Andy Hibel 0:03
In January of 2024, our producer, Mike Walker, and I had the pleasure of being in Louisville for a conference and taking a short drive over to Lexington to meet with my former Ph.D. advisor, Dr. John Thelin. Dr. Thelin is a historian and currently an emeritus professor and still resides in Lexington, where he taught at the University of Kentucky for many years. I had the pleasure of being with Dr. Thelin for one academic year in 1993 and 1994, and found myself having a bunch of questions for Dr. Thelin and what he thought about his career in higher education in general. The time that Mike and I got to spend with Dr. Thelin was about an hour and a half to two hours, and we recorded the whole conversation and it really told a story of not only his career but of higher education over the past 30 to 40 years. For me, it also told a bit of my own story that every career has its own story and its own path, including my own. And to me, being able to tell Dr. Thelin's story with a little bit of my story is important. I actually came to Dr. Thelin in that academic year, having just completed a master's in higher education and a law degree previous to that. I was kind of searching for my career path and becoming a plan giving officer. And being at Indiana University in that academic year really taught me a lot. Not only about the history of higher education and the current state of higher education, but it also gave me some thought about what higher education was about to become and what the path that I was going to take would look like. Now, in my path, what we didn't anticipate that year was when I finally found my position and started getting on my way in my career, another path opened up and that was HigherEdJobs. Seeing Dr. Thelin reminds me of actually the similarity of the paths that I followed. Most importantly, that academia is this unique place that transcends generations and transcends what society expects of it. Now we're just going to release these episodes as we kind of see them shaping up. What we really hope for is that listeners start learning a little bit more about where academia has been and where we are now, and maybe thinking about where you want to push the needle in the future. Dr. Thelin's perspective is unique and also amazingly thoughtful. I hope you enjoy these conversations as much as we enjoyed having them with them. Enjoy listening.

What would you hope from a historical analysis for a higher ed historian who is starting his academic career or academic career today? What would you hope in the next generation that's coming out now? What would be some ideas that you might say I really hope for our community to find?

Dr. John Thelin 3:03
I would hope that there would be some increased acknowledgment of the importance of higher education and courses of study that do not necessarily promise or make a false promise of an immediate economic payoff. Some rediscovery that in the course of a lifetime, that the ability to critically analyze, to read, to discuss, to regain conversational skills, which I see as I observe vicariously undergraduates, they've lost some of that, and I'd like to see them regain that. In addition to whatever preparation or advancement any student wishes in terms of their long term professional goals. But I would like to regain those civil, civil society dimensions of being good citizens, good conversationalists, reasonably well-read, good listeners.

Andy Hibel 4:07
Any other hopes? Before we move on.

Dr. John Thelin 4:10
I hope that all institutions get to celebrate their Tercentenary anniversary.

Andy Hibel 4:16
There's going to be a lot of Googling after that answer.

Dr. John Thelin 4:19
Well, that's why they need a general education.

Andy Hibel 4:24
So I want you to feel perfectly comfortable. This is meant to be a celebration of you. Thank you. Not a congressional hearing.

Dr. John Thelin 4:33
Well, you know. Believe it or not. Believe it or not, you know, you and I and Mike, we might have done just as well. But. But take heart. There was one worse presidential congressional session in the early 1990s. The president of Stanford, a world-famous biologist, spent time at the Food and Drug Administration. He was being grilled by the senator from Michigan, Dingell, about abuse of research grant funding. One was on the Stanford yacht. It had a custom-made toilet seat in the executive commode. And using federal research grants. His response on national television, he said, Senator, if you just give me 15 minutes on live television, I will explain to you indirect cost recovery on federal grant funding. Cut. He retired the next week.

Andy Hibel 5:35
It's not how you want your career to count. No, no, no. So for this next topic, which we've kind of loosely called for our conversational purposes, the genesis of a career. I feel like I need to remind you a little bit about myself. So in 1993 and 1994, we had a different relationship than what we have today. Yeah, I was your advisor. You were my advisor here at Indiana University. I was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in higher education. And in that process of that year, I was there for only a year, did not finish my degree. I got a job offer at Penn State and was working through that job offer while I was your student. And you were not only a great advisor from the perspective of being a student and what I studied, you were also a tremendous mentor and supporter of my career. And that opportunity. And one of the things which I'm sure expressed more importantly than anything else, I'm forever grateful for. We all need somebody who is there without self-interest to advise us on key moments in our lives. And it's never been lost on me that I was one of many, that you have sat over your career seeing many, many folks like myself, having their careers born from the spot by which you you say goodbye to them from your professional perspective. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people feel similar to me who express their gratitude in that way. So I want to ask you some questions about that. I think for those folks who are now listening to a higher ed historian and they're starting their careers or are really thinking about starting a career in higher education, what would be some of your common threads for all students who you've worked with at this stage that you would say, This is what I saw after all these years that everybody kind of goes through?

Dr. John Thelin 7:41
One is that as a college student or, let's say, even earlier in high school or whatever, you're going to experience a number of things such as courses, teachers, classmates. You don't know at the time that they are making a difference. You are acquiring insights and sometimes the ability to reject certain ideas or to say, This is not for me or this is. But the point is, we know in some range, for example, we clicked because we both understood that neither of us was likely to have an NBA career. Oh, I know that your classmates called you Tree and mine called me Kareem. But there are skills and aptitudes and also all the people, the individuals and kinds of people that you interact with that does not make sense and it is not predictable at the time. But these will be influential and important and it will make sense in retrospect. But I also think that there is among people who are conscientious and are concerned, they acquire a resilience where adversity, disappointments, setbacks, or unexpected situations, they're able to roll with those and to constantly appreciate the lessons good and hard that eventually come together. I mean, for example, I think many people who end up being very, very good at what they do and as good citizens, good spouses, good parents, they could not have predicted that path. So it will make some sense in retrospect. But, in fact, many of those essential associations and skills, you're not sure how important they are, but they end up maybe more important, you know, that the required English literature course that you had to take actually may have helped. Well, let me give one quick example. Our classmate. She went on to be a major science writer for The New York Times, and I think she was an English major. She had gone on a job interview in New York City. And just by chance, she took an issue of Scientific American and rolled it up and carried it with her with her umbrella. It so, impressed the editor of this magazine said, Oh, you can write about this. So there is this good-natured sense of serendipity, but also of learning from adversity and setbacks. And since there's no visual side to our interview, I can't show you or the audience my collection of rejection letters on articles and books or whatever. Yet one learns from them.

Andy Hibel 10:36
It's funny, it just reminded me of a couple of quick things. One of my favorite things to say to folks who I collaborate with is that one of the most important ingredients of success is failure. And if you have failure, what you learn from failure and where you adjust the recipe to find success, that's part of the process. The hardest part is you have to be willing to put yourself out there and allow yourself to fail. Yes, not in big, glorious ways, but in safe, measured, well-reasoned ways. I think that's so important. And I chuckle because you were the ending point of my academic career. I had been in college for nine years. At the end of the year, I spent with you. I remember my dad at that point, probably for the two years after I'd graduated law school, I went on to get my master's with you, just saying, Why are you still in college? Why are you still doing this? What? What is it that you're hoping to gain by doing this? I think he was just at the point where I got the first full-time job. I was hired for the job, but he was just delighted I had gotten out of college. I'm thankful for my parents having the patience with me to see my plan out and see where it would go and allow me to make these choices.

Dr. John Thelin 12:00
I used to waste a lot of time watching movies, but they actually pay off. Let me give one example. There was a movie with Dustin Hoffman called Marathon Man, and he was what's called an eighth-year graduate student at Columbia. And he can't afford to live near the campus. So he takes the subway off to some distant borough. And he came up out of the subway and the biggest group of juvenile delinquents, the gang, they never touched him. They never harassed him. And one day he asked them why so? Well, you're 29 years old, and you're still in school. You're absorbing a suffering that we could never match. But serious observation, if there were a single insight I'd have, is that if one thinks back on your own experience, there were times when one was really down or uncertain or struggling, and it could be a professor or a supervisor or whatever who takes time to talk to you. And it makes a difference. And I can document that in a linear, direct way, but it's an undeniable connection and I think the message they left me as I would then proceed and have some good fortune. Payback. Now it's your turn to take on that role. And that's what I love about having been a professor and teacher. And I think you captured it very, very thoughtfully.

Andy Hibel 13:30
And if there's faculty out there who are looking to acquire new skills, if this is one that you don't have, I can't tell you how much of an impact it will have on the lives of those folks who make it matters.

Dr. John Thelin 13:46
Yeah, you make it. You can, and you will make a difference, with thoughtfulness, It's vague. I can't empirically document it. But I believe that.

Andy Hibel 13:57
For me, as I have an opportunity to do things like that, what I sometimes feel almost guilty about because what I gain from it, working with a younger professional who is interested in the same things that I'm interested in, and being able to with just compassion and understanding, work with them through whatever it might be. I believe as a human being, I get so much more from that than than I should. But I do. So, yeah, I'm a little bit more pragmatic of a question because I think one of the more interesting parts about the genesis of careers that you've seen, I think you've seen a good number on both the faculty and the administrative side. I think you touched on some stuff earlier. I'm not sure it's going to be in this part of the podcast, but pragmatically, what do you think the differences would be from the start of the students that you've worked with, with a faculty career and with an administrative career, that you've had to tap into different resources to offer to them?

Dr. John Thelin 15:05
An interesting change? Yeah, in the last, say, 20 years is that it used to be that one would think that the faculty career was going to be more interesting, more chance for exploration. Curiosity. Yeah, innovation. In many ways. I think that's flip-flopped that in in some ways there have been more opportunities for innovation and making a difference in administrative roles. And so often what I recommend to graduate students is to consider a professional career in which perhaps you teach part-time or as an adjunct, but that your real contributions might be in your administrative path.

Andy Hibel 15:51
That's awesome. Good. I agree with you on that.

Dr. John Thelin 15:54
You know, it's undeniable.

Andy Hibel 15:57
So what I want to highlight for future conversations is the very last question I was going to be asking about disabilities and accommodations. And I think one of the things and why I've been crazy to want to do this with you face to face, our younger child was born with a significant hearing loss. I've never wanted to do this over Zoom or a phone call with you because I know for you this is so much easier to do it this way.

Dr. John Thelin 16:33
Although, as my Bluetooth and my department of rehab hearing aid, actually the gains are incredible but I'm so glad that you brought this topic up and did you want to talk a little?

Andy Hibel 16:50
We could talk about why I wanted to just say to you it's more of a first, a personal reflection that as Elizabeth and I have gone through, it, I've talked about you. I'm like the weight because I have this, and I've had this disability I have to present my entire career. And I think the way that you've always... I can't repeat the words you used to describe Dr. Ikenberry, but very similarly with grace, with dignity, with respect. You've worked through, as long as I've known you, the needs that you have with your hearing without making it a big to do. And I've always been impressed by that and you.

Dr. John Thelin 17:30
The strong American ethos. People want to do well. They want to be part of things. They want to succeed in it. For myself, a lot of it was simply the absence of technology. There was no technological assistance. So at the age of five because of a nerve loss. There was not even one thing that happened in California's incredible state. They happened to have a very, dedicated civil service, which is one of the most underappreciated tiers of professional work. And the counselor got my case by chance. He followed through, and he was getting ready to go to graduate school, University of Iowa in the conservatory and piano. And he was working as a counselor. And he persisted and he said, there are going to be some innovations that in time will be available to you. The other thing was that my mother, who's a strong reader and really emphasized school, she took me to adult evening classes on lip reading. So I like most people, like people who during World War II, they lost hearing in the defense plants working or whatever. So here I am, like at age 11. And, it was a tough loss. And she, you know, I know you could be doing something else on Tuesday evening, but we're going to go through this. I had a teacher who agreed with her and persisted. And so there's a quiet persistence. And you don't want publicity about this. The hardest determinant, though, is that sometimes with some disability or whatever, you learn to cope. And my problems, I wanted to fake it in the light. I could speak better than I could comprehend, which is in a debate. You've got to go first. But it also would mean, for example, in high school I did not fit the profile of, let's say, for example, class officers, but I was president of my junior class. I was president of the student body my senior year. And in large part because I had one delivery and I learned a gift of gab. I also probably speak too long and I interrupt as a way because I don't have to hear. But there are going to be some situations and you realize if I were to pursue this role or whatever, I think the obstacle would be a bit much. I mean, for example, I think it would be very hard for me to be a full time college administrator, a university administrator. You just miss too much. The other thing is you talked about how professors, including myself, have assisted you and other students. My students have been great. They always accommodated me. I had a focus on delivery and they understood that at a seminar table, which meant that I could focus on Judas sitting in front of me in the Last Supper. But I would miss some of the minor disciples at the end. But they were accommodating. And that shows a theme of interdependence of students and faculty. You both shape the experience.

Andy Hibel 21:01
That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. For somebody who is out there listening with that, I can just tell you as a student, it was never hard to want to do it and make life easier for you.

Dr. John Thelin 21:15
Thank you. It is interesting. One of my closest colleagues, just retired, is the head of rehab counseling. He was from Long Island. He had gone to Wisconsin for graduate school. He was at Michigan. And I got the state certificate. And I know a lot of employers said no, not I'm glad someone wanted it but I know this network of counselors and I go and I stop in and see them and keep in touch. And so it's another example of this interdependence within a campus community.

Mike 22:01
We hope you've enjoyed listening to our conversation with Dr. John Thelin. We'll be back with two more episodes in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or thoughts on this or any other episode, please email us at Podcast at Higher ed Jobs dot com or reach out to us on X @higheredcareers. Thanks again for listening. We look forward to talking soon.