Kelly Cherwin 0:02
Welcome to the Higher Ed Jobs podcast. I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy, and we're happy to have Leah Jackson back today with us as our guest co-host. Thanks, Leah, for stepping in.

Leah Jackson 0:12
Thanks for having me back.

Kelly Cherwin 0:13
we're also happy to have a previous guest back, Lisa Jasinski, and we're going to be taking a little different approach today we are going to talk about careers in higher ed, so on higher ed jobs, we obviously focus a lot on you know, finding a job, your job search, managing careers. And we have series called Higher Ed Careers. So this kind of goes a little bit into the career aspect. So, Lisa, can you explain a little further about your work in strategic plan development for your university and how someone might craft a career in strategic initiatives or planning in higher education? So basically, just kind of give us a little background on what you do, what kind of goes all into the strategic planning.

Lisa Jasinski 0:52
Sure. So, you know, you might think because I'm a strategic planner,I had this clear destination in mind and I had a carefully mapped out process and I was going to, go from 1 to 2 to three. But my career has not been nearly that linear. And my experience is that most people who work in some aspect of higher ed planning, we all got here in a really different way. Sometimes I think of myself, my go to metaphor is thinking a little bit about being a midwife for the University of Texas at San Antonio and our hopes and dreams. So really, I think if you kind of play that metaphor out, what it means is that I work with really talented and amazing leaders and colleagues at levels of the institution. And what I help them do is I help them to craft a vision of where we might go in five, ten, 25 years, the decisions that we make in developing a strategic plan really have long consequences. What I love about my job is I find it deeply creative and collaborative and really it's such great fun to work with different people, to come up with a vision that's going to animate the work that we do together. and just personally, I love feeling like I'm part of something that's bigger than myself. And I think that's what a good strategic plan does. I think there's probably some traits that I have as a person that make me a good strategic planner. I tend to be pretty organized. I'm also pretty determined and dogged and I think strategic planning because it can feel a little bit amorphous and squishy. You have to be the kind of person who's going to keep fighting for and pushing momentum on something that might, you know, get stalled or might kind of fall by the wayside when an institution has a more urgent or pressing crisis to attend to. But I think when I think about how I got here and I look back in hindsight, think there's maybe three or four things that I did that I think made me a better strategic planner. But I didn't know at the time that this is where it might lead. So the first thing was I was really fortunate in my career to have opportunities to do broad kind of cross campus cross-functional projects. And this was everything from working with faculty to revise a gen ed curriculum, you know, kind of understanding what different departments or what different people thought about what general education should be. I worked on building renovation project, so I had to kind of balance the needs of budget and construction and faculty hopes and dreams and the timeline. And that was, you know, set by our board of trustees. And even in my institution's own COVID response, just kind of beginning to think about institutions from lots of different angles and lots of different perspectives. But I think in some ways the ability sometimes to see a bigger picture or to see how all the various components fit in. I think that's made me a better planner because it helps me recognize that institutions really are lots of little parts that add up to something bigger and I think that that vantage point has been really helpful. The second thing I did, I really worked to become a skilled facilitator, and so much of what I do on a campus is helping people have better conversations. So I think about 15 years ago I did a facilitators training course, and really since then I have been playing in that space. I've been trying new things, I've been trying to imagine new ways for people to come together and learn together. I've gotten better at asking questions that really solicit moments of insight and revelation. But that's something that it's a skill set I use all the time. Whether I'm talking to five or six people or 500 people. And I would say another thing that's really helpful as a planner is that I keep working to cultivate a more strategic mindset and I try to keep an eye on a horizon that's always kind of further out than I can comfortably grasp. And when you're asking an institution to make decisions that are going to impact its future for the next, you know, 30 or 40 years, a campus building is likely going to be in use for 50 years or more. The decisions you make about where you put the walls are really consequential, right? Or how you divide up that space. But I think I try to keep both pulse on what's happening in higher ed right now while also keeping an eye on kind of larger, larger spaces, whether it's what's going on with the economy or the political landscape or even changes in culture, because you have to be nimble in thinking about how is it going to work now and how is it going to work if the future is different. I've in the last year really fallen in love with a new set of tools and methodologies. It's called strategic foresight. the work that professional futurists use. And I think the best introduction is a book called Imaginable by Jane McGonigal. And that book has just kind of blown my mind in all kinds of great ways because it's helped me think about a future that is almost assuredly going to be different than the present we're living in. And it's made me feel a little bit more comfortable within uncertainty, and it's helped me in some ways face that uncertainty with a sense of hope and possibility. And I'm by no means an expert in that field, but I like to keep learning about it. And I think it's been helpful. And, you know, maybe the the last disposition, I think that's been helpful as a strategic planner is that I always look for ways to empower other people. So I think if any organization or institution is going to be successful at really moving the needle on whatever wants to do, right, whether it's to help more students gain access to college or to graduate more quickly or with less debt or with different skills, it's going to take the aligned efforts of a lot of people. And certainly as a planner, I'm not going to be the one on the front line doing most of that work I'm not going to be meeting with students and helping them figure out a schedule so they can stay in college. I'm most likely not going to be in the classroom or developing a new academic program, and I'm certainly not the one who's going to be laying conduit, in the new library building. But I think for the most part, as a planner, I try to add some value to the work of my colleagues by giving them a structure and a common language and some inspirational ideas to shoot for. But then I get out of the way and I let the experts do the work. So I think we can all do that in our jobs no matter what role we're in, whether it's, in a small office finding ways to kind of celebrate shared successes and try to tell a bigger story about how everyone contributes. I think that's one of the things that that's made me successful in planning. And if nothing else, it's just made it much more fun to come to work every day and be surrounded by great people doing great things.

Kelly Cherwin 8:42
Yeah, that's fantastic. I think it's rare that someone is the master of everything, so I liked your advice there and thank you so much for kind of explaining the strategic planner and like all your advice on asking questions and listening. And I love the fact that you are pushing yourself to learn more and be nimble. So I'm sure a lot of our listeners are kind of like, hey, maybe I might want to go into the strategic planning route. So thanks for that.

Lisa Jasinski 9:05
It's great fun. It's great fun. Come, come join me any day doing this work.

Leah Jackson 9:10
So, Lisa, thinking about career development, I know you were an ACE fellow and we actually published an article earlier this year on the Fellowship with the American Council on Education. Can you tell us a little bit about how that has helped You with your career?

Lisa Jasinski 9:25
Yeah, So I was a fellow in 2021 to 22, and at the time I was working at Trinity University, which is a small private liberal arts college. My my career up until that point had been largely at small private institutions. And I stepped away from my role for a year and I went to the University of New Mexico. So folks might know that UNM was the country's first, "R", one Hispanic serving institution and I felt like that was a way that I could just kind of throw myself into the deep end and get a totally different perspective on the higher ed. So much like I said about a skill I use in planning is to have a broad kind of peripheral vision. Like I kind of have a sense of what's happening across higher ed as well as maybe where the future's going. I really feel so grateful that I had the chance to step away mid-career and be a learner and to put myself in a place where I could just see things that were so different to the work that I saw every day. And I think that that year, both the time I spent at the University of New Mexico, the time I spent visiting other campuses or engaging in really kind of guided professional development, having some great sessions on topics like diversity, equity and inclusion, or learning more about financial models. That just opened up my mind to things that I wasn't thinking about. And it was incredibly energizing and it's definitely motivated me to think about what I want to do, both in my current job and what I might want to do in my next job as well.

Kelly Cherwin 11:12
So it sounds like it's a program that you would highly recommend.

Lisa Jasinski 11:15
You know, I, I try to tell people, you know, all programs can be great. I think it's good to go into something with your eyes open. I think it's really smart to go into tha ACE fellowship at a time in your life when you're really ready to give that your fullest attention. So if you have a lot going on in your personal life at home or your institution is going through something where they really need your talents and they need you to be fully grounded and fully present, that's probably not the moment to do the fellowship. S So I think it's good to find a moment in your career where you can really make the most of it. But it was a great experience for me and it came at exactly the right time in my life.

Kelly Cherwin 12:00
Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. We'd like to hear from you if you have a question for us or comments. Tweet us at higher ed careers. Or email us at podcast at higher ed jobs. Well, thank you, Lisa. That was fantastic,

Lisa Jasinski 12:14
Well, thanks for. Thanks for using me twice. I, apprecitate it.

Kelly Cherwin 12:17
and Leah, thanks so much for being the the guest co-host. I really enjoyed the conversation. And thank you so much for listening. Take care.