind down our time together? How do people learn more, and do you have any suggestions for success? 

 

Carla Santori  23:07 

Ooh, suggestions for success. I think the very first thing you need is to put together a great team that includes stakeholders across campus. Anyone and everyone who is doing something leadership-related, leadership development, leadership education, needs to be included. And once you're done inviting everyone, think about who's not on the table and who needs to be because sometimes things aren't defined in leadership, but it is adjacent, or they're just talking about it in a different way. So, consider who needs to be included in this team to first make the decision to apply and then to put together the application because gathering data and analyzing it is a really tough job, and it requires perspectives from everyone on campus. So, that is my number one tip for success. Where can you go for resources? First of all, we have this free platform called "Higherled," and you can join for free. There, you will be able to see and look through anything classification-related. So, you'll have resources, webinar recordings, frameworks, guides, etc. You can also email me. You can visit our website at the Doerr Institute or the ACE website. I'm sure we'll have those listed here. But yeah, I'm always happy to hop on a Zoom or phone call to talk more about the classification. It is like 90% of my job, so I'm really happy to talk about it anytime. So, those are the best ways to learn more.

 

Scott Allen  24:44 

That's great. Well, I always close out our conversations by asking what's caught your attention in recent times. What you've been listening to, streaming, or watching, other than Michael Jackson's ‘Thriller,’ although I'm sure there are some leadership lessons in ‘Thriller.’ But what's caught your attention? It could have to do with what we've just discussed in leadership, but it could be something totally unrelated. Dennis, let's start with you. What's caught your attention in recent times?

 

Dennis McCunney  25:13  

Great question. My latest book that I'm reading is ‘Comfort Crisis', by Michael Easter, and maybe that kind of goes back to my upcoming relay experience in the mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains. But to keep it consistent, there are definitely some leadership lessons when it comes to trying to push ourselves to do some challenging things, as some people say, do hard things. And I'm just getting started with the book, but I think it's inspiring to think about just how we experience discomfort and how that pushes us to be on a learning edge, which is a good thing. So, I'm going to stick with that book, and hopefully, it'll push me to continue to do hard things.

 

Scott Allen  25:51 

Awesome. ‘Comfort Crisis.’ Yeah, it reminds me of, just by your description, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. We're not too comfortable, but we're not too challenged, but we're in that Goldilocks zone of growth and development. Carla, how about you?

 

Carla Santori  26:07 

Well, like I said, ‘Thriller.’ A lot of toddler songs, such as ‘Baby Shark,’ etc., are on my playlist, fortunately. But I guess, recently, what I watched that isn't ‘Thriller’ related, the latest season of ‘The Boys.’ Have you seen that on Prime Video? It deserves all the trigger warnings because it is gory and offensive, and for mature audiences, I'll say that, but it does explore, I think, this idea of who it is we give power to, who we put in power, who we admire for all the wrong reasons. So, that dilemma of who we put there as a figure, as a leader, and who deserves to be a leader? And, yeah, so that was an interesting watch.

 

Scott Allen  27:02 

Superheroes. Correct? Is that…? 

 

Carla Santori  27:04

Yes. Superheroes that are not great. They're not great people; they're not great leaders. So, it was a very interesting take, I think, on superheroes.

 

Scott Allen  27:16 

Well, I will look forward… Now, you've intrigued me. And my wife and I were just saying last night, “Hey, we need to find a show.” So, now you've intrigued me. So mine will be, and I wrote a blog post about this the other day, but I don't know if the two of you have watched ‘The Bear' in season 3. Gosh, there are many lessons in leadership, influence, and organizational change. And IO psychologists could have a heyday.

 

Carla Santori  27:42 

It is not psychologically safe, I believe. 

 

Dennis McCunney  27:47  

My 16-year-old had been watching that. I said, “Please tell me you're not repeating the language that you heard.” That’s all I asked.

 

Scott Allen  27:55 

All the warnings there as well. Well, to the two of you, thank you so much for stopping by today. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks for the incredible work that you're doing. Congratulations to you, Dennis, not only on the certification and the classification but also on the upcoming race that you will participate in. That's just awesome. Enjoy that. And Carla, congratulations to you on baby number two. Very, very excited for you. And thanks for the good work that you do for leadership education and leadership learning; it's pretty incredible. And, for listeners, there are a bunch of links in the show notes, so check those out. Learn more. And, of course, as Carla said, reach out to her. I am confident Dennis would also field questions for those of you who are interested in learning more from a user perspective and an applicant perspective. So, to the two of you, maybe I'll see you in Chicago at the ILA, and I hope to do so.

 

 

[End Of Recording]