Working on the High Wire
Several years ago, I was sitting at lunch with a group of college deans as we interviewed a candidate for the position of Vice President for Business Affairs. The candidate asked us what we liked about the current VP who she knew was both liked and respected on campus. I don’t remember what the deans…
Read MoreUnderstanding Budget
Today I decided to try a new way of coming up with a topic for the newsletter – Writing Topic Tarot. No it’s not really a thing, but it’s how I picked today’s topic. A few years ago, one of my ideas for a book was a series of essays about various lessons I have…
Read MoreOnce Upon a Time (Part 2)
Last week, I shared part of the keynote presentation I gave this month at the Professional Development Day presented by the Academic Counselors Association at The University of Texas at Austin. Today, I’ll share the rest. In preparing for this speech and looking up information about stories, I came upon the idea of the monomyth,…
Read MoreOnce Upon A Time (Part 1)
Last week, I had the opportunity to present the closing keynote speech for the Professional Development Day Conference presented by the Academic Counselor’s Association at the The University of Texas at Austin. In preparing for the speech, I had a couple of insights I found interesting, so I thought I’d share the first part of…
Read MoreWhat A Year!
I’ve seen a few people on social media posting their experiences from a year ago – before COVID-19 changed our work and our worlds. I know where I was and what I was doing. On March 9, I talked with my class about the way we might structure class IF we moved to online learning…
Read MoreLearning Lessons
(This essay is, in part, modified from a speech I gave to the SMU Lions Club in 1997.) Over the years I have learned many things, in many ways, and from many people. I learned a great deal about being an effective university administrator from Ron Brown, a former Vice President for Student Affairs at…
Read MoreCold, Hard Leadership
I was scheduled to teach my undergraduate leadership class at Trinity University the evening of September 12, 2001. I didn’t know whether or not students still needed to talk about what had happened the previous day, but I started the class as I usually did asking them about the leadership or lack thereof they had…
Read MoreSnow Days
I wasn’t certain that there would be a newsletter this week. We had intermittent power yesterday, but full power today. And sometimes we have connections to the internet and sometimes we don’t. We’ll see what happens. I grew up in Oklahoma City and we had real snow then. Not often, but I do have a memory of…
Read MoreTime, Money, Space
Finding time. Taking time. Losing time. Wasting time. And that’s just a short list, isn’t it? It’s interesting to think about all of the ways we talk about time. We talk much the same way about money and space, don’t we? It’s no surprise that these may be the most precious resource on a college campus.…
Read MoreConversations That Matter
My first year at SMU was Andrea’s senior year. (Not her real name.) She was a leader on campus and in student government meaning we had a number of conversations over the year we were both on the SMU campus. Once she graduated, she went to graduate school in education and later to Washington, D.C.…
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