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(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward, I'm your host, Matt George.

Tonight's topic is gonna be a great one, so we're gonna get right down to it.

Joining me tonight, Dr. Stephen Standifird.

He is the president of Bradley University, welcome.

- Thank you, excited to be here.

- Well, I'm glad you're here.

I've got a million things to talk about, but I just wanna say, when you were hired to come here, and, you don't remember this because you were just starting meeting a million people, but I was at the Bradley Golf Outing, and you were standing there and you had your mask on, when COVID was just starting to hit.

And I thought to myself, as we went out to play golf, I thought to myself, 'This poor guy.'

(both laughing) Here he's coming in, and you're starting.

And the more you talk to people, the more a lot of people really started different ventures in their lives at around COVID.

So what was that like?

- Yeah, it's an interesting question, not surprising I get that question a lot.

One of the questions I get is, if I knew what I know now, would I still have done it?

And the answer is absolutely, yes.

- Yeah, I love that.

- It was interesting, I was at a conference last week with a bunch of university presidents from independent colleges.

And there were a series of us that started at the same time.

And one of my colleagues got up and said, "Knowing what I know now, I would never wanna start as a university president at a time other than a pandemic."

- Wow, that's strong.

- I thought, 'What an interesting statement!'

But there's... now, I hope we never have to have another pandemic ever again, so I hope we never have the situation.

But there's some wisdom in the statement, and one of the things that I have often maintained is if you really wanna understand an organization, watch it operate in crisis.

You learn a whole lot about your organization, true character comes out, when people are in a very stressful situation.

And so this last, now it's a year and a half, these last year and a half, I've had an opportunity to see my colleagues operate under the most dire of circumstances, and it's just been amazing to watch them work.

- Have you noticed like, there are people that they're paid to lead, so you expect them to lead, but there's so many people that have just stepped up and you just sit there and go, 'Wow, I love this.'

- Yeah, yeah.

And they come from all different areas, that's right and you just... And it gives it an opportunity for people again, to show their true character, and we really understand fundamentally who they are.

I'll tell you the other group that inspired me a lot throughout this process, was our students.

- Yeah.

- And, it's interesting, there's lots of thoughts and comments about today's students, I gotta tell you, I'm optimistic.

- Yeah.

Because we asked our students to act in a way that college students have never been asked to act.

And they did it, and they did it with grace.

And that's one of the things, we were on campus all of last year, we never closed the campus, and we were able to do that because we said, 'Okay, here's what you gotta do different, it's gonna be tough, and if you do it, we can stay on campus.'

and they did it.

And that was inspiring to me.

- That is inspiring and I think it's an interesting comment you said, because a lot of people just drill the millennial mindset.

- Yeah.

- And, my daughters are 27, 25, 22, and they're actually a whole lot smarter at their age than I was.

(both laughing) - It's amazing, isn't it?

- It's amazing.

- Yeah the level of, two things, first of all, what, I've actually, my daughter's younger, I've got 8 and 12.

And the things that they're studying and learning today, it's like, "Oh my goodness".

And the other thing that I see in our students is there's a civic mindedness, to them.

That is unlike anything I experienced as I was growing up.

And I think again, it just makes me optimistic about the future, and that became really obvious this last year.

- Yeah, I'm gonna get to Bradley because I have so many questions, but I will say, in the work that I do, or it seems like we're in crisis all the time, running social service agencies and so, I did get to see a lot of people step up to the game, and it was really encouraging to see that.

It was tiring but it was encouraging.

All right, we're gonna get to you, so let's talk about you.

Undergrad from Purdue in engineering, MBA from Northwestern, and then all of a sudden, you just go out to University of Oregon.

(both laughing) How did that come about?

- That's a great question actually.

So, yeah, how did that happen?

I was a student at Northwestern and I worked at Amoco at the time I was getting my MBA and there was a faculty member that I named Paul Hirsch.

And I mean, the short version is, I applied to a bunch of big 10 schools, and out as a favor, I applied to Oregon for Paul Hirsch.

And he's like, 'I know the people out there you'll work great with them, you'll love it, I want you to apply.'

And especially with a PhD, it's really about, can you connect with the faculty, you're gonna work very closely with the faculty and you better be able to connect with them, and Paul knew them well.

And I got a really nice offer from them, and so I had to pull up my Eugene, Oregon.

Where is Eugene, Oregon?

- Right, right, I've never been there.

- It's like a way out there.

And it was a transformational experience, I'm really, really glad I did it.

Thrilled to be back in the Midwest, love it here, but my time out west was very enlightening, I really enjoyed it.

And so I met my wife at the university of Oregon, which is arguably the most important thing I did while I was out there.

- Well it was meant to be then.

- Exactly.

- All right.

So before coming into Bradley, where were you at?

- So almost immediately I was the Dean of the Business School at Butler University in Indianapolis.

I was Dean there for six years, three years, I was at the University of Evansville.

So a couple of different Business Dean roles.

And before then, I was actually at the University of San Diego for much of my career.

And usually it's about February where my wife reminds me that we used to be in San Diego.

(both laughing) - Yeah, this last week, I guarantee she reminded you.

- Its come up a few times, but we love it here.

It's been, the Peoria community has just been fantastic.

- Yeah, I kind of set you up on that question because I really liked Butler and I have a lot of family in Indi.

So how long did it take for you knowing that there was crisis when you came in that to kind of get into the groove?

Because Peoria is a unique town I feel, and I feel like, how did you during that time really get to know people and make those introductions.

- It's interesting, it's a unique town, but it's a very community connected town.

And that actually has not been the challenge that I anticipated it would be during the pandemic.

In fact, a lot of folks will ask, 'What do you think of Peoria?'

Questions like, 'What do you think of the restaurant?'

It's like, I can go to them, I'll let you know.

So, that has been a challenge, but it's amazing how many people have stepped forward to help, to be a part of the community to make us.

We have a great relationship that was solidified in all of this with OSF.

For example, they did a lot of the testing work for us.

They've been our science partners throughout this process.

And again, that crisis, it created some challenges, but also created a need for us to work together as a community.

And you could feel that a lot in this last year.

So it's actually worked out really, really well.

I find this community to be incredibly welcoming.

And we've noticed we live in a development a little bit North in the city called 'Edge wild' and lovely community.

We were there a week and the neighborhood kids show up on bikes at our house.

And my daughter, who is 12 years old, has her best friend on the planet ever here in Peoria.

And that happened within weeks of arriving.

- Oh my goodness!

- And it just speaks to quality of... - That does make you feel good?

- It does.

- Yeah.

- It speaks to the quality of community.

And there's a level of community engagement here that makes it a really special place.

- I feel like that of all of central Illinois.

- Yeah.

- I mean, Peak and an East Peoria in Galesburg.

And there's just so many great towns, and a lot of those people come to Bradley.

- Yeah.

- So I stole this, so I'm gonna have you explain.

So it's, 'After more than a century of holding onto the status quo, the demand for higher education to prove value is surging.

Within the grounds of academia, there is a need for institution centric halls to become student centric classrooms.'

- Yeah.

What does that mean?

- So the it's interesting if I won't go long into this, but just a short history of higher ed.

It's been, if you go back to 1870, Bradley was founded in 1897.

A bunch of universities were founded in the mid 18 hundreds.

So I go back to about 1870.

And if you look at the data from about 1870, till about 2010, it's pretty long run.

There has been, literally if you look at the graph of Roma, it's a constant upward trajectory.

Flattened out a couple of times during the world wars, but never really declined.

Demand has been steady forever.

And as a result, we've kind of developed this mentality in higher ed.

Understandably, given the environment, that if we build it, they will come, because we did, and they did.

And then in 2010, for the first time in over a century, demand actually flattened.

And it started slightly declining.

And we know, because of demographic trends and a bunch of other things, actually the great recession had an impact on this in terms of birth rates and such, we're gonna see a rather significant decline in demand in three to four years.

And now what we have to do is, for over a century, we could build whatever we thought made sense, and the demand was there.

And for the first time, I think in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anybody working in higher education today, we're being encouraged and forced by the market, to be far more student-centric than anything we've had to do in the past.

And I think it's a huge change.

I also think it's a great opportunity.

- What you're saying is you can't, as you're looking forward, as president of Bradley University, you can't do business how you've always done it.

- Absolutely not.

It fundamentally has to change.

And again, that actually, you hear people talk about the enrollment cliff coming in, and then they talk about enrollment getting, the dark ages, blah, blah, blah.

You get all these draconian comments about it.

I actually get excited about it, because it's an opportunity for us to rethink how we operate.

- Yeah.

- And, and to be truly student centric.

And I'll argue there's a big difference between being student concerned, care about them deeply, once they plug into our system, versus being student centric, which is designing the system, to match their needs and interests.

And that's a fundamentally different way of thinking and something that's gonna shape a lot of what we do moving forward.

- I refer to my daughters a lot in a lot of interviews because just from experience, you talk about, and I've heard you talk about, not wanting to just open one door for students, so open many doors for students, in that.

So I go back to one of your daughters and she, thought she wanna do this.

And then she decide to do this.

And then she want... And a lot of kids feel that way, correct?

- Absolutely.

One of the things, so this is, again, when the demand was what it was, and it was a constant, the kind of the traditional model of higher education is we've got these predefined doors, called 'majors', come here, pick one of those doors.

We'll give you the skills you need to open the door, help you open the door, off you go.

What today's students are telling us is wrong model.

We wanna come and discover the door that's right for us.

- Okay.

Explore maybe thousands of doors and maybe find a door, that you've never thought of.

And can you help me create that door, and then don't open it for me, give me the skill sets, I need to open it myself.

And when we do that, it breaks down this concept of major and traditional discipline, and all of that has to get more flexible, to really be able to accommodate what today's students are looking for in their education.

- Is that the, multi-disciplinary?

- It is.

- That's what that is?

- Yeah., yeah.

- Yeah, because I think it only makes sense, especially with where these kids, what they wanna do.

- Yeah.

- It's not because they wanna, jump jobs every one or two years, but I will tell you this, they do want different skill sets, so they always can have a job, - Absolutely - Or a career, however you wanna, or start a business.

- Well, there's a lot of research that talks about the jobs that are available today will be very different than the jobs that are very five years from now.

So if you think you're gonna...

The stability of taking a job and staying with one organization for the next 30, 40 years, just doesn't exist in today's market.

So we do our students a service by helping them build that level of flexibility, adaptability, and that's something we're looking to do more.

- Yeah.

And I read something.

So let me see if we're talking the same thing here.

So my sister was in the arts.

And so, a typical dad comment 20 years ago was, 'You're not gonna make any money doing that.'

But, let's say it's music as an example, you can take that music piece now and there's actual merging into, and integrating into video games and different.

- Exactly.

And we're doing literally just that.

In fact, one of the things, what a great example!

One of our hottest programs, our single fastest growing program is actually game design.

- Isn't it?

- It is.

We have a nationally ranked top five game design program and it is hot.

- Wow.

So, one of the things where we literally, it's an amazing example you just use, 'cause we literally have conversations with our music students about, 'How about designing music for games?'

You get to do what you love.

It connects with another area of discipline that we have some expertise in, and it's getting comfortable crossing those boundaries, and allowing students to do that.

We've got to change our system to make it possible for them to be able to do that.

- Yeah, and so again, I'm just using a million family examples.

My mom was a nurse and, she's 75 now, so it used to be, 'I'm gonna be an RN and then I'm going to just be a nurse forever.'

But now, there are a thousand different ways you can go into the healthcare field, and especially in middle Illinois, here in the Peoria area, - Absolutely.

That's really really cool.

One of the ones we're looking at for example, is healthcare administration, healthcare business.

And it's, it's interesting you'll increasingly see people coming out of nursing, into healthcare administration.

It's a very different skill set.

Great, this isn't an either or, it's a yes end conversation.

- Great.

- How do we let you be an amazing nurse, and give you skillsets, that allow you, to pursue a track in administration, if that's something you're interested in doing?

- It's interesting because one of my mentors, and somebody I respect very highly, Debbie Simon was the first.

- She's one of our trustees, by the way.

- You have.

former CEO of Unity Point and she's retired now, but, she started off as an RN and 41 years I think, she goes through the system almost at every position you can in the hospital, and becomes a CEO, and becomes one of the best CEOs.

I think I've ever been around.

- Fantastic example.

- That was pretty cool.

Switch gears, we on this show, I'm a big advocate for mentors.

And in college, I was thinking about this, college, you have advisors.

- Yes.

- And they're not the same thing.

- Right.

- But I think there's some blurred lines of what that looks like.

My experience of having mentors has really propelled me to be able to be in the position that I'm in.

If I didn't have these mentors, I probably wouldn't be doing all of these different things that I'm doing right now.

Do you agree?

- Yeah.

It's almost like you've taken a glance at our strategic plan, which I don't believe you have, but it's not showing that actually I would like to.

Some of these we're talking about fit right in that.

So one of the things that, we started our plan, strategic plan a little bit different.

Instead of us sitting together in a room, trying to think what makes sense, we actually began by surveying 1600 prospective students.

So what are you looking for in today's higher education environment?

And precisely what you're talking about.

They're looking for mentors, and there's a big difference between mentors and advisors.

Academic advisors help you pick out what class, if there's a complex, if you wanna be an accounting student, for example, there's a very clear curriculum you have to follow on that.

And a good advisor will make sure you do that well.

That's very different, than sitting down with somebody and saying, 'What kind of impact do I wanna have in my life?'

'What do I wanna accomplish as part of my life experience?'

So we're actually gonna be running an experiment this year, around separating those and creating an advising core, and then separately creating a mentoring core.

And making those separate functions and relieving faculty, for example, of that traditional advising functions so that they can be the mentors that they're really excited about and designed to be.

- That is really cool.

Are you looking for mentors outside?

- So we're gonna probably experimenting with both.

So the model that we're looking at is there's two pieces in the strategic plan that we talk about is re conceptualizing the advising function.

And the idea is to bring in professional advisors who do just that.

they're masters of the curriculum.

They understand that.

And especially in the professional fields, if you wanna be a nurse, there are specific things you have to do, a specific classes you have to take, specific things that have to be accomplished.

So experts on that.

And then separately experts in their chosen field.

So maybe I wanna be a nurse, can I talk to immersing faculty about what that looks like?

But then also, a separate core of, we're still working on the term, whether it's life coaches, or mentors, but that's something we're also looking to design, so that we can have conversations around, what's your chosen path?

What do you really wanna accomplish in life?

And then we'll talk about disciplines, and advising.

But until until we have a clear sense of what it is you really wanna accomplish with your life, we shouldn't even be talking about curriculum or advising.

That comes after we've had that conversation.

- I think a lot of times people think of kind of like social service.

Like non-profit, they'll think that, being a president of a university is not really just not necessarily a big business.

It's huge business.

So do you have a COO and a CFO?

And I know a CFO, but, I mean, they've got to be in your right hands at all times.

Especially in this...

I'm gonna call it a disruption.

I don't know if you use that term, but I mean, this is a disruptive time period weather... And you're taking the positive spin, I love that.

But right now you need that COO, CFO, to be able to help you navigate.

- Absolutely.

So my COO, CFO, same person, by the way.

So we have a COO, CFO.

She is one of my biggest strategic partners.

We have two Senior Vice Presidents, one's of academic affairs, and one is the COO/CFO.

She has a really long title by the way.

- How does she do it all?

- Well, she's amazing.

So Cheryl Cox is her name.

One of the things that I get excited about Cheryl, we were looking for a position and we were talking to her, and she doesn't come from higher ed.

She actually comes from private equity.

That's her background.

- I like that.

- And one of my colleagues was like, 'She sounds awesome.

She's gonna do great stuff for us'.

The one weakness is she doesn't come from higher ed.

What I heard was she's got what we need, she's awesome.

One of her strengths is she doesn't come from higher ed.

(both laughing) - I do the same thing.

- That's so funny.

So she thinks differently.

And she looks at our processes, she looks at our systems.

And she's constantly asking, 'Why do we do it this way?'

And she, and our Vice President of Academic Affairs, Walter Saccone, they become great partners.

- I played golf with him too.

- Good golfer by the way.

But what'll happen is there'll be in conversations.

And she'll ask that question and he's great about this is half the time.

I don't know, I can't give a good answer.

(Stephen laughing) So we look at it and decide if we need to do it, or if we should do it differently.

And the other thing that she's been really great about, is, look, we're a not-for-profit, we're mission-driven, but we have budgets, we have financial constraints, and she immediately came in, and started cleaning house on that.

One of the things, when I first arrived, we were talking about deficits.

We were concerned about that.

We've taken care of a lot of that.

More importantly, we weren't talking cashflow.

- That key to a business - Okay, it's key.

So you can't run on deficit and survive.

You run out of cash you're done.

So now we close our books, monthly.

We used to do a quarterly, now it's monthly, and we measure cash weekly.

And one of the beautiful aspects of that, is it's allowed us to be thoughtful about investments.

And when you're not paying attention to your cash, but you're running a deficit, you go into hyper cost cutting mode, without making key investments in areas that allow you to sustain and be successful.

And now that we have a better sense of our cash, we can make investments in areas, that will help us grow and be stronger.

- Yeah, that fresh perspective gives you, I'm guaranteed she's sitting here thinking, you're saying weekly closing.

She knows that day.

- She thinks about it.

I think she thinks about it by the hour.

- Yeah, she could.

That's the asset that you have at your fingertips to be able to say, 'What do we do right here?'

'What's your recommendation right here?'

Because I have to make a decision.

I don't have to make a decision, all the time, very quickly, on some projects, but this bucket needs to be attended to, right now.

- That's right.

And once you understand the cash flow, you can start making decisions on what you can and can't do in ways that are interesting.

So give me an example, Ray LaHood who's on our board.

Great trustee, former secretary of transportation, just phenomenal individual in general.

Ray calls me several months ago.

Ray calls me, says, 'Look, I don't know what you think about federal earmarks.

It really doesn't matter, they're back.

You've gotta play the game.

And if you're gonna play the game, here's the lobby firm and DC you should work with, by the way, they're expensive, and they're not easy to get with, but I'll introduce you and you ought to do it.'

I went to Cheryl and Sidra.

And they're not cheap, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and said, 'Gosh, Cheryl is pretty big expense.

What do you think?'

'That so quick, let's do it.'

We will probably get a couple million dollars of federal aid this year that we would not have gotten otherwise.

I'm not a finance person, but I can do that math.

A couple hundred thousand dollars investment, $2 million return.

That's easy math.

- That's cashflow.

- That's cashflow.

But you gotta know that you can afford the investment if the return is there.

And she's really helped us to develop this discipline about thinking return on investment.

- We've got a short period of time here but, I've had Chris Reynolds on the show.

A great, great man, a very talented man, Bill McDowell on the show.

And, you just have a lot of good people, that work at Bradley.

I think sometimes people forget, or just maybe take for granted the universities here in Peoria.

It's needed.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've got a riches of talent on campus.

And one of the things, we own some of that, by the way.

I think one of the things that I get excited about and wanna be more aggressive about, is becoming more a part of the community.

I often talk about, we are and always will be in Peoria.

This is our home forever.

And we have an obligation and opportunity, every reason in the world to be more community engaged.

And so I think getting people like, great examples, Bill McDowell, Chris Reynolds, more community connected is good for everybody.

- Well, I appreciate you coming on.

It was great, because we talked a couple of weeks ago and I saw you at a mutual friend's house.

And I thought boy we've got a lot to talk about.

There's even more, I wanna talk about, I wanna talk next time about 'Diversity and Inclusion', and a lot of that push, that you are really behind right now.

Some positive things happening, but thank you for coming on.

I'll help you with this community, 'cause I love all of central Illinois.

Another great show with Bradley President, Dr. Steven Standifird.

This is Matt George, another episode, of 'Business Forward'.

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