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“The need for us to lead with love is more profound today than it has ever been,” Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of Austin Community College District, said.
Lowery-Hart delivered the nationally recognized Dallas Herring Lecture on Tuesday, where he challenged community college leaders that transforming higher education requires loving students to success.
Known for being the “love president,” Lowery-Hart discussed strategies for community college leaders to implement love as a guiding principle, which entails intentional, courageous, and systemic leadership.
But what does that look like practically? For starters, it’s reimagining what leading with love means.
“Leading with love isn’t just about the warm fuzzies, although they can be fun and important,” Lowery-Hart said. “It is about building love through structures, data, accountability, budgets, and plans to activate love – not just talk.”
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The Dallas Herring Lecture turns 10
National community college leaders have delivered the Dallas Herring Lecture since 2015. Tuesday’s event marked the 10th lecture since its inception.
The lecture honors the late W. Dallas Herring – the “father” of the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) – and is hosted by North Carolina State University’s College of Education and the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (Belk Center).
“I am convinced that North Carolina’s future depends in large measure upon the kind of educational opportunities we afford her children today.”
W. Dallas Herring
Herring penned those words in 1955 to then North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges.
“This may seem obvious to those of us for whom the words economic mobility and workforce development are common phrases, but for Herring, who wrote this nearly 70 years ago, it was rather prophetic – not to mention controversial,” Dr. A.J. Jaeger, executive director of the Belk Center, said during her opening remarks.
Emily Thomas/EdNC
Jaeger said Herring recognized that expanding educational access and improving pathways for all North Carolinians would result in a stronger workforce, a stronger community, and a stronger economy.
But Herring’s story was marked by both triumphs and flaws.
Jaeger pointed out that Herring held troubling views on segregation earlier in his career.
“He let the discourse of the day shape his views rather than the voices he served. While we cannot gloss over Herring’s flaws – and must acknowledge and recognize our own faults – we celebrate his willingness to learn from his mistakes, and to lead with astonishing acuity, perseverance, and courage.”
Dr. A.J. Jaeger
Past keynote speakers were invited to attend the 10th anniversary.
Jaeger recognized the past lecturers in the crowd by noting their collective accomplishments, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, two White House Champions of Change, as well as an appointment to the National Council for the Humanities.
“Their expertise, their service, and their vision for community colleges have left an incredible mark on us all,” Jaeger said.
This year, more than 1,500 people registered to attend virtually and in person, joining from 36 states from Hawaii to Maine as well as three other countries. Twenty North Carolina community colleges hosted watch parties, and all 58 community colleges were represented during Tuesday’s event.
During opening remarks, Jaeger pointed to empty chairs situated in the front row, representing the 14 community college presidents from western North Carolina. Those presidents serve communities impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Helene.
These institutions, some of whom have endured significant loss and damage in their communities, have served as hubs during recovery efforts from hosting emergency personnel to setting up makeshift shelters on their campuses.
‘Understanding Maria’
During his keynote address, Lowery-Hart said the journey to transformation starts with understanding “Maria.”
Maria is the typical college student and looks like the demographics that most communities represent. She is a woman of color, 26 years old, raising 1.2 kids, and working two part-time jobs. Maria is also a first-generation college student going to school part-time.
“And she is the hope of our community, the hope of our country,” Lowery-Hart said. “Yet we are not designed for her.”
The “we” Lowery-Hart is referring to are the community colleges across the country that serve some of the most diverse student populations.
In North Carolina, those individuals represent over 600,000 students across 58 community colleges who are working toward either high school diplomas, short-term workforce credentials, certificates, and degrees – including university transfer degrees.
Lowery-Hart said community colleges often ask the “Marias” of their campuses to shift their entire world to align with the institution.
But it’s not just the “Marias” of these institutions that Lowery-Hart is concerned about. He’s also worried about the students who aren’t enrolled, the students missing from these institutions. It’s that face that doesn’t have a name that is missing, he said.
“Imagine what the world could look like if we saw our students – both those that are in our presence and those that should be – for the humans they are and build systems and bureaucracies for who they need us to be, rather than demand they shift.”
Dr. Russel Lowery-Hart
To illustrate his point, Lowery-Hart asked the audience to imagine receiving a call from a family member, one they loved deeply, and they were in trouble. He then asked, “What would you do when you got that phone call?”
“You know what you would do,” he said. “Maria is calling you, and our bureaucracies aren’t picking up the phone.”
A philosophy of love
Lowery-Hart’s leadership philosophy is influenced by scholar and philosopher Bell Hooks – particularly her book “All About Love.”
Hooks defines love as actions that openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.
To further drive home his point, Lowery-Hart showed a clip from CBS Evening News’ On the Road with Steve Hartman that highlights what he says we can all learn from a 4-year-old.
The segment features Alabama’s Austin Perine, a 4-year-old turned “superhero” who’s made it his mission to show up and show love by feeding people experiencing homelessness.
Perine’s example, Lowery-Hart said, exposes a failure in higher education – urging that institutions must transition from convenings that talk about transformation and double down on doing it.
“The doing is love. The talking about is just rhetoric.”
Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart
Transformational leadership
Before becoming chancellor of Austin Community College District, Lowery-Hart served as president of Amarillo College in Amarillo, Texas.
From his time at the two colleges – both in areas with strikingly different economic realities – Lowery-Hart said he has learned that people are people.
“Rural and urban, those students still need the same advocacy that you offer in your institutions,” he said.
After a decade of being in Amarillo, living and building a philosophy of deep commitment to students and their success, Amarillo College tripled its graduation rates, dramatically increased completion rates, and won the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.
Both institutions share something in common, he said, and that’s the courage to admit when something is not working and to seek a new model of execution.
But leading transformation is hard, Lowery-Hart remarked, and leading with love takes more courage and deeper commitments to students, faculty, staff, and colleagues.
“Leading with love will only expose the deeper fissures that exist within our institutions, rather than be the salve that hides it.”
Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart
During the inaugural Dallas Herring Lecture 10 years ago, Dr. Ken Ender commented that higher education institutions of today were not sufficient for the challenges of tomorrow. The tomorrow Ender described is here today, Lowery-Hart said, and “it requires a new framework for leadership.”
That framework has three parts: changing culture, changing impact, and changing communication.
Changing culture
The culture work starts with loving students to success, and the initial step is really listening to students.
Lowery-Hart set out to listen by engaging secret student shoppers.
Through multiple conversations, he discovered that most students’ definition of the perfect college didn’t have to do with equipment or shiny buildings.
“Our students just wanted a college full of people who cared about them and would be willing to help them,” he said.
Lowery-Hart said the “good old days” tropes in higher education — ones like if student were just better prepared or worked less — tend to stifle student success.
Shifting culture means leaders will need to help employees know and understand the students they have, Lowery-Hart said, rather than the students they wished they had or thought they had.
Once you listen to students, you can then evaluate the data that explains their experiences with your institutions, Lowery-Hart said, and then the next step becomes building a clear theory of change.
Austin Community College’s theory of change is “if a student can have a strong start in systems that help them enroll full-time while we’re meeting their basic needs in a culture of belonging and purpose, then she will complete.”
A theory of change, Lowery-Hart said, must be built into budgets, structures, organizational charts, and job descriptions.
“When the theory of change becomes real instead of a marketing strategy, the warm fuzzies of love disappear real quick,” he said. “When colleges understand that the theory of change is actionable, that it’s based on predictive analytics and the student voice, the culture will start to shift in really powerful ways.”
The “perfect college” from the perspective of Austin Community College students.
The perfect college is one that:
- Is full of people that have the courage to admit when something isn’t working.
- Has compassion to see students for who they are instead of the challenges they bring with them.
- Finds it joyful to serve students rather than a burden of inconvenience.
- Finds a way to get to a yes rather than simply accepting the answer is a bureaucratic no.
Changing impact
Impact building means leaders must ensure that data is actually reaching the goal, Lowery-Hart pointed out, and that starts with data summits. It’s critical for every employee to have access to data and to understand how to use it to improve their work.
And college leaders must also remember that iteration and transformation take time, he said, but it does get easier.
It took Amarillo College two years to integrate to eight-week courses, 18 months to scale tutoring in the top 26 enrolled classes, and nine months to scale co-requisite courses at 100%.
At Austin Community College, Lowery-Hart is empowering employees to reimagine what the college looks like. Two hundred colleagues are involved in cross-collaboration teams, focusing on making the theory of change actionable and real.
But there’s a catch.
No deans or higher are involved in the cross-collaboration teams.
Lowery-Hart said colleges often cut out faculty and staff — those who see students on the frontlines — from these types of projects, but he takes the opposite approach.
“Our job as leaders is to reconfigure the power dynamic and go all in on our colleagues who can save us from ourselves,” he said.
Changing communication
The final piece of the transformation is communication.
The challenges colleges face require strong, clear, frequent communication plans that address the obstacles within colleges and their theories of change. One lesson Lowery-Hart said he’s learned is that organizational charts are not communication plans.
“In the absence of information from the CEO, employees will fill in the gaps with rumors, conjecture, speculation, and fear, he said. “Emails are not communication strategies. Our colleagues and our students deserve direct communication from us.”
Every month Lowery-Hart conducts town halls. That looks like traveling to campuses, meeting one-on-one, learning what employees’ hopes and dreams are.
Changing outcomes for students, Lowery-Hart said, will be the intention for culture, commitment to impact of our actions, and communication.
In his closing remarks, Lowery-Hart centered the conversation once more on leading with love.
“Many of us believe that to speak of love with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived as weak or irrational,” he said. “Leading with love seems to challenge the fundamental notions of academe, and I’m asking you to accept that challenge.”
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Bringing it home to North Carolina
Following the keynote, two North Carolina Community College presidents offered responses: Wake Technical Community College President Dr. Scott Ralls and Piedmont Community College President Dr. Pamela Senegal.
Ralls reflected on the charge that the late W. Dallas Herring gave: “We must take the people and carry them as far as they can go within the assigned function of the system.”
Ralls called it a heartfelt love letter to a state that had long struggled economically.
In the 1950s, North Carolina ranked among the poorest in the nation. Nearly 75 years later, North Carolina is recognized as an “economic powerhouse.” Ralls called the state a leader in technology and job creation – a place where individuals and companies flock to and thrive.
But amidst the success, Ralls cautioned about overlooking the “forgotten people” or the “Marias” of postsecondary institutions, reminding the audience of the disparities that still exist.
Drawing from his experiences at Wake Tech, Ralls described how the college has continued to forge new partnerships and collaborations, helping to rally around the communities the college serves. The college has increased the percentage of students from economically vulnerable areas in the county from 17% to 22% since 2021.
Ralls urged community college leaders to confront the challenging realities – saying when they uncover uncomfortable truths, not to simply put the rock back and turn their attention elsewhere.
“For those of us in leadership roles within community colleges, the demands of courage and culture can feel daunting,” Ralls said. “Yet, I have found reassurance in the belief that strategy, courage, and culture are not solely the responsibility of those occupying the largest offices; rather, they are reflected in the spirit and commitment of our entire institution.”
Piedmont Community College is a rural-serving institution north of Durham near the Virginia border.
Senegal said being situated in a rural community has taught her that people never forget how you make them feel, and it’s important to get it right the first time. Secret shoppers, Senegal said, are a great way to understand how your institution engages with students.
But Senegal has also faced another reality being a rural-serving institution, and that is, “the cavalry ain’t coming.”
“The other way to think about that is that resources are extraordinarily limited in our rural communities,” Senegal said. “Being innovative and having creative partnerships are absolutely essential to serving our students and to meeting their needs.”
The work, Senegal said, comes down to three things: people, practices, and partners.
Senegal went on to discuss the various partnerships, including her institution’s partnership between the system office and the Belk Center, to help with strategic planning – a resource Senegal is thankful to have.
Piedmont Community College found through their strategic planning process that they needed to create a director of student engagement role and carved out money to do so. That person then helped the college restructure their food pantry, eliminating additional requirements and bureaucracy that was preventing students from accessing the food they needed.
All of this – the people, practices, and partners – is anchored in what Senegal calls an ethic of care.
“There are over 600,000 (community college) students across the state. There are 3.7 million potential students within rural communities that are counting on us to show up and to remind them that we care.”
Dr. Pamela Senegal
You can watch the full 2024 Dallas Herring Lecture here.
