Annmarie Caño on Transforming Culture in Higher Ed

On season 4 episode 2 of the agile academic, I talk with Dr. Annmarie Caño, higher ed leader, coach, and professor of psychology at Gonzaga University, about transforming culture and transformational change in higher ed.

Transcript

On season 4 episode 2 of the agile academic, I talk with Dr. Annmarie Can(y)o, higher ed leader, coach, and professor of psychology at Gonzaga University, about transforming culture and transformational change in higher ed.

Welcome to The Agile Academic - a podcast for women in and around higher education. In each episode, we tackle topics from career vitality to burnout and everything in between. Join me as I chat with inspiring women about their experiences pursuing purpose, making change, and driving culture in the academy and beyond. I’m your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark.

Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Hi, Annmarie, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. 

Annmarie Cano: Hi Rebecca. Thank you so much for inviting me. 

RPR: Yeah, I'm glad to talk to you today. I think we have a lot in common and I'm looking forward to our conversation. So do you just want to start by telling the audience a little bit about yourself and the work that you do? 

AC: Sure. So I'm a clinical health psychologist by training and came up through the ranks of the professor at doing that work. But a, a very strong theme for me throughout all of my professor work teaching, advising, research was on empathy and helping other people who might not understand the experiences of someone who's suffering or going through a difficult experience how to, how to meet people where they are and how to listen deeply non-judgmentally. And so that is some of the work that I bring to the academic leadership positions that I've had as an associate dean, an associate provost, a dean. And that's something I'm very interested. I'd like love to spread the word about how we need to meet people where they are. 

RPR: That's been particularly salient for me this semester. And you and I didn't talk about this ahead of time, but I lost my mom in February. So figuring out how to have those conversations and how to get back into the environment of work and to be present and what you say to other people and what they say to you has been particularly interesting from an academic perspective as well as a personal perspective. Um, so it's such important work that we learn how to have those conversations with each other about whatever it is that happens ‘cause we bring our whole selves to our workplaces. 

AC: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and that part, so at the institution that I'm at right now, that care for the whole person is very central to the mission. And that's what drew me to, to this particular institution. And it's, it's interesting to be in a place that truly does that work versus other places where that's not baked into the mission. Because my, my father passed in October of last year, and so I totally understand of what you're saying. And people, like, people came out of the woodwork and I got cards, I got little gifts. It, you know, just those little things saying like, we know that you're dealing with a lot, you know, just extending that grace during a very stressful time of an academic year was beautiful. 

RPR: I think in the last four years we've seen so much of our humanity come out in different ways. Mm-hmm. Through the pandemic and through through everything. Social unrest, political unrest, just there's a lot more humanity I think, that we're willing to show a lot more vulnerability that we're willing to show each other these days. 

AC: Yeah, definitely. 

RPR: So I like to kind of dive right in to the, the nitty gritty, and we've already kind of started to go there a little bit, but I'm, one question I always like to ask is, what defines your purpose in higher education and how does that drive you? 

AC: Mm-hmm. So my purpose has shifted over time. So when I first started out as an academic, I'm a first gen college student, Latina daughter of an immigrant. I, I was very much focused on access, access that people need to have access. I still am, but it's shifted as I've seen a lot of, I've, I've seen how things work from different vantage points from a professor and then also an administrator. And the systemic nature of some of the gatekeeping that goes on, not just in terms of who gets into college, but then who has access to leadership roles, who is seen as a leader, who is yeah. Who is, who's counted mm-hmm. that my focus has shifted in terms of looking at how we can dismantle the systems or the practices. Sometimes just the, like changing the norms mm-hmm. For how we interact with each other to try to make a healthier environment so that everyone can thrive. Not only certain people can thrive and other people feel like they don't belong. And so I think my purpose has shifted into this to liberate the academic culture from some of these gatekeeping oppressive practices. And that, that's hard, it's hard work, but I also see hope in that there's so many people who are hungry for that kind of work and hungry for that kind of change. So that is very motivating for me.

RPR: One of the reasons we connected was our, our kind of common interest in culture change. My, my work in burnout has, has been kind of individually focused for now because you have to start somewhere. But really burnout is a workplace problem. So it's a culture problem. How do we shift the culture of higher education that leads faculty and staff into burnout conditions? What does that look like? And that is, that's hard scary work. 

AC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because it means removing what is known and replacing it with something that's unknown. And not everybody wants that. That's the other thing. So there's, people have to take a risk to, to say things need to change and you know that there's gonna be pushback and people who benefit from the status quo and from a culture of overwork and from policies that are inflexible, there are a lot of people who benefit from that. And even the people who don't benefit from it and have suffered through it, but that's all they know. Any kind of change is scary. 

RPR: And the, the system is really probably working the way it was designed to work, which is right. And was trying, trying to figure out how do we shift that in a a lot of ways thinking about what does serve us and the socialization into academia where you're trained to think that it's a calling and that you're, oh yeah, you're one of the privilege to be in that circle. And of course we are to be able to do this kind of work, but you can really take advantage of that perspective if that's ingrained in the people that are working in higher education. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't really see some of the systemic nature of this or the, the baked in structural parts of this culture until after I became a full professor. Because I too, like, keep your head down, do your work, get the publications for tenure, do the service. So I did all the things and whenever something would happen that didn't sit right with me or made me feel insecure, I thought, oh, it's just me. It's just me. And so I, I individualized a lot of it or internalized it. And it was when I had my first academic administrator position as an associate dean, someone gave me a project where I had to look at all the departments across the university, and it was a simple assignment of counting up, you know, how many principal investigators of federal grants were underrepresented minorities at that institution. And I did the work and it was maybe five out of 1200 faculty, and I was included in that five. 

And I was shocked. And I talked to a senior administrator, I was like, I didn't, like, I didn't realize, like I kept my head down and I was doing my work and doing my thing. Where's everybody else like me? Where's like, what happened? And it was, it shouldn't I, I don't know. I look back and I'm like, I was so unaware of the systemic things that were going on that make it, that make it so, and I felt guilty about it. Like I should have been working towards systemic change all this time and how could I be so unaware? And the, the faculty member that I talked to, he, he was so great cause he said, Annmarie, you did exactly what you needed to do. We needed you to become a full professor who knows how this all works so that now you can be in a place to change it. 

And that, I mean, it's, it's sad that it had to be that way, but also I took those words to heart. I was like, okay, here, here we go. We're gonna do something. And then shortly after that, I, I had my son after, after I became an associate professor with tenure, I had my, my only child. So I also didn't experience what it's like to have children on a tenure, on a tenure track. But I got a grant, uh, several years after that and someone expressed surprise, oh, you got a grant. And I thought, well, why wouldn't I, I was a professor and a researcher for much longer than I have been a mother. But then those kinds of comments, I read them for what they were and not that, oh, he's, this person is surprised because he didn't think I could get a grant. 

It's because the system is designed to think, oh, this is, you know, mothers can't be researchers or there's certain norms. So having that shift was really helpful to me to not internalize these things anymore. A lot of it is the norms. Sometimes it's not even the policies or the practice, the, the, the policies or the procedures, but it's the norms and the practices and those little interactions that you have with colleagues that sends a signal that this is really only designed for the ideal worker who is a white male heterosexual person who's married and has a stay-at-home wife who's taking care of the children. So's it really is an interesting, that was a whole interesting time having my son and becoming an administrator. I think both of those helped me shift my perspective a bit. 

RPR: Say in your part of your bio on LinkedIn that you work on co-creating inclusive and healthy workplaces for all. So I'm curious how you see that being operationalized. 

AC: Yeah. So the, the co-creating I think is important because that means I'm not creating things by myself and that I am accompanying others who perhaps have less power, voice, or authority in whatever, whatever the group or the system is that I'm moving within. So the co-creation means we're doing something together. It's not me as a leader being top down and saying, here's what's gonna happen. The inclusive part is that everybody needs to have a part in it and have a say. And that is, that's the difficult part because if you don't have everyone around the table, or let's say if we go down to an academic department and the recruitment has been such that it's a homogenous faculty, everyone thinks the same, looks the same, has the same background, then you, it's not inclusive because we know that they're really great people out there doing similar work and for whatever reason, they're either not choosing to come to your department or you have selected them out before they've, you've really considered their talents. 

So that, that co-creating and inclusion is really central to liberation psychology and liberation approaches, liberatory approaches. It, it is flattening the hierarchy and creating something new, which is not typical in higher ed spaces, which are very hierarchical. And so there's president, provost, deans, chairs, full professors, associate, assistant, lecturers, adjunct, staff. So that's one of those things where when I work on that and operationalizing it means, I'll, I'll give you an example. When I became a dean, I entered the university from the outside, I was an outside hire. And I could see that one of the things we needed to work on was diversity, equity, inclusion throughout the college, but it could be many different things there that could be many different projects. And as an outsider and as a dean, I was aware that there's probably certain dynamics within the institution and within the College of Arts and Sciences that I need to learn about. 

And so I need to enter this space with humility, even though I have this title of authority. And rather than saying, here's what we're gonna do to address or advance diversity equity inclusion, I said, I think we need to work on this as a College of Arts and Sciences, whoever wants to come, let's come and talk about it and see what kinds of projects you would like to see, or what are your goal, your end goals. And about 40 or 50 people joined this large discussion and they're like, we've never done this before. Usually like a committee is set up and then we say we're gonna do things and then people are assigned tasks. And I was like, oh yeah, well, but you must have a sense having lived here and experienced what it's like here to know what are the things that we need to do. 

And so from some discussions, it came became very clear. There were some people who wanted to work on recruitment, uh, faculty, other people who wanted to work on diversifying STEM, uh, the STEM undergraduate population, and some other kinds of projects where people were like, I feel very drawn to this piece. And so we created these work groups and, but again, it wasn't me saying, now your committee is gonna work on this. They organically came up with, here are the things we wanna work with. And I was just kind of the, the shepherd or, you know, because there were, there were a lot of ideas. I was like, okay, some of these ideas are great, but that's like a, an idea for five years down. What are some things that we can accomplish this year? So I just provided some guideposts, I think, or let's set up milestones. 

And so I provided some guidance as the leader, but really the work and the ideas were coming from quote unquote the people. And that was, so that was generative work. That was the first year of the, of the pandemic. So I started as a, one of the cadre of COVID deans, and most of it was online through Zoom, but people were super energized. We got some things done and that work is carrying on today. So I look at that as being successful because it's sustainable, people are, are working on things that they care about and that they have experienced and that they have witnessed with their own eyes. And it really was coming from the ground up, not from me. So I just provided the structure and maybe some incentives along the way to keep people going. And that to me is what it means to create a co, like, to co-create cultures where it's creating health instead of burnout. It's helping people feel vitality or, or, uh, energy about things that they care about. And it would actually change the culture into the future where the faculty staff and the students feel like they have a place and that they're listened to. 

RPR: That's so amazing. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on appreciative inquiry. So it's very similar, I think in, in a lot of ways, right? So that, that sense of starting kind of with the positive, what's the best experience that we've had here? When did I feel the most vital or the most whole or the most included? And then thinking about what, you know, what, what's our positive outlook? Like, what does the positive future look like and how do we get there? And then letting people self-organize around that. I think you get much more traction with, with those kinds of efforts than, like you said, just forming a committee and doing things the way that we've typically done things in the past. 

AC: Yeah. Yeah. And when I, when I coach, so I do some coaching on the side, and when I coach academic leaders, when I ask the question like, what energizes you? Sometimes we're just, we get so beaten down by certain kinds of experiences, and not just in academia, but in, in life that we forget that there are those things that bring us life and, and energy. And so I'll ask like, what, what depletes you about what you're doing right now? But also what energizes you? What excites you? And that usually then leads to, you can hear it in people's voices, you can see it on their faces, and it's like, all right, there's some joy. There is joy, and that's where your work is. And it is very similar to appreciative inquiry about what's going well rather than what's going poorly. And then we end up ruminating and venting is good, but sometimes vent like venting without also looking for the joy or the gratitude doesn't lead us to great places. 

RPR: Yeah. There's that principle of appreciative inquiry that we move in the direction of the questions we ask or the things that we talk about, right? So if we're asking the questions in a certain way that is more about the joy or that it is more about the potential, we're, we're gonna get more out of people then if we really do focus on kind of venting, which like you said, I mean, we need to, sometimes you need to clear the air and get things out, especially kind of in a coaching session too, and those kind of situations. But, you know, how do we, how do we look toward the future? How do we look? How do we maintain hope in that. And that and the way we structure our inquiries and the way we structure our conversations and committees definitely, definitely impacts that. 

AC: Yes. Yeah. 

RPR: So we, you, you mentioned very briefly kind of that idea of vitality, and that's something that, that I do a lot of within my work. And you know, initially it was kind of productivity based and then it was kind of on burnout. And now I'm looking at it more kind of broadly, how do we develop a culture that doesn't frame this positively? How do we build a culture that supports thriving and flourishing rather than burnout in higher education? So I'm curious what, like vitality means to you in higher ed? 

AC: So vitality in higher ed, if I were to see someone acting from a place of vitality, let's say a faculty member, a staff member, I would see them, I would, I think I would see joy and I would also see a place of energy and balance. And I, I think that's something I'm, I'm always working on with myself also is how do you, how do I have the energy for the things that matter, drop the things that don't matter as much or might not matter in the grand scheme of things? And how do I also correct my ideas of what matters? Because we talked about earlier, when you come up through the academic pipeline, like what ma like we are socialized to consider what matters, and it really is a lot about what we produce, you know? Right. We become, you know, we become, we become producers instead of beings. 

So vitality means that you're walking through the world as a being who is generating, like, generating life or generating energy for other people to be able to feed off of in a good way. And not coming from a place where we're walking around as depleted human beings just tired and stressed all the time. And I think that's a, that's a, a struggle as, as a dean, I have told people many times to say no to, to things, even if they, they look like things that they enjoy. And I got into the habit where I would ask people, like, I would think of somebody who would be great for a particular working group or a committee or a nomination, and I would nominate them and let them know. But then I would also include a, you know, a tiny little paragraph at the end saying, just because I've nominated you or think you would be great, I, I want you to know that you can say no, I will keep thinking of you. 

This isn't your only opportunity to say yes and please do what you need to. And I've, I've had people thank me for that little extra <laugh> at the end because I, I'm also cognizant that as someone with an authority, you know, with a title, there's power. Even if I don't see some of the power or I think, well I'm, people know that I am, you know, that they have the option to say no to me, but really I, they don't because it's, we're in a hierarchical situation. And so that has been that I've developed that as a habit because I want people to have vitality and energy to do the things that they do well and to have some choice as to what they do and not like everything's been foisted upon them. So I think to get to that place of vitality, we need more leaders who are aware of that, but then also everybody needs to feel empowered to say no or not now, or something like that to protect their energy. Cause I think that's, that's so important. But it's, there's so much that needs to be done. So I think that's where it's, you know, that's a tension. 

RPR: Yeah, that's definitely, I hear that a lot from my coaching clients. We can talk about vitality and we can talk about, you know, following your curiosity and your creativity and your motivation, but there's still a lot that needs to get done. And some people have a long memory when someone says no. How do you, right. So how do you navigate making sure that you can stay healthy and well and vital, but still function in a system that isn't really designed for that, um, but also still get the work done that needs to get done without feeling like, you know, I've, I hear this especially from women faculty, you know, well, if I don't do it, someone else is gonna have to do it. And then I feel bad about that, that someone else is That they're foisting it upon someone else if they say no. So yeah, I've done multiple workshops at my institution on saying no and had some really interesting conversations with faculty about it. 

AC: Yeah. When I do one-on-ones with faculty, sometimes they'll, people will ask me for a course release, let's say. And that I understand when you look at the whole, you know, the pie of your time and all the ways you spend it, it feels easier to say like, if I had one less course to teach, I how to quantify that time. There's time in the classroom, there's time for prep. And then I would have this much more time. And especially at teaching institutions, that's really hard to do. And so I, I try to look at, well, let's look at all the things that you're doing. I unfortunately can't give a course release, but where are the other places that you're spending your time? Where can we find the time? What can you say no to? How can I help you say no? Cause if you don't wanna say no, maybe I can step in and say, Hey, so-and-so you're asking this person to spend time, but actually I need them over here instead. 

And maybe I can help the person say no and save face or be able to do that. But I can't do that all the time also. And, um, the associate professor situation where people become associate professor and then all of a sudden they're given a lot of service. I, and I've worked with women who are, if I don't do it, then this thing is not gonna get done or things are gonna get worse. And that sense of duty, and I respect that. And that's also one of the places where we need to change the culture about who does this work all, you know, there's all that writing on academic housekeeping, women who become chairs when they're associates and then, you know, spend all their time on really difficult issues. Some of which some other people could probably take over instead. So that's one of those things where I see it as we need to empower individuals to be able to find the courage and say no, or artfully explain why they can't do something right now, but of course they can do something later. There's a political piece to it. But ultimately the, the system has to change where some of the workload for, for some of these things, whether it's department chair or all the other tasks that need to get done in a department, it, it, something needs to change about how we allocate work. 

RPR: It just workload, balance, workload is, has seems to have mushroomed so much, I mean it mushroomed over the pandemic and it seems like it, it had been mushrooming continuously for then and it since then. And it just feels like faculty just don't have enough time to even think. Yeah. There's so much to do and there's so much that gets put upon in individual faculty members and many of, many of them take it on because they feel like they have to, or that it's, it would be good for them to do that for CV purposes or for promotion. when, you know, when we start, when we keep taking all that on and never take off our plates or even consider helping someone take something off their plates, we're contributing to that culture of burnout that is only gonna get worse if we don't really think about how we manage and how we prioritize the work that really needs to get done. Where's the sludge? What are the things that, you know, that don't need to even be, be being done 

AC: Right. Right. <laugh>. Right. 

RPR: So yeah, it's, it's such a complex knot to think about in terms of Yeah. Workload and vitality 

AC: Yeah. And promotion and tenure guidelines or reappointment criteria. That's one place where it could be baked and, but it, that's one of those places also where some people just don't wanna touch that because, so, you know, the standard promotion criteria, you know, you've got three or four areas to be like, you need to do, you need to hit the mark in all of these areas. And at some institutions it's on paper. True, but not in reality. True. I have the feeling that, so like when I was going up for tenure, I felt like I had to be perfect in every single one of those things, even though I was told one really counts the most. So research counted the most, the other things counted less. But I was like, well I want an airtight promotion package. So I have to, I have to exceed the mark on all of these areas. 

And that's where I think some of the, this is both faculty leadership, faculty governance and administrators work together to really clarify like what really is the mark. But there's so much resistance to identif to clarifying the criteria in the different areas and to keep it slightly vague so that, well, to keep it vague enough just in case. And I think that that's the, the consequence of that is that it creates these conditions of depletion for people because no one knows what those criteria means. There's like lore and legend about someone who didn't meet the criteria, but it, you know, it's, it's, so, it's great to have it on paper, but what does it really mean? The other piece I I see with promotion tenure criteria in general is that there's no wiggle room or there's no individualization, especially after tenure for people to say, you know what? 

I'm gonna spend my next phase of my career and become an excellent teacher. Or I'm gonna spend it and do much more of intensive university service because I think this is where I can bring my gifts. And there is no space in a lot of promotion tenure guidelines for that individualization. It's like everybody has to do the same distribution of activities. And I, I think, I think stifles some of our ability to really have the energy, to have people with different talents contributing to a larger whole that's good for the university. I also understand the dangers of that too, because it's like, well how do you, how do you make these judgments? But that's the part of, that's the part of liberating academic culture that is scary, but could really produce healthier cultures where people are bringing their talents and their joys and their vitality to bear to make the greater good. That would be an amazing university where people are able to do that. I already hear like the naysayers, ‘cause again, I was, I was socializing into this culture <laugh>, right? The naysayers would say, well, someone would abuse that. Someone would find a way to game the system and not do anything. And if, if fear of people who are gonna abuse the system makes it so that we don't try something new, then we'll be stuck with this problem for, for a long time. 

RPR: That's a really powerful thing to think about, isn't it? That if, if we're, we continue to build around the negatives, around the negative possibilities and we cont we maintain a status quo that is unsustainable because we're afraid of those potential outside cases that could cause damage and that can massively impact faculty, women, faculty of color, faculty from marginalized backgrounds so much. So I'm thinking, I'm thinking about the culture issues that we're both interested in, and I'm thinking about women faculty specifically, and I'm curious what you think maybe the biggest cultural challenge fe facing women faculty is in higher education today. And, and what do we do with that? 

AC: So I think one of the, well I think one of the biggest challenges for women is that we are in spaces. We're trying to do something different in our research and our teaching that is not, not valued, um, not truly valued. Only if we behave a certain way, only if we fit into our, whatever our academic culture is. Cause I un I understand different disciplines also have different academic, different cultures, subcultures. And so when I say women too, I also understand that that's, there is no one group of women <laugh>, right? That, you know, women bring lots of different things to the table. I have been thinking more about academic mothers and caretakers and people who have any kind of caregiving responsibility, which is usually ac it's usually women in academia, but not always that the way we have things set up for, again, promotion and tenure, but even how the workday works and who is available to do what kinds of things at different times. 

There's an inflexibility there that I think affects caregivers and women more. And even things like policies about canceling classes or we don't really have appropriate sick leave for faculty. Like, so I know there's family medical leave of course, and a lot of universities also have their own policies for sick leave. But even just the occasional days where caregiving responsibilities might be more intense or there might be an emergency, those kinds of things. It might not seem like a big issue, but it's the kind of thing that affects people throughout the semester and that unpredictability and then the scrambling that takes place just takes a lot of mental energy and makes it hard to concentrate, makes it hard to do some other things. If I feel like, uh, some of the universities have great emergency caregiving policies or centers or care that I think they understand it, like they, they get it right. 

Like, okay, life happens and it seems like life happens a lot for women <laugh>, but, and, and there's a certain amount of grace, but after a certain level it's like, well, this is happening too much, or she doesn't care about her job, or she's not serious about research or all these, these messages that come up can really add up and cause problems later on when someone is reviewed for the annual review. So it seems like it's just kind of a, something that happens here and there, but it really can have this cumulative effect that can affect women more. And so that, that's something that I've noticed and I, I've noticed when schools have these policies, what a relief it is for the people who work there. That to me is showing care. And in some ways it's not, it's not a big thing, but can have big consequences. 

RPR: How do we work together to, to start changing those, those policies or to even create those policies? Do we go into that kind of work like, like you were talking about earlier, that's more kind of appreciative inquiry in a way, or that's kind of what more open than just assign a committee to go look at this issue of quote unquote issue of, you know, how do we move forward with that? 

AC: So I think that people already know what would be helpful to make their lives better and to be able to be fully present at work and excited about work. So I'm not opposed to committees, but I do think that there needs to be some authentic invitation to, from leadership to say, we wanna make things better for you all. We're inviting you to participate in, it could be a committee or a survey or a needs assessment, but to also clearly say, and we're gonna do something about this. We wanna hear from you what we should do. Because I think that second part of these invitations to serve on committees or to do a survey, that that commitment to do something different is not there. It's like, oh, tell us what we need to do. There's listening, sometimes very empathic listening, but it doesn't actually result in anything different's like, oh, that's too expensive, sorry. 

Or it's an endless needs assessment that five years later there's a report, everybody's gone by then and then they have to do another needs assessment. And then it's like, it just drags on with no action. And people are tired of empty empathic work, they're tired of busy work committees that don't do anything. I think this is, this is maybe a plus side of the last few years, is like people are tired of the old way of doing things and they're like, we want, we wanna see action. So leaders, if they're going to be able, if they're going to issue these calls, need to be prepared to do something afterwards. And that's the part, having been in some leadership positions, I understand that's challenging because budgets are tight, but budgets are also malleable valuable. And that's where leadership needs to work with boards, board of governors, board of trustees, other leaders to say like, this is important to us, that our people are well taken care of and we need to listen to them and do something concrete. And so I'm going to issue this call and we're gonna do something and we have to be prepared to actually act on it. That to me is the, the part that it is been missing, I think. 

RPR: Do you think we start that at small levels or do we go kind of jump in and, and kind of think about it around strategic planning or, you know, at a big institutional levels. Is it easier to start something, I mean, obviously it's easier to start something in a, in a home unit than it is across a college or an institution, but I guess I wonder are there, should both things be happening at the same time, right? Should leadership be asking these questions, but people on the ground kind of those, um, tempered radicals kind of coming out and making you know, um, making change and starting to kind of navigate both directions to so that, so that we can actually see culture change? 

AC: Yeah. I, I do think it needs to be happening everywhere. and oftentimes they'll get started at the grassroots level. So you'll see when I came in from the outside started new in my position, I had individual faculty come to see me and say, here's some of the struggles that we're having. And so there's the individual meetings that faculty and staff can have with their leaders to say, Hey, can I have an appointment with you? Here's some things that I think could make our institution better. I, I think that needs to happen. I think faculty governance structures need to be having these conversations. I know they are already and coming together and saying, okay, across the university we all want something to address this issue or this problem. And, and leaders, I, I think this is where in leadership development, I think we need to do a better job of helping department chairs, deans, provost and up understand what their roles are, not just as managers, but also as leaders in transforming culture. 

And, you know, there are many leadership development programs out there. There's in-house leadership development programs. Some do a really great job at the, um, about transforming culture and, and transformational change. But some really do focus only on the managerial aspects, like how to run a meeting, which is important, but there's more to it than that. And what does it mean to truly listen to the people that are in your care and to act on what you hear rather than just listening, giving people a chance to meet with you, but then you don't respond in a way that is meaningful. So I think that we need people in leadership positions who are prepared to do hard things and not just cutting budgets or not just, you know, doing those kinds of hard things, which we hear a lot about in all the newspapers, but what does it mean to take a strong stand in favor of your people and putting people first, because then, then you get a really great partnership between the ground swell, you know, the people on the ground who are experiencing the things and the people who have control over the resources and, and the system, the systemic issues. 

But I, I do think you need both. 

RPR: Well, I wanna be mindful of your time. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. So I have one last question. So what's one thing you wish all women associated with higher education knew or practiced? 

AC: I would love to see more women say what they really want, what they really want out of their careers. I think that if, if more women said out loud, well first of all recognize if when women could say that to themselves, this is what I really want outta my career, and then share that with other people, I think there would be many more opportunities for them to lead in, in really impactful, courageous ways. There have been so many cases where I've had people tell me, women tell me this is something I want, but I'm afraid to say like, no one's gonna listen to me. But I know that someone, another leader is looking for someone who wants to do that exact thing. And when they do say it out loud doors open that they didn't even realize we're there. So I would, I would like to see some bold statements from women individually and collectively to say, this is what I wanna see and this is what I wanna do. 

RPR: I love that. I think that's a perfect way to end our conversation on culture and leadership. So thank you so much for being with me today, Anne Marie. 

AC: Thank you, Rebecca.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Agile Academic podcast for women in and around higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. To make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the show on Apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps, and be sure to leave a review. You’ll find each episode, a transcript, and show notes at theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com.

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