Kelly Cherwin 0:03
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast, Ask the Expert edition. I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy, and I'm happy to have Matt Trainum sit in for Andy Hibel while he is out. So thanks Matt for joining us.

Matt Trainum 0:16
It is a pleasure to be here and nice to be on the other side of the table, I get to see what it's like over here.

Kelly Cherwin 0:21
So what are we going to be talking about today?

Matt Trainum 0:23
Well today we have our expert back. We are joined by Gretchen Bataille. And as we talked about last time, Gretchen you just have an amazing career in higher education. Senior Vice President at the American Council of Education, former President of the University of North Texas. You have been at Arizona State, you've been at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Washington State University the University of North Carolina system. I mean it is a wonderful resume. You've been consulting for the last several years both with your own company and with a couple of other spaces. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. It's a treat to have you.

Gretchen Bataille 0:58
Well thank you very much. It's a treat to be here and I'm always eager and willing to talk about leadership. And particularly because today I know you want to talk about women's leadership. I feel I have my own experiences as well as the experiences that I have observed in other women leaders through the years.

Kelly Cherwin 1:17
Fantastic. Well thank you again for joining us. So the question from our reader is, and it's kind of a long question, multi part here. "So, I'm interested in advancing into leadership roles in higher education, but I've found it challenging to break into the field. For women at the entry to mid-management level, would you recommend focusing on career development such as additional training, mentorship or skill building, or should we be applying to leadership positions even if we don't meet all of the listed qualifications? What strategies have you seen work best for women navigating this transition?" Gretchen, I know that's a lot. What are your thoughts on that?

Gretchen Bataille 1:51
Well let me start with the advice I give almost everyone when they say, "Oh, I want to be a president someday." And right now they're an associate professor,not yet a full professor and I'm thinking, "Okay, you've got a long ways to go." And my best advice to you is take advantage of every opportunity you can. And all of these options that you cited make sense, but you do need some kind of a plan. And I know that some coaches advise women in particular to lay out a five-year plan or a 10-year plan, but that kind of strict timetable not only means you often miss opportunities that don't fit into your life calendar or your life calendar changes, as mine did with the death of a husband. You might end up having a pregnancy you didn't plan on. You might have parents to care for and all of a sudden you're feeling defeated because you haven't carried out this plan. And so I think the important thing is take advantage of opportunities. As a young faculty member, if I was asked to serve on a committee or to review a book, I said, "Yes", even though I knew there would be a time commitment and the writing review for choice really didn't count for tenure. But it did get my name out there. It showed people I was willing to do things. It demonstrated that I wanted to be engaged. And I know a lot of advice given to assistant professors, for example, is, "Don't let them make you serve on these committees, devote your time to writing your book for tenure or getting your NSF and NIH grants." And that can be good advice up to a point because if you don't get the grants but then also nobody knows who you are, but about much harder time navigating that progression in your career. And so you can use these experiences to network if you get on a committee meeting with other folks from other departments, meet new colleagues, often outside of your own area. And there's conflicting advice out there really because some coaches do tell you to no, and it's up to you to choose carefully what you will do, but don't opt out of everything.

Matt Trainum 4:12
Gretchen phenomenal, really helpful, as I'm listening to this. And one of the things I'm aware of is the gender element in the question, and I'm wondering about what I as a male might not be perceiving. What is specific for women thinking of advancing, and maybe later after that or entwined in that you can talk a little bit about how as a male in higher ed and leadership roles. I can also be conscious of that difference. I guess I'm trying to figure out what I need to know more about to support someone in the circumstance.

Gretchen Bataille 4:49
That's a really good point, and certainly there's a gender issue. Because very often a search committee wants to be sure they have a woman on it, or they want to be sure they have a person of color on it, or they want to ensure that they just have diversity of every kind. And that means for every one or two white males on that committee, there are a lot of other folks who are also doing the work. And then because they are in lesser numbers in higher ed, they're called on to be on the next search committee, or the next committee to look at student requirements for a major. And so they end up being overworked. That's where they have to learn to say no. You can't do it all. But there are some ways to handle that. I mean, for example, years ago, I worked with a person in the, it was not called the DEI Office at that point, but it was essentially monitoring searches. And some universities used to say you have to have a person of color and a woman on every search committee. Well, that put pressure in some departments, what if you only had two women in the department? They had to be on every search committee. And so what this person did was say you have to be trained to lead fair and equitable searches to be on that search committee, and every search committee requires two of those people. Or, she made it important that a lot of white men did the training. And so you didn't have to be a female to be on that committee. You needed to be a person who had the training to know how to recognize what a fair job description might look like. I think there are some ways to make changes in your processes. Things like job sharing. More and more couples, partners need two jobs in one place. And one of the things I did when I was a department chair way back was hire 2 women to into one position. And people were shocked. They said, well,that's unconventional and when are they going to get tenure? And I said, well, they will get tenure during the same six-year period, seventh year promotion as a half time person. And we managed to give them each 51% so they would have benefits. You have to be strategic. You have to be very careful about how you do some of those things. But there are some creative ways that you can recognize that women often have more of a problem. Extending the tenure clock, that's just been around for a long time. But when I started in the profession, there was no extension of a 10-year clock. I mean, I went back to work with a one-month-old baby because I had to go back to work. Nobody was going to give me six months off. And I don't say that to say we should do that again. I do it to say there's work that has been done and good work that's been done. There's probably more yet to do.

Matt Trainum 7:59
Wonderful. Creativity, flexibility for those in management, around that fantastic. Kelly, what are you thinking about all this?

Kelly Cherwin 8:05
I actually want to circle back to what you were saying at the beginning about encouraging women to kind of seize the opportunity to kind of get out of their comfort zone and join a committee and say yes when they should. But then you also referenced a lot of people kind of, and I don't know if you want to call the peanut gallery, but this person said this and this person said this. How should a female kind of figure out who can be in their circle to help them? this question mention a mentor? Did you have a mentor? Do you advise how to find a person or people to kind of help you make the right decisions on knowing when to say yes to certain committees or picking up this, maybe this extra assignment or whatever it might be?

Gretchen Bataille 8:47
I've been fortunate. I've had mentors and, to be honest, mostly men because when I started in the profession, there were very few senior women. When I started at Iowa State, there were a number of couples, married male female couples, in the department. The men were on tenure track. The women were all adjunct, and in many cases, the women's credentials were certainly equal to or better than their husbands. But the men were hired and then the women were hired as an afterthought so that they would have a job teaching four sections of freshmen English. It was a pretty brutal environment for some of these women. I learned early on to pay attention to what was going on. And in terms of a mentor, I won't name names, but I had an incredible mentor at Arizona State University when I was a department chair and then an associate dean. And the way he helped me was because of his own honesty in dealing with what was going on. And one of my frustrations when I chaired the English department was we had all these adjuncts and this gets really down into the weeds, but they would get hired by semester. So if they were hired for the fall, they would have a full load, but they couldn't get benefits because they weren't hired for the year. And so I proposed to him, I want to hire these people for the year and their offer letter will say, if there are not classes available for you in the spring, your appointment will end after the first semester. And there always were classes. We would hire them for semester and then we would rehire them for the spring. And that way we wouldn't pay benefits at all. They had no health benefits. They had no contributions to retirement. And this person said, that sounds like a really humane way to do hiring. Let's do it. So we did it, it worked. And then when I became associate dean under this person, he said, I want you to do this for the whole college now. I want you to figure out how we're going to be a more humane college in dealing with our colleagues. And it costs money. And that's okay.

Kelly Cherwin 11:02
That could be a good tagline, a humane college, humane hiring, I love that. So you do not have to name names obviously of your mentor if you don't want to, but because we do get this question a lot, how do you find a mentor? How do you find someone that you can trust to look up to?

Gretchen Bataille 11:18
Great question. I think you have to discover. It's a process of discovery. Watch their behavior. What do they do? In that same position, I was responsible for setting salaries for department chairs. I was doing all the personnel work and there were some department chairs I like better than others. We all experienced that, right? And yet the dean said, what is your list of requirements for salary increases? Well, it had to do with success at hiring. It had to do with grant success and had to do with updating curriculum. We had this whole list of expectations for department chairs. He said, "okay, does it say anywhere on your list? I like him or don't like him. Or, she's my lunch buddy?" No, those things aren't on the list. So my recommendations followed his guidance and I thought, boy this is how I want to be treated. I want to be treated and evaluated based on criteria that are reasonable, sensible, measurable, and actionable.

Kelly Cherwin 12:29
Gretchen, did you have other strategies that you want to address?

Gretchen Bataille 12:33
Well, there were a lot of questions there, yes, and I would have wanted to talk about it. It depends what you're aiming to do. I mean, if you're a faculty member, wanting to be a department chair, it's very different from being a dean who wants to be a president or a director of a research facility. And I think you have to learn more than your job. You have to learn about fundraising. Maybe you volunteered to go with the advancement person to meet with a donor who you're hoping might give money to your department. And you maybe don't say anything except explain what the money might be used for, but you're observing how advancement works. And so you're learning about fundraising. Public relations, maybe you get a chance if you're in D.C. to visit one of your legislators. And because the team is there, you've got folks on the ground and maybe they will take you with them someplace. Those are all skills that you need in these positions as you move up. You can't just have your little set of skills as a faculty member and think that those are going to carry you through. I also think if there's a conference or convention in your area, like an AGB, APO, ACE, ASCU, CIC, any of those, you may not be doing anything at that conference. It's great if you can present or be on a panel. But if it's close by, pay the registration fee yourself, go to it, drive home every night. But get that experience, meet those people, find out what people are talking about at the national level, so that you're really enhancing your skills. The question about applying for positions, for which you lack qualifications, there you have to really do some self-examination because you may have some skills that are transferable to the job requirements. And you can address those in a cover letter. So you may never have had authority over budget creation, but maybe you've had a lot of experience in keeping within a budget or raising external funds to meet budgetary needs. And so you have to find ways to demonstrate that given the opportunity, you'll be able to handle these new skill requirements that are in the job. But if you're really not qualified for a position, don't waste your time, don't waste the time of the search committee. You don't want to be viewed as someone who applies for everything takes advantage of references. I can't tell you how many times I think, you know, and I often talk with you, will you be my reference for this? And I sometimes have to say, but you're not qualified for the position. You know, have you thought about something else? And so you have to be clear about your own strengths and your own areas in need of improvement. I don't want to say weaknesses, there are just things you haven't learned yet. And not just be out there applying for everything.

Matt Trainum 15:15
I hear a lot of intention, a lot of thoughtfulness, a lot of personal reflection, that goes into that. Gretchen, that's a great list. Thanks for sharing that.

Kelly Cherwin 15:24
Thank you, Gretchen. Thank you so much for being our guest expert today. We appreciate your thoughts. If you have a question for Gretchen or any of our experts, please email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs. com or message us on X, @higheredcareers. Thank you both for joining us today and we'll see you next time.